“I love you,” I told him huskily through the tears burning my throat.
Love you, he mouthed, his lips hardly moving.
Something clicked together inside me, and my world tilted back into place.
My man was even more beautiful than before, but maybe being robbed of him had made me see deeper. Jacob had died for me; how could that not be an extraordinary thing? People claimed that they’d die for the person they loved all the time, but when it came down to it, would they?
Jacob did, and it filled me with awe for him because it was proof—not of his feelings—I never doubted those—but it proved the type of man he was. Being without him felt like I’d been plunged into darkness, but now the long night was over and the first ray of light shone on me. And we all knew that where there was light, there was hope.
Lighter days were coming.
The door clicked open again, but my gaze remained on Jacob’s.
“Well, well, well,” Bones drawled. “It’s about time.” I felt his presence beside the bed, and he murmured, “Can you move aside for a minute, Saint. I need to check his vitals.”
Jacob’s fingers lightly squeezed mine, and his eyes flared slightly.
“No,” I said, smiling, “I’m not moving. Check his vitals another way.”
Jacob’s lips twitched, and his eyes crinkled with a small smile.
Bones chuckled and somehow worked his way around me, taking Jacob’s blood pressure and listening to his heart, and all the while, our gazes never left each other.
I had my big, bad biker back.
And I’d never let him go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ICEMAN
Once Bones removed the drainage tube from my chest, my recovery was pretty straightforward.
It took time, of course, but he had me on my feet within days and as much as I was in agony and begged him to let me piss in a bottle rather than go to the bathroom, in hindsight, getting moving again helped my muscles to start working as they should.
I think Bones and Saint almost came to blows a few times. Bones was a young doctor and, like Freya, had qualified early because he was some kind of medical prodigy genius whose grandfather invented some heart valve contraption. But along with his confidence, also came a touch of arrogance, and if there was one thing Saint hated, it was an arrogant man. Therefore, she pushed back more often than not. I saw a different side to her because until then, I’d only ever witnessed sweet, so when she turned fiery it shocked me at first, then very quickly turned me the fuck on ‘cause she only ever got fiery for me, and what man wouldn’t love that down to his dick?
None, that’s who.
Except, I couldn’t fuck, it hurt too much. Even the pain of getting a half-chub took my breath away, so I had a lot of semis go to waste.
My mom and dad hung around for a week after I woke up. I loved my parents to distraction, but their bickering drove me insane, so by the time they left for the airport, I was ready to see them go. I gave them a promise that we’d visit for Christmas, so Mom seemed happy to leave as long as I promised to FaceTime her every night so she could check on my recovery.
That was also the day I moved out of the medical wing and back into the suite with Saint. I felt bad for my woman because she had to run around after me, but I was okay to move around by then, so I went downstairs to eat and sit in the bar for an hour every night and shoot the shit with the boys.
It was there that I finally got to talk with Diablo.
We got on well, and always had, but we’d never been close. I didn’t really get Diablo and his decapitated body parts, chop-a-cock thing, so I tended to keep him at arm’s length. The thing was, Saint and D seemed to have become new BFFs, so I had no choice but to spend some time with him, and I was pleasantly surprised when Hendrix told me how D had stuck to Saint like glue while I’d been out for the count and made sure she was safe and protected.
A man like that deserved my respect, frankly, because he’d earned it, and not just by saving my life, but also by caring for Saint the way he did when I couldn’t. He saw her heart, the same way I did, so we had that in common at least, and it was something I could work with at long last.
We were sitting at a table because it stung like a motherfucker to get up and down on a bar stool. Diablo had joined us, and Saint had taken Gigi to the ladies' room.
I took in his black eyes, his olive skin, and his dark beard, noting how two men couldn’t be more different. Diablo was good-looking but for some reason, he wasn’t popular with the ladies or even the club whores. They fucked him and didn’t complain about anything but they also didn’t flock around him the same way they did with, say Gambit and me (pre Saint, of course).
“I never thanked you,” I muttered.
He hitched a thick, black brow. “That’s because you don’t have to.”
