“I missed you, too,” I admit, putting my Coke on the floor so I can wrap my arms around him.
He tips his head back to look at me. “So, he’s awake?”
“Yeah. He was a little disoriented, but he seemed aware. He didn’t want me to leave the room, but I think the staff wanted him to have some privacy while they did whatever it is they had to do.”
He strokes my hair back from my face. “Happy for you, babe.”
“I know you don’t get it, my wanting to be here for him after everything. I’d be lying if I said I got it myself. It was just something I had to do.”
“I don’t need to get it. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”
“Have I told you today how much I love you?”
“Not yet, but the day is still young.” He grins.
The door opens, and the doctor walks out, looking around before he spots me and Banner. “Ah, Miss Wells, he’s asking for you.”
I scramble to my feet, nearly ruining Banner’s chances of having kids with my knee in the process. “You wanna come with me?”
Banner gets to his feet, shaking his head. “No, the man’s after an angel, and he’s found one in you. I think I’ll wait out here until you’re done. Then I can take you home and remind you who you belong to.”
“Promise?”
“You bet your sweet ass that’s a promise.”
Epilogue
BANNER
I trail my fingers down her back, grinning when she shivers under my touch
She turns her head from where it rests on my chest and looks up at me. “I’m happy.” She sounds so surprised, like she never expected that to be something she could look forward to. It makes me both proud that I had a hand in that and sad that she learned never to expect it in the first place.
“Good. You deserve all the happiness in the world.”
“It feels wrong somehow. Not like I don’t trust it,” she hurries to say. “More like…I feel guilty that there are so many others having such a crappy time at the moment that?—”
I cover her lips with my thumb. “I seem to remember you spending a bunch of time behind bars after going through a horrific ordeal. And while that happened, nobody here stopped living. Nobody stopped laughing or falling in love. We all carried on with our lives. I’m not going to say you owe these people nothing. That’s not who you are. I’m saying that their sadness isn’t enough of a reason to stop you from being happy. If you were only happy when life was going well, I’d never see you smilebecause shit happens. You never know what’s around the corner, and I for one am done living my life worried about what others think.”
She presses a kiss to my chest. “I either lock myself down and feel numb, or I open myself up and feel too much. I need to figure out how to handle things a little better.”
“I think you handle things far better than you realize. But if ever they get to be too much, just lean on me. That’s what I’m here for.”
“You’re too good to me, Banner.”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Sorrow.”
Her eyes flutter closed, a smile on her face as she lays her head back on my chest. I keep trailing my fingers down her arm as her breathing evens out and she drops off to sleep. I feel my eyes getting heavy, but I fight it for as long as I can. These moments when everything is quiet, and I have my whole world lying on my chest, are the moments I treasure the most.
“Wait, Tate—Tate as in Tate Foster? The SWAT guy who helped us out with Callie? He’s going to join Price Security?” I ask, thinking I heard Blake wrong. I look around the large table in the back room of our offices and see the others look as surprised as I am.
“One and the same. Seems he had some trouble. I don’t have all the details, but shit went down with the Kings of Carnage and it spilled over onto Tate. Though from what Tate was saying, the bad guys in this were supposed to be the good guys, and as we’re all familiar with what that feels like, I thought he’d fit right in here.”
“So he’s leaving SWAT?”
Blake nods. “Already left, from what I understand. I think his other brothers are considering it too, though Tate is the only one who’s considering relocating. Perhaps they’ll set up something similar up there to what we have going on here.”
“Would he not want to work with his brothers? Don’t get me wrong, I like Tate, but I don’t want to bring a guy in only for him to leave a few months later.”
