“Whatever.” Ronan stood up and shoved his hands under the faucet. He washed his hands for what seemed like hours, leaving Sage bleeding at his feet. “Is he staying here?”
“What? No.”
“Foster.” Ronan turned off the water and dried his hands on the legs of his sweats since I didn’t have a clean towel left in my whole house. “Put him in your guest room.”
“He’s not a guest.”
“He almost died on your floor.”
“But he didn’t,” I said. “Thanks to you.”
Ronan looked down at Sage. “That’s yet to be seen.”
“If you think he’s going to die, he’s definitely not staying here.”
“I’ll help you move him to the spare room.”
“Ronan,” I protested.
“Come on. I can’t do it on my own. I gave him a dose of a new painkiller and muscle relaxant combination and he’s a lot of dead weight.”
“A what now?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it. Just get in here.”
Ronan was already on the ground, sliding an arm around Sage’s back and pulling him up. I watched the way his stare lingered on my gun, which he’d managed to maneuver around while he stitched Sage back together. Reluctantly, I joined him in my kitchen and helped him get Sage down the hall into my guest room.
“Take his clothes off first,” I said, frowning at the mess of Sage and the way he contrasted against my clean white sheets.
“You can manage that part,” Ronan assured me, patting me on the back with a trembling hand. “I’ll expect answers tomorrow.”
“Expect away.”
He slapped his hand against my back and walked out without another word, leaving Sage and me alone. I waited until the sliding glass door pulled closed before, giving Sage a quiet onceover.
“I’m going to take your clothes off,” I told him.
Sage’s color had started to return, but it was clear standing was work. He answered me with a dip of his chin toward his chest. Half a nod would have to do. I pushed his jacket off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. His shirt went with it because Ronan had cut it up the front to the collar.
Swallowing thickly, I worked open the button to Sage’s jeans and shoved them down, along with his blood-stained briefs. It didn’t take more than a gentle push to get him onto the bed, and I knelt at his feet to remove his boots, thankful he was high and wouldn’t remember me on my knees for him in the morning.
Once he was as naked as he was going to get, I raised his legs onto the bed and pulled the sheets up over him. Sage was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
I gathered up his clothes, finding a Sig Sauer in the pocket of his jacket. There was no way I was going to leave him armed and wounded in my house, I didn’t know enough about him; I didn’t know why he was wanted dead. The last thing I needed was him waking up and coming after me. I took the gun.
I flipped on the hall light on my way back to the kitchen, dropping his clothes in the blood he’d left all over my floor and taking both of our guns to the dining room table. I set them on top of his file and stared out the window until the sunrise.
Chapter Eight
Sage
When I woke up, it was dark.
It took a good five minutes for me to realize I wasn’t in my own bed, and another two for me to recognize the searing pain that radiated through the entire left side of my body. I tried to breathe in, and it felt like the movement of my ribs somehow punched me right in the face. There was a splint on my nose and my whole face ached. I pressed the pads of my fingers against my cheek, drawing back with a wince when I touched what had to be a bruise.
Golden.
“Shit,” I cursed under my breath, trying my best to push myself into a sitting position. The sheets slipped and rustled against my skin, and I dared a glance down, finding myself naked. I dragged my hand down my stomach, a white gauze bandage over my side, and I could feel the dried and cracked blood on my ribs, even though it was too dark to see it.
