He didn’t laugh or even smile. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life than you, standing here right now. Alive. Home.”
I blinked back the tears that sprang to my eyes. I hadn’t cried once while Ethan Todd had kept me prisoner.
I wasn’t going to start now.
“Did they hurt you?” Bram asked.
There were a million other questions hidden in the words, but I knew what he wanted to know.
How bad had it been? What had Ethan Todd done to me?
“I think so. I mean, it fucked me up, but mostly they just kept me in the cell, fed me shitty food, made me listen to Ethan’s rants. And then…”
“The tunnels.” Remy’s blond hair looked damp, like he’d just taken a shower, and without thinking I pushed it back from his forehead.
I nodded. “That part was…” I took a deep breath and forced myself to exhale slowly as the memories threatened to overtake me. “That part was rough.”
“You fought back.” There was pride in Bram’s voice.
“We saw your booby traps,” Poe said. “The chain, the rope.”
“For all the good it did me.” Anton had caught me in the end.
“It did a lot of good,” Bram said. “You slowed them down, bought us time to find you.”
I looked at each of them in turn. “I knew you’d come.”
Bram’s eyes burned like the deepest night. “Always.”
“Are you hungry?” Poe asked. “I could make you something.”
I swallowed against the bile still lingering in my stomach. “Maybe some toast? And I’d kill for a coffee.”
“You got it.” Poe headed to the kitchen.
“Come sit down,” Remy said.
Bram pulled out his phone. “I’m going to call Doc.”
“Who’s Doc?”
“The doctor we use for house calls,” Bram said. “He’s one of the Blades.”
I shook my head. “No doctor.”
Being seen by a doctor who was a member of a local MC seemed strange, but that wasn’t my reason for saying no.
“But— ” Remy started.
“No doctors,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m okay, and I don’t want anyone else touching me right now.”
Remy and Bram exchanged glances.
“Okay,” Bram said.
He pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over me, then tucked it around my body like my parents had when I was a kid. It was such a tender gesture, and I wondered if Bram had done that for Cassie when she was little.
In spite of the circumstances, the thought of Bram tucking a child in at night did something weird to my body, and I was pretty sure my ovaries were screaming.
