I was thankful for that part because who knows how it would have played out if it had lasted longer.
A shiver took hold of my body at the thought, and I began to tremble.
“I got you, sweetheart.”
Jett may have been scared, worried, angry, and sometimes stuck in the past since he’d gotten to me, but he had one hundred percent also been my rock.
Had been since I was seventeen.
After the police left, I couldn’t help but replay in my head the things they told me. Once they realized I hadn’t seen anything after being shoved into the wall, they told me Dusty’s part of the story.
I was beyond astonished and grateful. It was also clear that Dusty needed a far bigger and better word than badass to describe her. I didn’t know how I was ever going to thank her.
But I did know that she was a friend for life.
The woman had beat the large man over the head with her cane, causing him to release me. When he whirled around toward her, she threw a couple of punches to his gut, then his nose—most likely breaking it—before he ran for his life. I suddenly knew what the crunching sound was that I had heard.
I wasn’t sorry at all—he got what he deserved.
Letting out a sigh, I slowly moved my neck, which was stiff as a board. I was thankful to have that contraption off from around it.
Turning to look at Jett was a lot easier now. My eyes met his, and just as I opened my mouth, the door opened.
Ruby walked back in, with the woman who saved me right behind her, and trailing Dusty were Brinley, Capri, along with a few other ladies.
I looked straight at Dusty.
And I burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Six
JETT
I felt like I could breathe again.
Is it crazy to think that I’d never been so scared in my life after everything I’d gone through overseas?
When I got the call that Patience had been attacked outside Capri’s bakery, I could swear I’d stopped breathing. The air truly didn’t return to my lungs until we got home, where she was pressed up against me in bed, my arms holding her close.
I rested my palm over her heart, needing to feel every single beat pulsing through me—to feed my soul with the guarantee that she was alive.
Patience’s chest rose and fell in a soft, steady rhythm as she slept, but sleep eluded me. Maybe I could breathe, but I couldn’t stop replaying the evening over and over in my head like a broken record.
The call that she was hurt, the frantic minutes until I could get to her, the hours spent in the hospital as we waited to find out she was okay—it was torture, plain and simple. But another form of torture kept flashing through my mind when they took her for a CT scan.
I’d flipped my shit, scared as hell that my wife would leave the room and never come back.
Just like my friends.
I flashed back to those moments in hell, the cries before the silence telling me I’d lost another brother. The memories bombarded me until she was brought back to her room, where I hovered and never left her side.
Her friends trickled in and out for a bit as we waited to get her discharged, and a couple of the guys showed up to talk about what happened, something I told them could wait for the next day, or to talk with the police. Patience was exhausted, and I wasn’t walking away from her for even a second.
Bronson was a cop, while Lyric was a former one, and all the guys ofNo Surrenderhad contacts everywhere. They could find out what they needed, and if they weren’t told, they would gather info on their own because of their crazy, secret skills.
Patience stirred a little, a slight whimper drifting from her lips, and I froze. The last thing I wanted was for her to have nightmares about what happened, but I knew all too well that was a possibility. I also knew how awful they could be.
“Shh, baby, you’re safe,” I whispered in her ear.
