She shook her head, brushing off her sister’s reassurance. “I told him not to kill Landon when he had the chance. I told him that wasn’t who he was anymore and that he’d regret it.” She wiped her nose with the back of herhand. “He let him go because of me. Then Landon came back and shot him.” She hunched over and cried.
Her sister wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, honey, no. That’s not on you. Landon was unhinged. He was obsessed with you. But no one thought he’d do what he did. If Jordan had believed he was capable of that, he wouldn’t have let him go. It was—” Lucy broke off as if scrambling for words to explain the unexplainable. “Bad luck.”
Somehow that didn’t make Vanessa feel better, but she did let her sister hold her until her latest bout of tears had been cried out.
After a while, Lucy sat back and dug through her tote bag, pulling out a plastic container of thick red liquid. “Minestrone. I knew I’d never get you out of here, so I brought you leftover soup. Knowing Mom, she’ll bring a five-course meal for your dinner.”
Lucy dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and Vanessa’s heart clenched. She was so lucky to have this family.
“Get some rest, okay?”
Vanessa nodded, and when the door clicked shut, she did what she did every time the exhaustion took over. She crawled in beside Jordan, curling herself around him as carefully as she could, and closed her eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTY
This time when the fog lifted, it stayed off. The rest of the heaviness peeled away slowly, first from his mind, as he gradually became more conscious of what was around him—the beeping of a heart monitor, the whirring of machines.
Clarity replaced the haze he’d been under. He remembered the roof, not wanting to kill Landon, wanting to be a better man for Vanessa. He remembered the gunshot, the shock of pain, the way his body moved on instinct. He remembered drawing his weapon, pulling the trigger. He remembered the second he saw the life drain from Landon’s eyes, like a light fading off.
And then nothing after that.
Awareness finally returned to his body. A heaviness settled in his gut where Landon’s bullet had ripped through him. The drugged weight of his limbs sank into the hospital mattress. He wiggled his toes.
A familiar warmth rested in his hand. Slowly, he dragged an eye open, then another. The room was dim and blurry, but there she was, her hand in his, head resting onher forearm. That long, glossy mane fell over her shoulder like a blanket.
He took a minute to come to himself, into awareness, and look at her. She was the last thing he saw before he fell unconscious, and the first he saw when he woke. If that wasn’t God at work, he didn’t know what was.
He squeezed her hand lightly. As he imagined she would, she jolted right up, her eyes pinned to their joined hands as if she didn’t believe what she’d felt was real. So he squeezed again, and she gasped, her gaze shooting to his, and when they locked, shock froze all of her features. Then, as quickly as they froze, they crumpled.
Vanessa buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
“Hey.” The dry, raspy croak of his voice came out as barely a whisper. He lifted his hand to stroke her hair, and the silky softness sent a new energy buzzing through him, his blood slowly pumping back to life.
“Hey,” he rasped again. Even after everything he’d been through, there was still no greater hell than watching Vanessa cry.
When she lifted her face, her cheeks were wet and her eyes red. “I hate you.”
She hiccuped mid-statement, and he almost smiled.
He trailed his thumb over her knuckles. “Well, that’s funny, because I love you.”
With an answering sob, she launched herself at him, seeming both mindful of his prone position and desperate.
“I was so scared,” she cried, nuzzling her face against his neck, dropping kisses along his jaw. “I thought that was it. That I lost you.”
“Doesn’t sound like hate to me.” Maybe he was being needy, wanting to hear the words back, but he’d had a brush with death, so sue him for wanting some reassurance.
Luckily, she took the bait, because she lifted her head, gave him her beautifully raw, wet, vulnerable eyes, and told him, “I love you. I love you so much it feels like everything, all at once. Like hate, like desperation, like wild, unabandoned joy, like fear, like the happiest I’ve ever been. You calm me and rile me up at the same time. Is that normal?”
He huffed out a laugh. “I have no idea. I’ve never been in love before. And I’ll never be in love again, so maybe this feeling isn’t normal for other people, but it’s normal for us. That’s all that counts, right?”
Fresh tears glistened in her eyes, and when she nodded, they spilled over. “Yes, that’s all that matters.” Then she kissed him until his heart monitor went wild.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
“You’ve got nine lives, brother,” Sean said as he propped Jordan’s arm over his shoulder and gingerly helped him into a wheelchair.
After some apprehension from his New York doctors and several online meetings with a specialist back in Portland, it was finally discharge day. Jordan refused to take any more drugs, which he was now realizing was probably going to bite him in the ass because his abdomen already ached like a son of a bitch.
