VIKTOR
Ranger’s brain was fine. Cam had made the doctor at the private clinic we had all used before write a full report, one that sent frigid shivers down my spine.
Agitation.
Severe pain.
Acute concussion, exacerbated by previous injuries, at least two of which I felt responsible for.
You weren’t even there when he got in the ring with Nash McGovern.
But that was the point. Ranger had fought Nash because loving me in that moment had hurt him. Because he had needed Nash to hurt himmore. And if that wasn’t my fault, whose was it?
Beside me on the bed, Ranger stirred. He did not wake, but I was less alarmed about that than I had been when I’d seen him collapse eighteen hours ago. Sleep was the best thing for him, and Cam had already told me Ranger was not leaving this place—this bed—anytime soon.
“Bet you want to goddamn punch me too.”
Not really. In the moment, I had been angry with Jake, but hindsight was a wonderful thing. What Alexei and I had plannedhad been exactly the same. The only difference was Jake and Cam’s deception had succeeded.
Eighteen hours.
I rubbed my chest, guilt lancing my heart that it had taken so long to dispose of every scrap of evidence. To erase the men we’d killed as if they’d never existed. We had done it to protect Ranger and Cam as much as ourselves, but being away from him had nearly killed me.
Was still killing me, along with the hard truth that Ranger had only been there because of me. That it had taken him and Alexei no time at all to convince me to allow it. But if I took nothing from what we had done at the port, it was that the time to look back was over.
Tell him you love him.
I had. Repeatedly, not caring who heard. But he had not been conscious to hear me. I could only hope that he sensed my presence beside him. That he knew I was here to stay, however long it took him to open his eyes and truly see me.
Ranger settled again, pressing his face into my side with a low groan, lips twisted in a grimace.
I rubbed his shoulders, hating that he was in so much pain, that he had been so sick, blaming myself more than Saint who had already confessed to causing Ranger’s injury.
“It was not your fault. You did not hit him the other three times.”
I had told him that, more than once. But I got the feeling it haunted Saint as much as not telling Ranger I loved him weeks ago was haunting me, and Saint did not deserve that.
A soft knock at the bedroom door drew my attention from tracing patterns on Ranger’s neck with my thumb.
I expected Cam. He had not yet left, leading me to idly wonder if he was scared of the wrath that awaited him withAlexei, but the figure that filled the doorway was taller. Fairer. And looked a thousand times better than when I last saw him.
“Hello, Locke.”
Locke embraced me, and I could not describe how that felt. How the arms of a man I had spent less than a month with had come to feel like something I had known my whole life.
He smelled like sweet lemons, his skin faintly damp from a recent shower, and I pulled back to realise he had octopus slippers on his feet. “My kids spend way too much time with Rubi.”
“And that persuades you to swap your boots for these?”
“Something like that.” Locke rubbed his palms up and down my biceps. “Don’t acknowledge them around him, or you’ll get a pair too.”
He turned his attention to Ranger, switching gears. And I remembered this about Locke Halliwell more than anything. That he was a natural caregiver. A trained one. And that I would not have lived to see this moment without him.
Locke had quick and gentle hands. He assessed the taped wound on Ranger’s head and took his vitals without waking him. “What’s he like when he’s conscious? Still confused?”
“He has not been conscious since I got here.”
Locke eased Ranger’s head back onto the pillow. “He was rowdy as hell earlier—at least by the standards of someone who’s supposed to be out cold.”
