I almost laugh when they say home, but it comes out as a trembly breath instead. Home is a door that swings open too easily, a couch that remembers fear, and a man in your living room smiling like he owns you.
Yet across the room is a man, a biker, who always felt like home to me.
Diablo stands with his back to the wall like he is guarding it, like the wall needs protecting from the world. He’s still in his cut, still wearing his colors in a place that smells like bleach, coffee and prayers that never get answered on time. His hair is a little messy, his eyes too dark and too awake.
Even with all that leather, you can still see the truth of him. Ink climbing his throat. Scars at his knuckles and the side of his jaw like history tried to kill him and failed. A sliver of old damage at his collar where the shirt gapes under the cut. You can put a man like him in a suit, you can wipe the blood off his hands, but you cannot hide what he is.
And there is blood on one of his knuckles that is not his. The nurse offered him wipes. He did not take them, like he wants everyone to see what happens when men touch what he calls, mine.
He has not sat down once since they brought me back here. He has not taken his eyes off me for more than two seconds. He looks calm, but I can tell the truth by the way his jaw keeps clenching and unclenching, by the way his fingers flex at his sides like he is fighting the urge to break something.
Every time a stranger walks past the door, his gaze flicks up, scanning the hall, tracking movement, hunting even inside this sterile little box.
Magic and Vice are posted outside the door like bouncers at a club, big shoulders filling the frame, faces set in hard neutrality. There is another man in the hallway too, one of Diablo’s enforcers in his leather, cut on, quiet eyes that don’t blink too often. He doesn’t come in. He just stands there like a warning sign with a pulse, making sure nobody gets too curious.
Nobody looks casual in a hospital when the president of a one percenter club is standing in the room like the law is asuggestion. Even the nurses do that polite glance-away thing, the one you do when you feel danger and pretend you don’t.
I keep seeing it when I blink. The flash. The sound. Rico’s body jerking like he could not believe the universe finally chose him.
Part of me feels sick about it, stomach still rolling when I think of blood spreading across my tile. Part of me feels something uglier, something I do not want to admit out loud because it makes me feel like a monster too.
Relief.
Because Rico is not in my apartment anymore. Rico is not in my bed. Rico is not in my skin. Rico may not survive his gunshot wound. If he lives, he’ll end up in a cell or a grave. Miami doesn’t do in-between.
And that relief makes me want to puke, because what kind of life teaches you to feel grateful for gunshots.
A doctor comes in with a clipboard and kind eyes that look tired, like she has seen too much and stopped letting it stick. She talks to me gently, like I am a scared animal that might bite if she moves wrong. Her voice stays soft while she checks my cheek and my wrists and asks if I have dizziness, nausea, headache, all the normal words for a night that was anything but.
“No fractures,” she says finally. “Soft tissue bruising. The swelling on your cheek will go down. We’ll give you something for pain. You’re lucky.”
Lucky is a word that feels wrong in my mouth, too sweet for what happened, too clean.
I nod anyway because I do not have the energy to argue, and because if I open my mouth to fight the word I might start crying again.
The doctor gives Diablo a look too, not scared exactly, but cautious, like she is checking the temperature of a storm.
“Make sure she follows up with her primary care,” the doctor says, and then her eyes meet mine again. “And if you don’t feel safe, we can connect you with resources.”
Resources. Like a pamphlet can stop a man with a gun. Like a hotline can keep a predator out of your living room.
I nod again because it is easier than explaining Miami.
When the doctor leaves, the door clicks shut and the room goes quiet again, except for the TV and the faint murmur of nurses in the hall. The blanket scratches my skin. My fingers keep twitching like my body still expects plastic biting into it.
I stare at my hands because looking at Diablo makes my heart do stupid things, and I do not trust anything stupid right now.
Diablo crosses the room like the air belongs to him. Boots heavy. Presence swallowing space. He stops in front of me, then crouches low, bringing his face close enough that I can see the red veins in the white of his eyes.
He looks like he has not slept in weeks.
Like he has been carrying rage in his chest and it finally got a target.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do, because my body remembers his voice. Remembers obeying it. Remembers how safe it can feel to give in when you are exhausted.
His gaze drags over my cheek, my wrists, the tremble in my hands, and his mouth tightens like he is swallowing something sharp.
