I can’t forgive myself. I can’t rest. I just need her to open her eyes.
Taking her hand in mine again, I lean in and kiss the back of it, watching her. Waiting.
Damn it, Wren. Open your eyes. Do it for me.
I don’t know how long we’ve been waiting. Doc has been checking and rechecking her vitals, fiddling with the machines.Sin paces and stares, hovering at a distance as if touching her would taint her. The blood he’s covered in is not hers.
It’s from three of the mercs who came in with Knox. He practically gutted them instead of shooting. Besides the one. Surprises need to be quick after all, and Sin excels at the kind of attack we just experienced.
We each did what we needed to.
I still should have been there to help her the moment she dropped. But my rage got in the way. My training. Neutralize the enemy. Then tend to the wounded. I was only able to because Doc was there.
It doesn’t feel like enough.
Wren’s eyelids flutter.
I go still—this moment is so fragile, I’m afraid to move and break it. I keep her hand between mine and wait.
Please, Wren, wake up. Please.
The first thing she sees ismehovering over her, eyes bloodshot, jaw tight.
“You look like hell,” she whispers, her voice hoarse.
Something like a laugh but broken comes out of me. “You scared the shit out of me.”
Doc exhales like he’d been holding his breath the whole night.
Sin stops pacing instantly.
Wren squeezes my hand weakly, and I bring her palm back to my mouth.
Doc steps close, voice soft, clinical but warm. “Easy, bird. Don’t move your arm yet. You lost more blood than I’d like.”
He adjusts her IV and touches her other wrist briefly—steady, grounding. His calm is keeping my biggest fears at bay.
Sin is leaning on the doorframe. His eyes are dark, angry from worry, his voice low. “Don’t do that again, pretty girl.”
My wife nods, and her gaze turns back to me again. “How long have I been out?”
“Six hours, nineteen minutes,” Doc says. “How’s your pain?”
Wren murmurs, and he taps at a tube, withdrawing a syringe with some of our limited oxycodone. I hold up a hand for him to wait. Not that I want my wife in pain, but I don’t want to send her back off to sleep just yet.
We have to have this conversation before it kills me.
I kneel beside her, brushing her hair from her face. My thumb shakes as I caress her cheek. I hate that she notices. My throat has gravel in it when I say, “You don’t get to do that. You don’t take bullets for me.”
She winces but smiles faintly. “Too late.”
I close my eyes like she just stabbed me. I lean forward, hands framing her face. “You’re my wife. You don’t protect me—Iprotectyou.”
She lifts her hand to my cheek—slowly, painfully—but she does it. “I’d do it again.”
She has Izzy’s fierce selflessness…
I finally see that Wren might not be made for this life, but she fits it. She’s adapting, becoming exactly who she needs to be to not only survive it but thrive in it.
