But I knew.
Some part of me that had been tracking Destiny Rourke since a burning desert night woke up before the rest of my body did.
She was there.
I opened my eyes.
And there she was.
Blue scrubs. Hair pulled back. Badge clipped to her chest. Tablet in one hand. All professional edges and tired eyes, pretending she had not once sat beside my bed, held my hand, and whispered words into the dark that had dragged my sorry ass back from the edge.
Morning light hit her from the side, thin and pale through the half-open blinds. It turned her skin soft and made the diamond studs in her ears flash like little blades. Mandy’s diamonds. Theones she wore every day. I knew that because I knew too much about her life and not enough about how to survive it.
Her hair was darker under the hospital lights.
Blue-black.
Shiny.
Pulled back tight enough to look controlled, but not tight enough to hide the few loose pieces that had escaped around her face. One curl brushed her cheek, lying against her skin like temptation had decided to get specific.
My fingers itched.
Actually itched.
Which was stupid, considering I had tape on my hands, tubes in my veins, a line tugging at my arm, and enough pain under my ribs to remind me I had recently lost an argument with a bullet.
Still.
My fingers wanted her hair.
Wanted to slide through that dark silk and feel if it was as soft as I remembered.
It was.
I knew it was.
I remembered the grave. Cabo. Her hair running through my hands like something I had no business touching and less business missing. I remembered salt air and smoke and her mouth trembling under mine. I remembered being a better man for one brief second because I had stopped when every part of me wanted to keep going.
Now I lay there in a hospital bed, half-dead, engaged, and still wanting the same woman.
Alive, but doubly fucked.
“Morning,” she said.
Her voice was careful.
Too careful.
That nurse voice.
Cool, calm, steady. The voice she used when people were bleeding and she needed them to believe she could handle it.
I hated that voice on me.
I loved it.
Hated that too.
