Page 65 of Wicked Ruin

Cavin's expression shifts into something very still and dangerous. He says something into his phone I can't follow just as the ambulance and police arrive.

“It's okay,” Cavin says, as the paramedics move Declan toward the ambulance. “I’m right behind you.”

“I'm getting in with him.”

“Ma'am, we're going to need you to step outside the vehicle,” one of the paramedics says, already moving.

“No. I'm going with him.”

“She's going with me.” Declan's voice, from the back of the car—thinner than it should be, but it’s still him.

I climb in beside him and take his hand.

“Why did they come for you?” I ask, because I can't not ask. “What happened?”

“Don’t know.”

“Please don't make him talk,” a paramedic says in a tone that makes it very clear he’s not too pleased with me.

Declan looks at me and shrugs his good shoulder—just barely—and even that costs him. “I have lots of enemies, Bridget. Who knows.”

I squeeze his hand. “You've got that going for you now, haven't you?”

He gives me the ghost of a grin, the son of a bitch.

We get to the hospital in record time.

Now is not the time to think about the way I feel when I see that familiar stretch of concrete or that smell I swear I will never forget. But my body knows before my brain does. My shoulders go up to my ears, my jaw locks, and some part of me goes very small and still.

“You're going to have to step aside. It’s very urgent, miss. We need to get him into the operating room straightaway.” The EMT pauses. “Are you his wife?”

I swallow. Shake my head. “We're just friends.”

The EMTs exchange a look I don't have the time or the energy to decipher as they race down the hall with Declan.

The waiting room doors open behind me, and Cavin is already there. I don’t know how he extricated himself from Ballyhock’s finest and got here so quickly, but the man has connections.

He takes one look at my face and pulls me in without a word, no questions, no careful distance, just his arms around me and his hand at the back of my head. I press my face into his shoulder. Something in my chest cracks open, and I let it, just for a moment, just here where no one who matters can see. I cry into Cavin’s shoulder until I’m spent.

“Shh. I know it’s scary. You did good calling me. Got in touch with Seamus,” he says quietly.

“They're bringing him into the operating room now.”

I let him go. He stands close, his brow furrowed in concern. His overprotectiveness might drive me mad, but I never knew I needed a brother like this before.

I don't know, I want to say. But I nod.

“You did the right thing.”

“Declan told the guards to stay, Cavin. God, I’m so glad they didn’t. If they hadn’t been there⁠—”

“Aye,” Cavin says. “May have told them I'd rip their arms off and beat them to death with them if they let you go with anyone but me.” He says this the way Cavin says most things—completely matter-of-fact.

“Well, that's unnecessarily violent.”

“Effective though?” He smiles, then guides me toward the nearest chair and straightens. He looks at the floor for a moment and scratches his chin. “Should probably call his fiancée.”

I say nothing. There’s nothing to say. She’ll come, or she won’t, and either way, he’ll still be hers on paper, and I’ll still be sitting in this chair.