Page 63 of Darkest Kiss

"Fate." He spits the word out like it just bit his tongue.

"Whatever you want to call it. Just don't wait until something blows up to figure out you wanted her the whole time."

"Hm." His gaze snags on me. Appraising me, perhaps. "Thanks for the advice."

Then Ransom turns, looking back out the window. We ride the last couple of minutes without talking. When the SUV pulls into an unassuming parking lot, Ransom opens his door. "Ready?"

I nod and follow him.

The private hospital doesn't have a name on the outside. Ransom slides me a look. “This place is safe. We own it.”

“You own it?” I echo.

“Yep. Two floors, six beds, a full surgical suite, a helipad on the roof for the days the front door won't do.”

“I’d say I don’t believe you, but I’ve seen more unbelievable things in the past month. You guys have so much money.”

A smile lifts the corner of his mouth. “Fucking right.”

From the street, the hospital looks like a beige office building nobody works in. The sort of place I'd walk past a hundred times without looking directly at it. The bodyguards that accompany Ransom hustle us into a side door.

They seem comfortable with the building. They've no doubt been here before.

A nurse pulls me aside the second we're through the door. She's brisk and kind and doesn't ask why a girl shows up at a private hospital at this hour covered in someone else's blood.

She checks my eyes with a little light. She asks what day it is, and how many fingers she's holding up, and whether I lost consciousness, and I answer on autopilot while my whole mind stays down the hall with Rian.

"Mild concussion," she says. "The ringing in your ears should settle in a day or two. Somebody needs to wake you every few hours tonight." She cleans a cut at my hairline I didn't know I had. "None of the rest of this blood is yours, hon. You're alright."

I don't feel alright. But my hands have finally stopped shaking, and I can walk, and that's enough to get me where I need to be. "Can I see him?" I ask.

"Soon." She nods toward a door. "Wait in there. They'll come get you."

The hallway smells like strong antiseptic and nothing else, which is somehow worse than blood would be. I try not to breathe through my nose as I follow Ransom into a private waiting room.

A dangerous-looking dark-haired man is already there, in a chair against the wall, flipping a small knife through his fingers without looking at it. He's not looking at anything. His eyes find me long enough to confirm I exist, then slide back to the middle distance.

“That’s Talon,” Ransom says. “One of my brothers.”

Talon raises his hand but he still doesn’t look at me.

I shift, whispering to Ransom. “I thought it was just you, Hale, and Rian.”

“You’ve met Talon. Hawke’s around here somewhere, too.”

Knowing that there is another King brother floating around, untethered, makes me nervous.

"Dr. B's in there with Rian." Talon fidgets with the knife. "It's been forty minutes without an update."

"And Hale?”

Talon jerks his thumb. "A nurse came by and yelled at him for bleeding all over the floor in here. She forced Hale and Hawke to let her patch them up."

A door opens, cutting off any more of Ransom’s questions. A man in scrubs comes out, his expression determined. He glances at Ransom first, probably because Ransom is the most 'I'm the boss in charge here' guy I've ever seen. Then he glances at me. His eyes soften.

"He's stable," he says.

"Oh thank god." My knees feel weak. I wobble, and Ransom reaches out and snags the back of my oversized t-shirt. He nods at the doctor.