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“But you did.” He looked back at me. “You both did.”
Emery stood and tried to gain her composure as she told him, “We didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”
“Yeah, yeah. Save the theatrics.” He shook his head. “I love ya, kid. Always will. But you should’ve come to me. You should’ve told me how you were feeling… Something. Anything would’ve been better than sneaking around behind my back.”
He didn’t shout, and somehow that made it sting even more. He stared at us for a moment longer. I didn’t look away. I deserved the anger and whatever else he wanted to throw at me. He finally let out a breath and said, “I’m glad you didn’t die.”
He turned and walked out, letting the door slam behind him. Emery didn’t move. She just stood there, staring at the closed door. I reached over and took her hand in mine. Neither of us said a word. We let the sting of his words sink in, but we both knew he would come around. He just needed time.
Until then, we had each other.
And that was enough. Hell, it was more than enough.
18
EMERY
“Idon’t like this.”
“I’m not exactly thrilled about it either.” Cole looked down at his wound and grimaced. “Looks like he was trying to carve a fucking pumpkin.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“I wasn’t laughing.”
I carefully pressed the fresh gauze against his gnarled stitches and tried not to hurt him. I hated having to do it. Not because I couldn’t handle the blood or the scar. I’d been around Fury long enough to see plenty of them, but he wasn’t just a brother.
This was Cole.
And every time I looked at his wound, I’d find myself being reminded of that night and how he looked when Jax and Reaper pulled him out of the back of that SUV with blood-soaked clothes. It was an image that would haunt me for months to come, yet he was sitting here smiling. “You’re impossible.”
“You’ve mentioned that before.”
“Well, it bears repeating.” I finished taping his bandage. “You might want to think about getting a new vest.”
“Wasn’t the vest’s fault.” A strange expression marked his face as he said, “It was all on me.”
“How so?”
“I was distracted.”
“By what?”
His eyes met mine, and he hesitated. I knew then I was the distraction. I should’ve known. The whole thing with Jax finding out about us before they left had to be weighing on him. It had certainly weighed on me. He reached over and placed his hand on my thigh. “I should’ve been focused. I wasn’t, and I paid the price. Simple as that.”
“But it’s not that simple, is it?”
“This is my life, Em… I’ve been doing this a long time. The men in this club are my brothers. I’d fight for every damn one of them.” He gave my thigh a squeeze. “I’d fight for you, too. Any day. Every day. No question.”
I sat quietly for a moment, and then the thought I’d been trying to push back all morning came creeping back in. My chest tightened as I muttered, “Maybe we’re moving too fast.”
“Fast?” He cocked his brow. “We’ve known each other for years.”
“But this is different.”
“Yeah, but it isn’t new.”
“It feels new.”
