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I touch his face, frantically committing him to memory. My fingertips tell me he’s warm and alive. “Gray,” I breathe through tears. They run down my face and coat my lips, ending up in my mouth in a salty rush. “I can’t imagine what you went through up there.”
He stares back at me like he can’t comprehend the hell that I’ve lived. Penny too. All of the men, not knowing where he was or what was happening. I see it all in the shimmering tears in his one open eye. When one falls, I sweep it away with my thumb. There’s despair at the pit of him. I know that the weight of his father and everything he now represents, weigh heavier on him and hurt far more than anything he endured over the days he was captive.
He grasps my chin so tight in his fingers that it hurts. He hisses air through his nose and makes an animal sound. The sound of a dying man.
I know what he’s trying to say.
“No.” I clap my hands on his face, digging my fingers in harder than he’s holding me, but still so careful to avoid the cuts and bruises and swelling. “I’m never leaving you again. No matter how much it hurts or how much horror there is in this life, I’m here. I fucking swear it, Gray, I’m going nowhere.”
He tries to get his mouth working. Tries, and fails and tries again.
Finally, he rasps out a few words I have to strain to hear. “Thought you wouldn’t want me like this.”
“Like what?” He won’t look at me, so I ask him again. “Like what, Gray? Your father wanted to take away everything, but we’re not letting that happen. You will never lose me and Penny. Raiden fought for you and your brothers are still yours. Your club is still yours. Your father might have burned your house and brought war to our doorstep, but we’re behind you. Me, Raiden, and all your club brothers. They’re your real family. The second they know that you’re awake, they’re going to be in here, demanding that you tell them what you want done. The clubhouse is under lockdown, some of the women and children have left Hart, but your brothers want to fight. If it’s war your father wants, it’s war he’ll have, but they won’t do a thing until you give the order. Some of them are upstairs, but the door to this room is locked from the inside. I’m not going to let anyone in here until you tell me that you’re up to it.”
His whole body shudders with a deep breath. I know he’s in pain, but he’s like a predatory animal, hiding it so well that you’d never know.
“That night changed all of us.”
I nod, taking his good hand in my own. “Yes. I didn’t need help finding the warrior in me. She’s here and she’s going to fight just as hard as any of your brothers. I’d do anything to protect you.” He jams a finger into his chest, a furious frown crushing his brow. “I know you think it’s supposed to be the other way around, but not when your queen loves you like I do. We’re both fierce and we’re both going to be raising a tiger of a daughter because you’re alive and you’re going to heal. Burning down a building and making threats isn’t going to break us or this club. We are goingnowhere.”
Beat up, bruised, stitched, swollen, hooked to machines, Gray still doesn’t look the least bit vulnerable. Even in this bed, he’s huge and powerful. He’s a lethal being in a momentary pause, gathering his breath before he unleashes the full fury of his wrath.
“I might sound like an avenging angel, but all that time you were gone, I was trying not to fall apart. I kept thinking I’d wasted all those years, and our time was up. My worst fear has always been losing you. I just want to hold you and let our hearts beat together because we’re still here, still alive, and you are so fucking precious and beautiful and mine.”
Gray’s face hardens. He was so tender before, but it’s lost to his sharp determination. He holds out his arms and my heart bleeds as I lean in against him. I tuck my face into the crook of his neck and manage not to sob until his hand comes down behind my hair and presses me to him so hard that I have to be hurting him in multiple places.
He arranges my hand on his chest and smooths it down with his huge one. Even in this bed, he completely dwarfs me. I haven’t ever asked him how he got that scar that twists his lips at the corner, but I wonder now if it was from his father that night he let him go. A promise of what was to come?
For every scar that Zale Grand put on the man I love, I will repay double.
I don’t know if he can sense the rage and need for vengeance emanating from me, but he runs his finger down mine. Over and over. I don’t raise my head and look until he circles it and leaves his fingers there, fit snugly around mine.
I realize what finger it is, and what hand.
“Gray!” I snap back to look at him.
He nods, his good eye bright and fierce with love. I wonder if he thought about that when he was taken away. If visions of Penny and I were enough to get him through. I see the quick flash of doubt when I go silent. I bring his hand up, still holding mine, and kiss it. Every single finger. I do the same to his other hand, reaching over for it and cradling it. The gap where his index finger should be is bandaged, but he acts like he can’t even feel it.
“I’ll marry you. Whenever and however, you want. If you’re going to tell me that you don’t have much to offer, you have everything because you’re here. Everything else will sort itself out. You have a legion of men at your back, my brother fighting for you above all. We have our beautiful, sweet, amazing daughter. She’ll heal too. She didn’t see anything that night except the house on fire. We’ll be okay, we’ll get through this, we’ll rebuild, and we’ll have a beautiful life.”
I drag my lips over his, frantic to taste him, to inhale his scent. He smells like the soap Archer used to clean him up, a little bit of disinfectant, but it’s Gray there too, underneath it all. I wept the most when I was finally allowed to see Gray in this bed. Archer worked miracles. He gave Gray back to me, not the bloody, broken, battered, barely alive shell I feared, but a peacefully sleeping, carefully tended, carefully washed man who resembled my Gray in every way.
“You were going to ask me that, weren’t you?” Maybe I didn’t catch his meaning. I flush backtracking.
“Should have got down on one knee,” he rasps. “Made it traditional with a big fancy ring. Should have asked your dad and Raiden too.”
“We can keep it our secret for now. Even if you went down on your knees for the next century, it wouldn’t change how much I love you. My answer will forever be yes.” I don’t want to give up my time with him, but I know that the club is waiting. There are women and children who have been displaced from their homes. Men worrying over their families and lives just as fervently as I’ve worried for Gray and for Penny, for my dad and Raiden. “I’m always going to be yours, even when I have to share. Do you want me to go tell them you’re awake?”
“Wait.”
“I can wait as long as you need.”
His mouth works so hard to shape the words. “What I need is you.”
“Gray… I don’t think- I- you need to heal.”
“No, Birdie, what I need is you. Always.”
