Page 93 of Keeping Knight

“Watch Ruby,” I reply. My vision blurs. Everything spins. “Keep her safe.”

“We will, Micah,” he replies, giving my shoulder a small squeeze. “Nothing will happen to her. That’s a promise.”

Chapter Twenty

RUBY

There was so much blood.

Every time I close my eyes, I can see it.

Micah, lying gray-faced and motionless while Cole worked to stop the blood pumping out of him.

The red soaking his shirt.

The blood smeared all over the floor.

The hole in his chest.

A small moan escapes at the memory.

There was a hole in Micah’s chest. Where Henry shot him. Where Micah took a bullet that was meant for me.

Because it’s my fault. All of it. Because of Henry’s crazed obsession with me, Micah and Houdini were almost blown up. Micah was shot.

I clap my hand over my mouth to keep another moan from sneaking out.

The man I love—no, not falling, I’m already there—was shot because of me.

“He’ll be okay,” Rogue assured me as the paramedics loaded Micah onto the stretcher. “I’ve seen a lot of bullet wounds. This one isn’t too bad.”

But how can a bullet wound be not too bad? It wasn’t some little graze on his arm. It was a hole. In his chest.

There’s a lot of important stuff in there. The heart. Lungs. Arteries. What if the bullet hit one of them?

Tears turn the falsely cheerful wallpaper into a wash of blues and yellows. It’s hard to swallow past the giant lump in my throat. My fingers pick at the torn vinyl covering the cushion of my chair. I know I shouldn’t make the tear even worse, but I can’t make myself stop.

The hospital waiting room is packed full of Micah’s friends and coworkers; some of them silently waiting for news, others quietly talking. Jester and Wraith are sitting across the room from me, their heads bent close together ‌while they look at something on Wraith’s phone. Houdini is standing by the water cooler, drumming his fingers on the water tank while he scowls at nothing. Cole—who turned out to be a pretty competent medic—is talking with another Fox & Falcon employee, Thiago. Sofia is here, too, but she just left to grab coffee from the cafe downstairs.

Then there’s me. The guilty one. The one who caused all this trouble to begin with.

What if I hadn’t taken that cooking class? I ask myself. I wouldn’t have met Micah. Henry wouldn’t have noticed Micah walking me home every week, and he wouldn’t have gotten jealous. Henry wouldn’t have tried to kill me in a jealous fit of rage. There wouldn’t have been a bomb at my apartment. Micah wouldn’t be in the emergency room after being shot in the freaking chest.

My heart aches at the thought of never meeting Micah. But it hurts even more at the thought of losing him.

My gaze moves to the clock on the wall, and I do a quick mental calculation. It’s three-twelve, which means we’ve been waiting for news on Micah for over two hours now.

Fear clutches at me. Two hours is so long. If the injury was minor, like Rogue insisted, we would have heard something by now.

Is Micah in surgery? Is there a team of doctors frantically working over him, trying to keep him alive? Or did the worst happen, and⁠—

“No,” I whisper to myself. I bite my lip hard to keep from bursting into tears. “He’s okay. He has to be.”

As I’m staring at my feet, hiding my face while I work to control my emotions, there’s a slight stirring in the room. There’s an energy that wasn’t there before. A tension that makes my breath catch.

“Beau’s going to be fine,” Rogue announces from the doorway. “I just talked to him. He’s got a mild concussion and some minor burns from the taser. He should be released in another hour or two.”

“Figures,” Jester says. “I’ve always said Beau has a hard head.”