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He hoped he told the truth. The feeling was returning to him now. He could almost imagine that Blake’s knife had sliced into him rather than Wingate, and that the wound had been filled with burning embers. Something told him he was just beginning to experience the full extent of the pain yet to come.
He glanced downward, then wished he hadn’t. The shirt Page held pressed to the right side of chest was rapidly becoming soaked with blood.
“Looks like I’ll have a scar,” he murmured, trying to ease the agony reflected in her eyes. “Blake says they’re devastatingly attractive to women.”
Page tried to smile. “You’re devastating enough already.”
And then her weak attempt at a smile faded into a sob. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I tried so hard to prevent this.”
“I know,” he murmured. “That was why you left me. I understand that now.”
“I wanted you to be safe,” she whispered, her words barely audible above the turmoil around them. “I couldn’t bear to have anything happen to you because of me. And now it has, despite my efforts.”
“I’ll be... okay,” he murmured, but his voice was fading, his vision blurring. The pain was beginning to overwhelm him. He focused intently on Page’s face, unwilling to let her out of his sight again.
Now that he finally had her back, he didn’t want to think about how close he’d come to losing her.
Page pressed harder on his chest. “Gabe, please. Hold on,” she pleaded, her voice thick with tears. “I love you so much.”
“Love you,” he managed to whisper. “I...never stopped.”
He closed his eyes.
“Gabe!”
“Okay, ma’am, move aside. We’ll take over from here.” The voice was a strange one, deep and brusque.
Gabe felt hands on him, people around him. “Page?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“I’m here, Gabe,” she assured him, her voice sounding further than before, but still close.
“Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” she promised. “I’ll never leave you again.”
Satisfied with her answer, he let the pain engulf him.
BLAKE SLIPPED an arm around Page’s shoulders and pulled her out of the way of the medics and police officers swarming through the motor home. He seemed oblivious to the chaos, and to the evening chill that permeated the metal walls, wafting across his bare chest.
“We should go outside,” he murmured. “Give them room to work.”
Her eyes were locked on Gabe’s bloodless face. “I promised I wouldn’t leave him.”
“We’ll only step outside,” he assured her. “You’ll probably be allowed to ride with him in the ambulance, once they get him ready to transport.”
She looked at him through tear-glazed eyes. He was battered and bruised and still obviously in pain, but his only concern now seemed to be for her. “You saw him, Blake. Do you think he’ll be all right?”
She didn’t like the doubt that flashed through his shadowed blue eyes before he forced a smile and nodded. “Sure he will.”
Her breath caught in a sob. “If he’d only stayed in Austin, this never would have happened. He would have been safe.”
“I saw him in Austin,” Blake reminded her gently. “He was the most miserable guy I’d ever met Nothing on earth could have kept him from finding you, Page. And I refuse to believe he went through all that only to leave you now. He’ll pull through.”
Page watched as Gabe was lifted carefully onto a narrow stretcher. She allowed Blake to lead her outside, out of the way of the paramedics and the police officers who hovered nearby, practically bristling with questions that Blake refused to answer until later.
Wingate had been taken away to have his own injuries tended. Page neither knew, nor cared, what would become of him.
Her only thoughts now were for Gabe...just as they had been for the two and a half years she’d spent away from him.
