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“He’s awake,” Layla says, and I turn my head toward her, needing to see her. Just like in the basement, when she was my only ray of light.
Only one of my eyes opens, the other swollen shut. In my limited field of vision, she’s the most welcome sight ever. She smiles, and I relax. If she’s okay, everything’s okay, right?
“Your knee is swollen like a melon, man,” Storm says from somewhere in the vicinity of my feet, and I crane my neck to see him—because I’m lying flat on my back.
On the floor of the chopper.
“You didn’t fit on the seats lying down,” Storm says. “You’re too long.”
“The word you’re looking for is tall,” I inform him, but it comes out kinda garbled.
“You said they hit him on the head a lot, right?” Rook quips in, and I find him perched on one of the chopper seats, his hair longer, a week-old beard on his face, sipping at a Martini.
I reach for it unthinkingly. So damn thirsty.
“Actually, Hawk fell on his head repeatedly when he was a kid,” Storm says, turning to Layla. “Can’t you tell?”
“Water,” I whisper, and Layla—who’s been curled on her side beside me, I realize now—sits up and reaches for something.
She brings a glass to my lips, lifts my head, and I gulp it all down.
Fuck, yeah.
“Busted knee, busted ribs, and your jaw is… yeah, pretty busted, too.” Rook raises his Martini glass to punctuate his clever and needless enumeration of my problems.
“Nothing seems broken,” Storm says, ever the anxious one.
“Dude, tell that to my fucking ribs,” I grunt, think about getting up and decide against it. It’s nice here, on the carpeted floor. My body is grateful to be laid out flat for the fucking first time in God knows how many days.
“You got good info back there, bro.” Rook is still rumbling in a voice so low I barely hear him. “Cops were happy. The FBI is popping champagne corks as we speak.”
“Is it enough, though?” Storm mutters, and I only know because he’s leaning over me, and I’m looking at his face, reading his lips.
Damn, I need a new hearing aid, ASAP. Even lying inside Storm’s luxury chopper with my friends and my girl, I feel exposed and too damn vulnerable without it.
“What do you have in mind?” Rook gestures with his glass. “Have yourself kidnapped next? Maybe we could go in turns?”
“Nah, they’d figure it out.” Storm smirks. “Though Hawk here played them well.”
“Bullshit.” I try to roll on my side and groan
. “I thought I was the deaf one, not you. Didn’t you hear when I told you Layla saved my ass? They figured me out all right. That Sandivar guy didn’t trust me for one second.”
“Deaf?” Rook picks on that one bit and frowns. Of course he does. “Who’s deaf? Hawk, what the hell are you jabbering on about?”
Storm sends me a withering look. “Ask him yourself. Hawk here apparently forgot to inform us how bad his motorcycle accident was last month.”
“I was already partly deaf, okay? It just got a bit worse.” Fuck, why do we need to discuss this now? Even lying on my back with Layla next to me I feel woozy.
She leans over me, slender brows meeting over her eyes. “He looks too pale,” she says, stroking my cheek, and it feels so good I won’t even mention she’s talking about me as if I’m not here. “He needs food. And are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?”
“I’m fine,” I mutter, grabbing her wrist and holding her bent over me. “Stay with me, Layla.”
Her eyes widen. Her lips part on a gasp. Confusion clouds her gaze. I want her to stay with me now, and later, and…
“We’ll take care of him,” Storm says gruffly. “He’ll be back on his feet in no time. He’s got a tough hide, Hawk. Don’t you worry about him.”
“I worry about her,” I inform him, because she was sick, and spent time with me in that cold basement, and because I hurt her trying to convince her to leave, and I didn’t treat her right.
