Sean doesn’t leave my side while I’m being checked out. He brought me through the Emergency Room entrance, but now I’m in one of the doctor’s private offices on another floor in another wing.

“Nothing a little bit of rest and a good meal won’t cure,” the doctor says, putting the stethoscope around his neck. He takes my chart from his desk and looks at it thoughtfully. “Miss Davenport? Any relation to Frank Davenport?”

Sean takes my hand and squeezes tightly, flashing me a small smile.

“Yes,” I say, clearing my throat. “That’s my father.”

The doctor puts down my chart carefully on the exam table where I’m sitting, giving us a small nod and pushing his glasses further up his nose.

“I’d like you to stay here overnight, just for observation. We just want to make sure everything’s good.”

“Thank you,” Sean says. “Anything you recommend. We’ll follow your orders.”

“I’ll have the room reserved and come back in a few minutes for you.”

The doctor leaves the exam room and Sean wraps me up in his arms.

“You’re coming home with me after this,” he says, brushing my hair away from my face and putting one of his strong hands around my waist. “I’m not letting you out of my sight again.”

I don’t know exactly what happened, but I don’t know if I want to right now. All I know is that I’m exhausted and I want to sleep. I want to sleep next to Sean. I want to feel him, have him wrap his arms around me.

I swallow hard as my eyes fill with hot tears, my chest pooling with confusion and anger.

But not anger toward Sean. I don’t even know what I’m angry at, or why.

“What’s wrong? Come here.” He pulls my body toward him and hitches my legs up around his waist. I hold onto him like my life depends on it.

“What about your uncle?” I choke out. All I remember clearly is someone taking me from Sean’s house. And then his cousins brought me into the hotel, and there were girls like me there, and then they brought me into a room...that’s the last thing I can remember. The doctor filled in the details on what happened to me. Thanks to Sean, it wasn’t something worse.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says.

“And your cousins?”

“You don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

A wave of relief washes over me. I don’t need to know what happened to them. All I know is that they were bad, bad men, and I wasn’t the first girl they tried to hurt. Thanks to Sean, though, I’ll be the last.

I look up at Sean as his hands snake around my back, pulling me in closer. He leans down and crushes his lips to mine with an exuberant intensity that I’ve never felt before. It’s clear and pure, and fills me with desire.

“I was thinking, maybe you could stay with me for a while. You know, after you get better.” He nuzzles his mouth into my neck, making a trail of kisses up my neck, nipping my earlobe with his teeth.

I inhale deeply, and let it out shakily.

“I’d like that.”

His strong hands come down my back, lower, bringing me toward him again. I can feel his hardness pressing up against me, through the thin paper robe they gave me. I’m about to get lost in him when he pulls away slowly at the sound of voices outside the door.

“Don’t move,” he says, giving me that smile I haven’t seen in days.

He leaves the exam room, slipping out and closing the door behind him softly. Through the closed door I hear the frantic voices of doctors and nurses, the kind of voices that you only hear when someone’s really in trouble.

Getting down from the exam table, I walk lighty over to the door, bringing my robe tight around me and opening the door a crack. Sean’s standing there in the hallway, watching the scene unfold before him as a man on a gurney is rushed through the hallway into one of the rooms down the hall.

I step out into the hall and watch Sean walking over to the room slowly. The man on the gurney is wheeled into the room and he’s hooked up to machines quickly. I recognize them, but I don’t know what each of them does. It’s a room like my father’s in, the nice one that Sean arranged for him.

I don’t want to watch anymore. That’s someone’s son, maybe someone’s dad, and it makes my heart hurt to watch. It’s not just because it makes me think of my own dad. It’s because that man has a family, too.

I turn to start back into my exam room when Sean turns around to face me. His face is stone and calm, but I can see the muscles behind his shirt flex each time he knots up his fists, curling and uncurling them. I walk toward him as he turns away from me again, and I put my hand on his back.

It’s then that I see who’s on the gurney.

Looking up at Sean, I search his face for answers. For even just a clue as to what he’s feeling, seeing his Uncle like this. I don’t know if it’s acceptance, or fear, or hell, even excitement.

My head swims with questions as I look back through clear glass window into the room. They’re cutting the old man’s shirt open with scissors. They’re squeezing gel from a tube onto his chest and charging paddles and calling clear!, and now they’re shocking his heart with electricity.

They do it again. I keep my hand still on Sean’s back as his uncle is worked on. I don’t know if he’s dying or if he’s being brought back from death. My heart is inside my throat as we watch. I want to turn away. I want to run and hide. But I stay by Sean’s side, because it’s what he’d do for me. It’s what he’s already done for me.

Someone calls out clear! again, and the paddles shock him again. The tension inside the room is thick and palpable, even from outside. They’re trying to save him. They’re trying to bring him back from the brink.

Again, someone calls clear. But it’s with less feeling this time. There’s less intensity behind it. The yellow light inside the hospital room seems to shift, being cast in a dull blue light instead as the doctors and nurses slow down and then finally halt, and someone checks and announces the time of death.

I gasp and throw myself into Sean’s chest, tears erupting from my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I gulp. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. “Don’t be sorry for him. He isn’t worth it.”

“I can’t believe it,” I choke, my body flooding with relief. I’m sorry that Sean has lost family, but…

“What can’t you believe? He had it coming to him. He deserved it.”

“I can’t believe it’s over,” I mumble into his chest, his shirt beneath my eyes becoming damp. “I’m sorry, Sean. I know he was your family.”

“No,” Sean says, raising my chin and looking deeply into my eyes. He smiles; he looks as though a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. “Not anymore. Those people ceased to be my family the second they took something away from me. They moment they took you away from me and tried to hurt you.”

“But you lied to them,” I say, peering up at him. My hands come up to his chest and he takes my chin in his hand, tilting it up and crushing his mouth into mine, making me open for him, sweeping his mouth against mine.

“I lied to protect you,” he says. “The only thing I’ve ever really cared about. It was the right thing to do. I had to protect you. I couldn’t let them have you. I wouldn’t.”

He pulls me close again, wrapping me up in his soft embrace. My fingers dig into the flesh on his chest, kissing him back as he kisses me. I want the moment to last. I need it to.