Chapter 10
HE WASN’T conscious when I got to the hospital. He still wasn’t conscious when everyone else made it. Five hours after that, he was still out. The doctor said we just had to wait.
Landry had sustained a blow to the head that had caused a minor concussion. He was also banged up and bruised and suffering from mild hypothermia and dehydration. His physical injuries, all in all, were not bad; they would heal. What had gone on in the cabin, the psychological trauma, was harder to gauge.
“He’s going to hate me,” I told Conrad. “He’s going to think I should have fought him and made him go home with me. He’ll never forgive me.”
Conrad looked at me like I was insane. “There’s no way.”
But he didn’t know Landry.
The nurse told me that he had been yelling and screaming at me, not for me. He had been enraged that I was not the one to find him. It confirmed my very worst fears. My life, on the cusp of beginning, had just ended, because the man I loved hated me.
As I stood outside his room, I let my head hit the wall hard.
“Don’t to that,” Conrad growled at me, his hand sliding around the nape of my neck so he could look into my face. “You don’t know shit about anything yet. Now if you go in there once he wakes up and he’s pissed at you and he hates you, then we’ll know that he actually is all kinds of crazy and there’s nothing, really, for you to hold onto anyway.”
My eyes flicked to his face.
“I like Landry, I do, but he is volatile, and sometimes I worry. But you’re not going to listen to me about what I think he needs and—”
“There’s nothing wrong with him.”
“Maybe not, but when he’s with you, it doesn’t matter. When you two are together, he’s different. Now, if he’s given up on that, if his anger is misdirected, you have to get used to him being gone. I will not allow you to go crazy trying to win him back. There are people beyond Landry Carter who are counting on you and who need you. And maybe right now you think he’s the only one that matters, but bigger picture, he’s not.”
I took a shuddering breath.
“When Landry wakes up, you’ll see what he says and we’ll go from there. Do not stand out in this hall and try and figure out your whole life when you don’t even know what the fuck is going on with it yet.”
It was good advice.
At the eight-hour mark, after Conrad made me eat a granola bar and Jocelyn watched me drink water, after Scott showed up at the hospital and said that his father had broken down sobbing, and after Chris went out and got us all burgers, finally, Landry woke up.
I heard him scream from the hall where I had gone to stretch my legs. Staring at his face, seeing the marks, the bruises, the yellow that his eye would turn as it healed, had made my stomach roll, and I had needed to move.
I bolted back into the room and stood still at the doorway, terrified and hopeful all at the same time.
For once, I prayed, let me be wrong about Landry Carter.
I swallowed hard, frozen there, and my stomach twisted into a knot with sharp edges and thorns.
“Trevan!” He shrieked my name, high and wailing as he flung his arms out to me, for me.
I ran.
“Ohmygod, I knew you’d come.” He sucked in his breath as I grabbed him and hugged him and kissed his face, his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, and then his mouth. I slanted my mouth down over his, the kiss demanding and deep, tasting him, devouring him. He was shivering in my arms when I stopped sucking on his bottom lip and leaned back to look at his face.
“Baby.” My voice broke as I choked on the words. “I know you blame me, but please don’t send me away. I’m so—”
“Blame you?” he almost shrieked at me, hands on my hoodie, holding tight, not letting me go. “Why in the hell would I blame you? I wanted to stay, and even if it hadn’t been today or now, that crazy fuck Brendan was going to get me.”
I took his beautiful face in my hands and stared into the eyes I adored, that were everything when he looked at me. “You still want me? You’re not sending me away?”
“What the fuck?” He scowled at me. “You came right back the second you knew I was gone, and I’ll bet that somehow you saved me. I don’t know how yet, but I know that’s true. I know if you hadn’t come, I’d be dead.”
My knees almost buckled at his faith as doctors and nurses streamed into the room.
“I love you. I will always love you. Don’t ever fuckin’ leave me.”
“No,” I promised him, holding his hand tight even as medical staff tried to move me away, push me back. “Never.”
And he took a breath as the deluge began.
“THOSE two guys getting shot,” Detective Baylor said after the second hour of us all being in Landry’s room. “That’s what broke this case. Mr. Carter lost it when he heard about that. I shudder to think what might have happened had they not been killed.”
My eyes flicked to Conrad’s.
“And it’s such a waste that they had to die, but when you involve yourself in crime, eventually you will pay for it.”
Conrad grunted.
“You disagree, Mr. Moss?” Baylor asked him.
“I do, detective. I think if people were as choosy with their friends as they were about their cars, a lot less criminals would ever be caught. You have to be smart.”
“Are you speaking from experience?”
“I’m speaking common sense,” Conrad told him. “How many cases like this one have you seen cracked because someone was stupid?”
He shrugged before turning to me. “You know, Trevan, you and Mr. Moss would have passed right by those two men on your way to the Carter home. Are you sure you don’t remember spotting anything out of the ordinary, seeing a car stopped on the side of the freeway?”
“I wasn’t looking,” I assured him. “The only thing I was thinking about was getting to Landry.”
He nodded. “Understandable.”
“You told Mr. Carter they were killed by a small caliber bullet.”
“Yes. Putting it all together now from e-mails and phone records, we know that those two were friends of Brendan’s from school. After Mr. Carter told Brendan that you were returning, Trevan, Brendan sent them to intercept you, but the information from Mr. Carter must have been faulty, since they never even saw you.”
“So my father had talked to Brendan earlier today?” Scott asked him.
“Probably sometime last night before he left for the cabin with Landry, but that’s why, we think, he was so horrified when he heard that they had been killed. Mr. Carter felt that he sent them into the path of whoever killed them by notifying Brendan. He felt responsible.”
“And who do you think killed them?” Chris asked him.
“Right now we have no suspects, but whoever did it, it was a clean, professional hit. Someone was very precise, and that just doesn’t happen for no good reason. They were dirty beyond trying to intercept you two,” he said to Conrad and me. “We just don’t know from what yet or who they pissed off.”
I nodded.
“It’s very lucky that whoever got them took them out before they got a hold of you two,” Baylor told us. “We could have had a very different outcome here today.”
Landry tugged on my hand, and I leaned close so he could press into my chest and inhale me but also whisper. “Who’s Mr. Moss?”
“Conrad.” I replied under my breath even though with the detective still talking no one was paying any attention to us.
“Because of…” He trailed off, knowing I would understand him.
“Yeah.”
“First name?” Landry asked me, as in Conrad’s alias.
“Terrence.”
He took a breath and said, “Terrence.”
“Yes?” Conrad answered, looking at Landry.
“Thank you for taking care of Trev for me and for being his guardian angel.”
“You’re welcome. I promise to always do it.”
“That will help me sleep for the rest of my life.” He exhaled.
“Good,” Conrad told him, and then I felt his hand on the back of my neck, squeezing gently. “So, I have shit to do. You think you can manage to get him home without me?”
I squinted at him, and his smile was huge.
“I guess that answered my question,” he said, and then he turned and walked out the door.
“Is he just leaving?” Jocelyn asked.
Yes, he was, and I was torn, because our relationship was based on specific parameters that I was not supposed to violate. Like when the man wanted to leave, let him. But there had to be more.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Landry and ran after him.
He was almost to the stairwell, and why he was going to walk down sixteen flights, I had no idea.
“Do you need to be away from me?” I asked instead of hailing him.
He turned and looked at me. “Not yet.”
“So can I hug you, or is that too much contact for you?”
“No,” he acceded. “It’s okay.”
I shot forward into his arms and hit him hard and hugged him so he could really feel it, using more force than was necessary.
“Okay,” he muttered under his breath. “I get it, I’m important, now lemme go.”
I stepped back fast because it had been an order.
“I’m going to your place when I get home to take back the gun. You don’t need it, not anymore. My reputation, your new status, it’ll be enough.”
I nodded. I didn’t ask if he knew where the spare key was to get into our apartment; the man had never needed it before. He got in and out all the time without it.
“I was thinking, at least you don’t have to worry about Kady getting what was coming to him anymore. Benji was avenged. You new boss took care of that.”
“Yes he did,” I agreed.
“Going forward, you don’t get to think about that kind of stuff anymore. That’s my department alone.”
I nodded.
“Call me when you’re home so I can walk beside you when you go in places.”
“I will.”
Quick nod and he was gone, the door to the stairs closing behind him.
The thing about Conrad Harris was that he knew his limits. Knew them like most people didn’t. He could tell the exact moment when you needing him became cloying, when you wanting to show your respect for him became unnecessary, when love tipped to hate and he just had to kill you because he needed the quiet. And he didn’t scare me because I absolutely respected his boundaries, and even though his patience with me seemed boundless, I knew it was not. But still, whenever I needed him, he was there. So who was to say what I could and could not ask of him? The thing was, he was important enough to me not to push, and I think most people did. It was important to actually listen to your friends as well as love them.
When I got back to the room, Landry was talking. And I understood, as I listened, as I took my place back beside the bed and he reached for me, that yes, the man sounded manic. But it was just him hyped up, and really, what had he eaten?
His doctor loved his chatter, liked seeing him animated and alert. The nurses were charmed, and the detective, when he stepped up, just wanted my boyfriend to hit the highlights for him if he could.
It was, in the end, anticlimactic. After dinner, Landry had been walking back to the guest house he had shared with me and been jumped and hit on the back of the head. One minute Landry was awake, the next minute he was knocked out. Detective Baylor filled in the blanks with chloroform—they had found it in Brendan’s car, and he had used it to keep Landry under during the long car ride—and a bed with chains soldered to it and rations that had been stored at the hunting cabin.
“When can I go home?” Landry wanted to know, and I could see the panic start to settle in. He needed quiet; he needed all of it—his family, the lights, the hospital, the questions, the fear, and the movement—to just stop. He needed to be in bed with me staring at the ceiling in our bedroom. It was all that would give him peace.
“Not for at least a couple of days,” his doctor informed him. “We need to be sure of the concussion, make sure you have enough fluids, check to make sure—”
“Fine,” Landry almost whimpered, the tremor in his voice hard for me to hear.
I squeezed the hand that I was holding before I lifted it, brushing my lips over his knuckles. He turned, and I put my arm around him as he pressed his face into my throat, trembling hard. My eyes flicked to the doctor.
“Maybe just overnight,” he recanted.
“Overnight he can do,” I said with a smile. Sometimes medical science had nothing on going home and getting under the covers in your own bed.
Once everyone was gone and we were alone, Landry begged me to get up on the bed with him.
“Babe, I can’t fit up there.”
But his face, his eyes, the need welling up in them, I had to make it work. Off came my shoes and sweater, and in just jeans and a T-shirt, I climbed in beside him.
“Oh God.” His moan was soft and hoarse. “If you weren’t here…. I mean, I’m fine when you’re around, I am.”
I kissed his temple gently, careful of the golf ball-sized lump there.
“I just fray some when you’re not.”
“Me too,” I told him as he moved until I was basically under him and he was lying on top of me.
“Start talking; tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”
“I think you should sleep,” I suggested.
“Did you call Gabriel?” he asked me, licking the side of my neck, nuzzling before I finally felt his teeth.
“Yeah, a little while ago,” I told him.
“Was he glad I wasn’t dead?”
“When you’re well, I will beat you for that remark.”
“Promise?” He sounded way too excited.
“Go to sleep or I’m getting up.”
“Oh?” He chuckled, hands sliding up under my T-shirt, smoothing over my abdomen. “You think you can do that considering that your eyes aren’t even open?”
The man was like a drug. I was warm, and his kisses, his mouth slipping over my skin, felt so good. I just wanted to be wrapped in him.
“What about my new job?” I offered. “I should sit up and tell you all about it.”
“You can tell me about it later.”
“But I need to get up so you can sleep.”
“Shhh,” he hushed me, kissing over my jaw. “Just give yourself to me, baby.”
I didn’t remember drifting off.
I WAS jostled, and when I opened my eyes, Landry was pulling a blanket up around us.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, not really awake.
“Nothing,” he said, moving half on and half off me. “Go back to sleep.”
“I need to get out of your bed,” I told him, my eyes refusing to stay open.
“Nuh-uh,” he muttered, nestling into my side, his leg between mine, head down on my shoulder. “I won’t feel safe if you move.”
“Bullshit, I’ll be right there in the chair, and the nurses are gonna make me get up when they come in anyway.”
“They’ve already been in. They didn’t care. They both said how pretty you were and how much better I looked.”
“Lan—”
“I need you right here, Trev. Once we get home, you can sleep without a Landry blanket, okay? But for now… I need you.”
I wrapped my arms around him, nuzzled my face against his neck, and kissed the smooth, warm skin. “I love you.”
Small whimper from him as I felt him shiver. “I love you too.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
And there was silence for at least three whole seconds.
“Am I bugging you?” Landry whispered.
I squeezed him tighter and smiled into his hair.