Without opening my eyelids, I heard the chaos of the hospital. Nurses and doctors shouting out medicines and procedures. Words like lacerations, bleeding, and long words no average person could possibly know. I was afraid to open my eyes. Like if I did, reality would come crashing down on me.

Daniels almost bought my reverse psychology, but then like a twig snapping so did he, and he lashed out across my chest. With the paralytic in me, I couldn’t move much and could only grunt. But the pain, it was searing. He laughed and called me a whore, slut, cheap. Over and over. The longer no one arrived the more hopeless I felt. But Ray was safe…. And then he wasn’t.

Laying there on the disgusting warehouse floor watching as Daniels lost his mind even further while having a standoff with Ray was terrifying. I couldn’t even help. I was only able to speak softly, every time I tried to scream it came out as a loud whisper. I felt each tear as it fell, and when Ray slumped to the floor, I almost wished Daniels had killed me too.

Then everything went into frantic chaos. Richie stood over me wrapping the blanket around me. I heard paramedics argue with him when he lifted me.

Voices shouting, Bradford telling Richie to stay with me and that he would go with Ray. I wanted to run over and grab Ray and bring him back to me.

Richie didn’t leave me. Not once. Much to the doctors’ frustration. I had no idea how long I had been in the hospital, but the fact I could move my body was a relief. One doctor said that amount of the manmade paralytic was toxic, and the fact I was alive after that in itself was a miracle.

I dozed a lot and didn’t want to hear the words that Ray was dead, so when people came into the room I pretended to be asleep.

“You suck at acting.” The sound of Bradford’s voice made me flinch and any hope of convincing him I was out cold went right out the window.

“Please just leave me alone, Bradford.” I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I wanted to wallow. For the first time I had been in love and loved back, and now it was over.

“I can’t do that. I promised Ray I’d check up on you.” Ray’s name on his lips had me turn my head so fast the dull headache behind my eyes thumped.

“No, Bradford, you have no ties to me. I don’t care if Ray asked you to watch over me with his last breath, I don’t want….” The sobs wracked my body. It was painful everywhere, my skin, bones, heart, all of it.

“Hey,” Bradford hushed me and in an uncharacteristic move, he tenderly scooped me up into a hug.

He sat there on my hospital bed with me on his lap and hushed me.

“Andy, you’ve got it all wrong.”

I’d soaked Bradford’s shirt and normally I’d feel like an ass for being so careless, but I just didn’t care.

“What exactly do I have wrong, Bradford?” I was snappish and angry, but Bradford smiled. It was one of pure pleasure, and I wondered just how sick in the head this man was to be joyful at a time like this.

“Andy, Ray’s not dead.”

I wasn’t sure if it was some cruel joke or I was hearing things wrong, so I asked him to repeat it.

“I said he’s not dead. He’s not going to be playing baseball any time soon, or much of anything until he’s healed, but he’s alive.”

Realizing that Bradford was telling the truth had me leaping off his lap and, on very unsteady legs, darting out of the room.

“Andy,” Bradford shouted at me. “Stop.”

I had no idea where Ray was, and I was also feeling a very chilly breeze on my backside.

Suddenly a blanket was wrapped around me. “Come back to your room, I’ll have a wheelchair brought to you and I’ll take you to him. I promise.”

I wanted to argue so badly, but exhaustion made that impossible.

I sat on the chair and watched as Bradford asked a nurse to please bring a wheelchair to the room. He sat on my now vacated bed, smiled, and told me what happened.

“Daniels did in fact shoot Ray and for a minute, I thought he was a goner. There was a lot of blood, and I won’t lie and say it wasn’t touch and go for a while there. But in the end, Ray was lucky. There’s really no other way to describe it. We didn’t consider Daniels would have armor piercing bullets, but we should have considering he was a cop and knew Ray or the others would be wearing a vest. Where he was shot there’s a fifty-fifty chance of fatality. But he’s too tough for that.”

“He’s alive? Where is he, what’s happened? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He nodded in understanding. “Ray broke his collarbone and he’s had several surgeries already. You’ve been out for four days. I didn’t want anyone telling you anything just in case something happened during one of the procedures.” He chuckled. “It didn’t help that every time someone came into the room you pretended to be sleeping beauty.”

When the nurse arrived with the wheelchair Bradford helped me get situated, and he pushed me down the hallway.

“He’s on the floor above you,” he said as he rolled me into the elevator.

I didn’t know why I felt nervous. It wasn’t because I didn’t know what Ray would look like, but I thought he was dead, and now he’s alive and… The pull of the stitches over my chest made me gasp.

“Yeah, be careful. You have a lot of stitches. But there’s creams that will help with scarring.” I looked up at Bradford and he winked. “Besides scars are sexy.”

On Ray, sure. I wasn’t positive they’d look great on me.

We went down a long corridor, and when Bradford rolled me into Ray’s room, I didn’t hold back. I cried once more, this time in happiness.

Ray was grumbling to a nurse as she desperately tried to show Ray how the sling worked. At the sound of my crying, Ray turned his gorgeous eyes my way.

“Andy.” He spoke my name almost reverently.

I didn’t care what the doctors or nurses said. I jumped out of the wheel chair and into Ray’s one open arm. I didn’t want to hurt him, but it was like I couldn’t get close enough.

“Oh, god, Ray, I thought I lost you.”

He kissed my head as I pressed my lips against every available piece of him.

“No way.” He paused my franticness and cupped my face in his hand. “I have too much to live for.”

“I love you so much, Ray.”

“Not even half as much as I love you.”

I heard Bradford usher the nurse out of the room and the click of the door. But after that it was Ray’s heartbeat, his kisses, and his smell that took over.

I was able to leave the hospital a few days after discovering Ray was in fact alive. It would be another week before the doctors discharged Ray, however. So I was able to get to the house and clean up. Bradford hired a maid service and a chef to get food ready for us because, he said, even though I was out of the hospital I had to take it easy.

Richie brought me to the hospital to get Ray, and the look of relief on his face as we drove away from there was almost comical.

“If I never go back to a hospital it’ll be too soon,” he said as he laced his fingers with mine in the back seat of Richie’s car.

“Have you talked to Finn?” I asked in the silence of the car. Richie was looking at Ray in the mirror obviously waiting for his response.

“He visited me in my hospital room the other night.” He flinched when Richie growled. “Yeah, and that right there is why I didn’t want to say anything.” He pointed at Richie, and while I didn’t like Finn going to Ray with no backup, I trusted Ray’s instincts. I never met Finn, knew only what I’d heard from Ray, the media, and anyone else who dared talk about the man. If Ray felt like Finn wasn’t a threat, I wouldn’t press the issue.

“What did he say?” I squeezed his hand in reassurance.

“He’s mourning his son. He wants to be angry about what he did, but I think he’s having a hard time reconciling it. Finn admitted Benji was always trying to push modern technology on him, but he never thought his own son would turn the direction he did.” Ray shook his head. “He thanked me for killing Daniels, even though he wanted him to die by inches he considered it squared away.”

“Does Finn have any more kids? What happens to him now?”

“From what I know of Finn, Benji was his only kid. He’ll be up to his eyeballs in cops for a while. It’s hard to convince a police force that you had nothing to do with it when your son was involved and you’re a mob boss.”

I knew that was true and I felt bad for Finn.

“Heard Green’s wife filed for divorce.” Richie chuckled from the driver’s seat. “Taking him for all he’s worth.”

Now that was a man I didn’t feel bad for at all. He deserved all that and more.

“Maybe he’ll stop playing the closet game now.” Ray lifted my hand to his lips. “It’s dark in there.”

When Richie dropped us off at Ray’s, it was a relief when no bodyguards stayed. It was just Ray and me.

The house was quiet and when Ray yawned, I convinced him to go lay down.

“Nap with me?” He was a little pathetic with his droopy eyes and, yeah, that’s a pout.

“Sure, and when you wake up, let’s watch a cheesy horror move, eat a million carbs, and pass out as far away from reality as we can?”

He smiled and pressed his lips to mine.

“Perfect plan.”