Chapter 27

Am I the only person running out of people I like?

-Coffee Cup

Lark

They tried to put Sal in the same ambulance as my husband.

That went over about as well as anybody could expect. Kind of like trying to shove a cat into a bag that was already riled up to begin with.

If it wasn’t for Pace, I think I might’ve tried to shank a few paramedics as well as the stupid officer who was still trying to make sense of what had just happened.

“Listen,” I seethed. “You will not put him in the same vehicle as my husband.”

I didn’t add in what I was also thinking—or I’ll stab him in the head with my goddamn belt buckle—which happened to be the only sharp thing I could think of at the time.

The paramedic opened his mouth to argue, but an angry voice from behind me had the paramedic closing his mouth before he said whatever stupid thing he said next.

“Listen, Cooper,” Pace said. “You’ll have to take them one at a time.”

“If I take them one at a time, one could die while we’re transporting.”

“Not my problem,” Pace shot back. “This man goes first.”

I had no clue who Pace was, but I was happy for his interference because the paramedic listened to him.

Squeezing Pace’s hand in thanks, I climbed up into the ambulance with my husband and stared at him as we made our way to the hospital.

When we arrived ten minutes later, Baylor was in no better shape.

His breathing was shallow. His eyes were closed. His hands flopped uselessly at his side.

There was a new IV in one hand, and they’d placed an oxygen mask on his face to help with his breathing.

Before I could wonder anything else, we arrived at the hospital, and he was taken away from me.

When I tried to follow, they pushed me back and told me to wait in the waiting room.

Which I did for all of fifteen minutes before the first trickle of family came inside.

His mom was first.

His dad second.

His brother, Travis, third.

Hannah, fourth.

Evander and Tate Casey fifth and sixth.

Dante, seventh.

I couldn’t even scrounge up the interest to see this elusive brother of Baylor’s.

I didn’t care.

Nothing interested me at all.

Not the fact that his family was rallying around me. Nor the fact that Dante had a baby with him.

No, not one single thing interested me until that nurse came through the door two hours later.

And only then it was the news that he was in surgery and that we could move up to the surgical waiting room on the first floor.

I didn’t go.

Not until after I stopped by the hospital chapel.

There, I dropped down to my knees in front of the steps that led to an altar, buried my face in my hands, and prayed to God.

Something I hadn’t done in a really, really long time.

It was hard to believe in someone who didn’t save you when you needed it most.

But now, I could see, that though he may not have answered my prayers when it came to making Sal into a good man, he did answer my prayers that I would someday find a good man.

Baylor was that man for me.

Once I was finished, I wiped my tears, composed myself and joined my new family in the waiting room.

Or tried to, anyway.

I wasn’t sitting down but for five minutes when a nurse came into the waiting room.

“Anyone O negative in here?”

I blinked, then raised my hand.

Two others did as well.

“We were hoping y’all could donate,” she disclosed. “We had two accidents come in on the heels of the other.”

I stood up, knowing which accidents she was walking about, and wondering if my blood would be used to save my ex.

I thoroughly fucking hoped not.

She led us through a maze of hallways to a sterile white room and came to a stop just to the side of the door.

“One at a time,” she said, gesturing at me first. “You come with me.”

I did, glancing back at the older man in his sixties, and the younger boy who looked to be in his twenties.

They’d been sitting together in a different part of the waiting room with us, and they hadn’t spoken a word to each other the entire time I’d been in there.

The older man’s eyes were kind. The teenager’s, however, were not.

He looked like the only reason he came was that the man had forced him.

Maybe it was his grandfather?

I shrugged and followed behind the woman.

“I have a request.”

She looked over her shoulder at me.

“The accidents you’re referring to…”

She nodded.

“If my blood is going to help anyone, I want you to give it to my husband. Don’t give it to the man that was shot…he almost killed my husband in front of me. My husband’s name is Baylor Hail.”

Her eyes were wide with shock.

“I…I didn’t know.”

I shrugged. “My husband is in surgery right now…if he needs blood, give it to him. Don’t…just don’t give my blood to the gunshot victim. I don’t want to help him in any way.”

Sal had taken my blood a lot over the years, but not by any means where it’d help him. The ways he’d taken it were with a punch here, causing my lip to split. Or a shove there, which caused my head to hit the concrete and split open.

Seriously, the man didn’t deserve anything more from me.

“I’ll write that in the notes on the blood,” she promised. “And I’ll personally walk it to the OR that your husband is in.”

I looked down at my hands.

“Thank you.”

***

Three hours later, I was let into Baylor’s room.

“You can come see him now.”

I stood before anybody else could.

“Where?”

He pointed down the hall. “Fourth door that way. Room 216.”

I didn’t wait to ask if I could go first. I wouldn’t have cared whether they wanted me to go first or not. I was going, whether they liked it or not.

Heart in my throat, I pushed through the closed door into a room.

I expected to find Baylor lying there, unconscious.

He wasn’t unconscious.

He was drugged.

“Life isn't always pretty, but you are.”

I laughed and wiped my tears, so freakin’ happy that he was able to talk after what had happened.

“You’re so high on pain medication right now,” I told him. “Your eyes are dilated, too.”

Baylor's smile was nothing less than spectacular.

I moved closer, stopping just short of touching him.

“Getting my ball hurt was totally worth it,” he told me. “You are the most beautiful woman I ever met." He stopped, opening one eye. “Will you marry me?"

I grinned and brushed his unruly hair out of his eyes.

"I'm already married to you, silly.”

The smile that overtook his face was nothing less than spectacular.

"You're joking!”

He brought his hand up to twirl one finger around a strand of hair.

“She’s not joking, dumbass.”

My eyes widened as I saw the man at the end of the bed.

I hadn’t realized that he’d followed me.

I’d seen him in pictures, and despite being a little more bearded than in his photos, he was recognizable.

He was also still carrying that baby carrier.

“Dante!” Baylor cried. “I’m married to this beauty! Can you believe it?”

Dante turned his eyes to me.

He was smiling, but it didn't reach his eyes. And those eyes...oh, my God. The pain in them physically hurt to witness. It felt like my heart was grasped in a giant fist and squeezed.

"I can't believe it," he said, turning back to his brother. "How'd you get yourself sliced?”
My smile fell.

“That would be my fault.”

Dante turned back to study me.

“Did you go after him with a sword?”

I shook my head no, but even though my hands weren't the ones holding the weapon, they might as well have been.

It'd been my ex-husband doing the slicing.

“Then I don't see why it would be your fault that he was hurt,” Dante said. “The way I heard it was that he did this in front of not just you, but a police officer and about thirty wounded veterans."

Well, that had been the truth. He had.

“But I—”

"You can't blame yourself for other people's sins," he cut me off. "I've tried. It doesn't turn out well."

Dante looked so serious that I swallowed and looked away.

The guilt I felt for all of this was staggering.

“Dante, I've missed you so much,” Baylor interrupted us. “Did you see that I had a wife?" Then my husband grabbed my boob. “And she has boobs.”

Dante’s lips quirked, almost like he was going to smile, but just shook his head instead. “I see, brother.”

I bit my lip and bent down, pressing my lips against Baylor’s.

He moaned and started to pull me on top of him, but I stopped him before he could so much as reach for my hips.

“Don’t,” I ordered. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

He pouted.

“Tease.”

I snorted and backed away, feeling that it was safer if I wasn’t too close to him. My body seemed like it was a little bit too tempting for him right now.

He gave me a scowl, and then turned that angry face to his brother.

“What the fuck is that?”

Dante looked down at the baby carrier he was holding.

Realizing what Baylor wanted, he turned the carrier around and showed him.

My breath caught.

“Dude,” he said. “What’s with all the pink? You hate pink!”

I wanted to smother my man with kisses.

With him high as a kite, I would’ve thought he’d say something about Dante’s child, but he didn’t.

“Can I hold her?” Baylor demanded, waving his hands out in front of him with an expectant look.

Dante looked like he was trying to deduce whether this was a good idea or not. I could see the thoughts crossing his face, one after the other before he decided that it couldn’t hurt.

He set the carrier down on the floor, bent down, and pulled the small baby out of the car seat.

The little girl was adorable in all her pink. She also looked tiny in her father’s hands, so I couldn’t even gauge her age by comparing her to anything—mostly because Dante was massive in stature.

“You’re wasting time,” Baylor sang to his brother.

I bit my lip and looked at Dante as he placed his daughter into Baylor’s waiting arms.

“Ow!”

My stomach sank as Dante touched Baylor’s belly, but Dante didn’t apologize. He held onto the little girl until he was sure that Baylor wouldn’t drop her.

And that was when I decided that I’d start working on Baylor’s desire not to have any children anytime soon.

Just looking at him now, a tiny little girl in his arms, it let me know that he was ready to be a father just as much as I was to be a mother.

“You okay?”

I blinked and turned to Dante.

“Sure.” I cleared my throat. “What’s her name?”

Dante looked at his brother and daughter when he said, “Mary.”

I studied the little girl’s face.

The up-tilted eyes and flattened features. Her tongue was stuck out of her mouth, and her face was scrunched up and puffy looking. Her body was splayed out in Baylor’s arms, but she didn’t look too upset by this.

It took me all of ten seconds to realize two things.

Mary had Down syndrome, and Baylor either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

Either way, I’d never, not once, wanted to throw myself into my husband’s arms and hug him more.

The one and only time he could’ve been loose with his tongue and get away with it, he said just one thing.

“She’s beautiful.”

And she was.

I would actually go as far as to say that she was the cutest baby I’d ever seen in my life.

And not only did she have her father wrapped around her little finger, but she had her uncle now wrapped around the one on her opposite hand.

Two huge, alpha males, one totally drugged up and the other worried and broken, stared and looked at the beautiful miracle in Baylor’s arms.

***

“I can’t believe he came.”

I opened my eyes to hear Baylor talking.

My eyes peeked open, and I smiled when I saw Rafe sitting at the edge of Baylor’s bed, talking to him.

“You don’t know what it took to get him to come,” Rafe said. “I drove to his place, told him what happened, and he looked at me like I’d grown a second head. I had to practically tell him that the fucker was strapped in the bed two rooms down from yours before he agreed to come.”

“He’s just down the hall?”

Rafe nodded his head.

“He is.”

I swallowed thickly.

“Think I can say I’m still high on pain meds and get away with murdering him while he’s handcuffed to the bed?”

Rafe seemed to consider it for a long moment, then eventually shook his head.

“No,” he said. “There are guards outside his room, just waiting for something like that to happen. You’d have to come up with a pretty good reason to be in his room, and since I doubt you can walk upright at this point, I don’t think you’re going to figure out a way to sneak in there.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and sat up, my neck stiff from the awkward angle that I’d had to lie in to curl up in the chair.

After Dante had left after making sure that Baylor was all right, the rest of the family had started to trickle in one at a time.

It’d taken over two hours for them all to work their way through, and now, I supposed, it was finally Rafe’s turn.

I wondered how long he’d been waiting out there.

My wince of discomfort was caught by both men, and suddenly I was under the close scrutiny of two pairs of worried eyes.

“Are you okay?” Baylor asked.

I nodded, which only made me wince again.

“I’m fine,” I lied.

The crick in my neck was starting to send painful stabs of sensation straight down my spine.

“You’re lying.” Baylor snorted. “Come ‘ere.”

I gladly stood and walked to his bed, stopping just out of reach.

He gave me a look that clearly said, ‘Don’t even think about it.’

Smiling, I walked until my thighs touched his bed, and he threaded an arm around my waist.

“Are you okay?”

“Okay.” I tested out the word. “No, but…I will be.”

He studied my face, then nodded in a way that made me think he was choosing his battles.

“Will you let Rafe take you home?”

I stared at Baylor blankly.

“Why?”

He let his eyes slide to the wall, and it was then I realized he was worried about Sal being this close to me.

“I just…I need to know that you’re not anywhere near him.”

I bit my lip, unwilling to tell him no, knowing that he needed this for his peace of mind.

But I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want him to have to stay by himself. I wanted to reassure myself that he was alive and well.

I couldn’t do that if I was at home.

But as I looked at his face and realized how serious he was about it, I couldn’t deny him.

“I’m coming back up here by eight.”

Baylor looked at Rafe, who nodded. “They say they’re moving him by seven. Her getting here at eight should be perfect.”

Baylor nodded, then turned back to me. “Okay. Deal.”

I sighed.

“I don’t want to go.”

He pulled me down until my face was level with his.

“I’m okay. You’re okay…I just need to make sure he’s gone. I need him gone before you’re back up here. I feel the pain meds they gave me starting to take effect, and I don’t want to leave you up here with me unaware.”

I closed my eyes in defeat.

“I’ll go.”

He lightly pushed on my butt, and I dropped until my face was next to his.

“Kiss me,” he ordered.

I didn’t so much as hesitate.

“Do I have to go now?”

He looked at Rafe.

“I’m leaving in ten minutes. I have a few things to take care of, then I’ll come back for you.”

Rafe left without another word, and I knew he’d only made up his excuse. He wanted to give Baylor and I a few minutes alone, which I was thankful for.

“If this ever happens again,” I said fiercely, “I’ll never forgive you.”

“Trust me, I don’t ever plan to step in front of a downward swinging sword again if I can help it.”

I shook my head. “That’s not what I mean. I mean that if you ever need to protect somebody again, make sure you don’t protect them with yourself…I need you.”

“Come down here and give me another kiss.”

I gave him the kiss he was seeking and didn’t stop until we were both breathless.

“They tell you about your belly?”

“A nurse came in while you were napping and said that it was pretty shallow on one side, but deeper on the other.”

I nodded. “It was. It was through the abdominal wall on your right side…I saw your intestines.”

I whispered that last part like it was a dirty secret nobody was meant to overhear.

He winced.

“Sorry.”

I waved his apology away.

“You have glue and staples, though. No stitches. The area was too big. They’re going to want you to take some antibiotics, but they say you should be just fine within six weeks. Moving better by two weeks.”

He nodded.

“And you got my blood!”

His brows rose.

“They were low, apparently. Since the hospital is so small, they weren’t equipped for two patients to come in needing the same blood type, as well as multiple units of blood. And since you are both O negative, they had to have the exact blood type. I told the lady that took mine that under no circumstances was she to give my blood to the ‘gunshot victim.’”

He smiled.

“It feels good to have you inside of me.”

Then his eyes grew heavy and he held out his hand.

“Go home. I love you.”

I pressed my lips to his one more time and backed out of the room.

Straight into a warm body.

“I’ll stay with him.”

My eyes widened when I saw Dante over my shoulder.

“You will?”

He nodded down at the baby who was still sleeping happily in her carrier.

“We will.”

“Can I…Can I call you to check on him?”

He nodded once.

“My number is probably in Baylor’s phone…you have all his stuff, right?”

I nodded.

With that, he walked around me, walked to the edge of the room, and took the chair that was beside Baylor’s bedside…the one I’d been curled up in earlier.

Then he bent down, unlatched the baby’s car seat, and pulled her out and onto his chest.

I continued to watch.

When his eyes met mine over the little girl’s head, I swallowed thickly, then waved.

I hoped he was back.

I think Baylor might like that.

“You ready?”

I looked over to find Rafe leaning against the wall.

“As I’ll ever be,” I muttered.

***

I deactivated the alarm using the code that Baylor had forced me to memorize the first night that I’d moved in and immediately started turning on lights.

“Call me if you need me,” Rafe ordered.

Then he was gone.

I rolled my eyes at the mysterious man’s ways, and walked inside, closing the door and locking it behind me.

I immediately walked to the alarm panel, a feeling of unease sweeping over me, and reset it.

I took a cautious look around the house, my eyes landing on a pile of food wrappers on the kitchen table, and a grin split my face.

That man of mine was always leaving trash out.

I wondered if he’d ever get to the point where he threw away his breakfast PopTart wrapper.

“Probably not,” I muttered to myself, picking it up and throwing it away.

My eyes lit on more trash in the trash can, and my brows rose.

There was a lot of food wrappers in there.

Did he clean out a stash of trash that I hadn’t known about before he’d left this morning?

Brows furrowed, I threw the wrapper in the trash can and started toward my bedroom.

I had to change clothes.

I was still in the bloody ones that I’d worn all day, and though I loved Baylor, I didn’t love wearing his blood on my clothes.

Making it to our room, I shed my t-shirt and went to unsnap my bra when I heard the words.

“You thought you could get away with it, didn’t you?”

I froze at the sound of Harold’s voice coming from inside my house. From inside my bedroom. Where I was standing.

With my shirt off.

“What are you doing in my house?” I screeched.

My hands automatically went to the bed to reach for the closest thing—which happened to be one of Baylor’s shirts—but he stopped me from reaching it by putting a gun in my face.

“You’ve ruined my life.”

I bit my lip.

“I didn’t ruin your life,” I told him bluntly, feeling so very uncomfortable that I wanted to cry. “You did that yourself.”

I swallowed.

“You’re a pretty little thing.”

I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of knowing that he’d gotten to me.

I stiffened my jaw and glared.

Wrong move, apparently.

He didn’t like the defiance.

Harold pulled the trigger.

It clicked loudly in the room.

The reverberation of the sound seemed to bounce off the walls, and my heart was racing.

I didn’t think. Didn’t even realize I was moving until I hit the floor.

And it was a good thing I did because a brown and black missile sailed past me in that moment, all fangs, bark and bite.

Where Pongo had come from, I didn’t know.

He hadn’t been there when I’d come in, and now that I thought about it, I knew that it was weird.

Normally he met us at the door.

Pongo hit Harold hard. So hard that I heard the impact from where I was on the floor.

Harold fell backward, bounced off the side of the bed, and crashed into the side table.

The alarm went off when a bowl shattered, and I gasped as I rolled to my knees to help.

Before I could so much as get to my feet, Harold was being hauled up by a very pissed off Rafe, and Pongo was growling, pissed off that his toy had been removed from his clutches.

“You. Stupid. Fuck.”

I bit my lip, shaking uncontrollably, and shivered at the pure hate that was rolling off of Rafe.

He really, really didn’t like this guy.

“We trusted you,” Rafe continued, shaking Harold lightly when he didn’t reply. “Do you know what happens when you break Free’s trust?”

Harold looked panicked as he started to claw at the hand holding him up.

“We break you.”

With that, he started dragging the man out of our house by the collar of his shirt.

I followed closely behind, racing to the alarm panel and turning it off.

“Is everything okay?”

I startled when the voice came out of the alarm panel.

“Yes,” I cleared my throat. “It was a false alarm. A bowl fell off the nightstand.”

“What’s your security phrase?”

I racked my brain, trying to remember the one that Baylor had said he used, and then I smiled. “Pongo.”

Speaking of Pongo.

I looked down at my amazing dog and grinned.

“Treats for life!” I declared.

Pongo’s ears went on alert.

Thank God he was there.

“Excellent. I’ll note it as false. Have a good night, Mrs. Hail.”

Mrs. Hail.

If that wasn’t enough to make me feel great, I didn’t know what would.

“Thank you,” I replied, then raced out of the house and into the driveway where Rafe’s car had suddenly reappeared.

“How did you get here so fast?”

Rafe slammed the trunk closed on his car and then turned to me.

“I never left.”

I closed my eyes.

“You need to call Baylor.”

I shook my head.

“No.”

Rafe looked at me.

“You need to call Baylor.”

I went to argue, and he held up his hand. “It needs to be done. He needs to know. I would want to know.”

I had nothing to say to that.

He was right.

“I’ll call him,” I promised.

“The gun…”

Rafe held out his hand, and it was then I saw the gun that’d been in Harold’s hand, now in Rafe’s.

“Uhhh,” I paused, not knowing what he wanted me to do with it.

“Take it. It’s Baylor’s.”

I blinked, then leaned forward and took it from his hand.

Almost on automatic, I checked the chamber of the gun, just like Baylor had shown me only a few short nights ago, and my stomach sank.

“That…it’s loaded.”

My eyes met Rafe’s.

“Seems to me the world isn’t quite done with you yet.”

Then Rafe turned around, but stopped and pivoted once again.

“You mind coming up to Kilgore?” Rafe asked. “Explaining things? Telling them what happened?”

Corroborating his story.

I nodded. “Once Baylor is out, and able to do a road trip, we’ll go. But not until then.”

Rafe winked. “I didn’t think you would.”

With that he left, banging hard on the closed trunk when a moan was heard.

Rafe got into the car, one that I just realized wasn’t just an average car. It was a 1972 Chevelle SS with cherry red paint and white racing stripes.

That hadn’t been the car he’d taken me home in.

The one he’d taken me home in was a company vehicle.

This was most definitely not a company vehicle.

“Uhh, Rafe?”

He looked at me through his open window.

“You get a new car?”

He winked.

“No, but I’ve had it in storage.” He paused. “Don’t need it in storage anymore.”

“Why?”

I couldn’t stop myself. I was curious by nature.

Rafe smiled. “My purpose has changed.”

With that, he started up the car, which nearly vibrated me straight out of my skin when the motor caught and rolled out of the driveway.

My breath caught when Rafe drove away.

I don’t know how long I stood like that for. Seconds? Minutes?

It was at least long enough to see the taillights of Rafe’s car disappear into the darkness.

Pongo rubbed up against me, reclaiming my attention.

I grinned and looked at Pongo.

“You are the most amazing dog I’ve ever met in my life,” I told him.

He blinked, then dropped down to his haunches, placing his head on one paw.

He looked sad.

He likely missed Baylor.

Which was not surprising. I missed him, too.

“You think we can sneak you into a hospital?”

Pongo perked up.

“You want that?”

He barked, answering me with exuberance.

I grinned. “We’ll go in the morning. I was banished to the house. He told the nurses that if they saw me, to send me home and not to let me pass until the morning.”

Pongo’s head tilted.

“He said it. I promise.”

Pongo sighed a big doggy sigh and then dropped back down, watching me cautiously.

“You ready for bed?”

His ears twitched.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He followed behind me, and later, when I was in bed and reliving my night, I realized that I was lucky times two.

Though Baylor had been nearly gutted, he’d made it out the other side.

He’d have six-to-eight weeks of doing nothing but sitting on his ass, but in the end, he would be all right.

Sal was in police custody thanks to every single veteran in the place corroborating my story, and it was likely that he was going to stay put.

That came from Rafe, though.

Rafe had let me know in no uncertain terms that the guys of Free, the men that had sent me to Baylor, didn’t like it when one of their ‘birds’ was hurt. They also didn’t like it when it was done by a man who was supposed to be a good guy.

According to Rafe, everything would be taken care of, and I wasn’t to worry.

And somehow, I believed him.

I knew that they’d follow through.

And it was a freeing feeling that I was almost afraid to embrace.

Harold was the icing on the cake.

I hated that he’d seen me in such a compromising state, but I couldn’t complain about the end result.

Harold was gone now, too.

There was no one else to ruin what Baylor was giving me.

And I fucking loved it.

What I didn’t love?

Calling my husband in the hospital and telling him that someone broke in and nearly saw me naked.

No, I didn’t love that at all.