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“It’s been too long.” I scuffed around the torment.
Dakota squeezed my hand. “I know it feels like a day has passed, but it’s only been an hour since they took him back. He’s going to be okay. Ezra’s way too big and bristly to let a little bullet take him down.”
She stumbled over the levity that she tried to force, the words hitching.
I sniffled. Ezra, my massive, mountain of a man. So rough and burly. But he was so soft underneath. Too soft. Too good. And I’d seen his intentions written all over him before he’d surged forward.
His promise.
The sacrifice he would make.
The door slowly swung open, and we all anxiously looked up, hoping to see the doctor with an update. Instead, Ezra’s mother stood at the threshold, her face a mess of torment and tears.
Dakota’s mother had gone to stay with the children so Linda could come here.
My spirit crashed against my ribs. She’d been so terrified of me hurting her son, but neither of us had truly understood the extent of where this would go.
Guilt blazed across my chest.
Searing.
Scoring.
Linda stumbled forward, hardly able to stand. I winced, though I didn’t lower my head. I just looked at her with an apology that would never be good enough.
“Have you heard anything?” she pressed through the anguish.
Paisley stood, her voice soft. “No, not yet, but he’s only been back there for about an hour. Here, sit.”
She gestured to the chair next to me.
Linda sank onto it. Grief billowed and blew.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered out into the room.
From my periphery, I saw her slowly shake her head. “My son loves his job. He loves protecting Time River and the people in it.”
Shock jolted through me when she reached out and took my hand. “And I was too blinded by my own sorrow and loss over Brianna to see what Ezra really felt—not until I saw him last night on that dance floor with you. It was so plainly clear to see what he really loves. And what he really loves is you. So it’s me who’s sorry.”
I squeezed her hand back. “You were right about me. I was a runner. Afraid. Terrified of being loved and of loving back. But your son…he proved to me that I didn’t have to be. That loving is worth it.”
Even if you lost it in the end.
We sat like that together for the longest time while we waited.
Finally, the door swung open again, and our attention jumped that way.
A nurse stood in the doorway.
I rocked forward, desperate. My spirit pleading and praying.
She smiled. “Someone is awake and demanding to see you.”
She was looking at me when she said it.
Heart in my throat, I hurried down the hall to room 3B, hands shaking like mad as I rushed through the door. Only I stalled out the second I stepped into the room and saw the beast of a man propped at an incline on the bed.
I was frozen.
Held.
Emotion so overpowering that I couldn’t stand in it, and a swell of lightheadedness slammed me.
I was struck with too many things.
Relief.
Love.
Horror at what he’d been through. At what might have happened.
My eyes raced to take him in. Tracing over every deep-set line and masculine angle. So big in that small bed that he looked like he was going to crush it, my sweet beast of a man whole and alive.
Tears blurred and my spirit thrashed.
A smile hitched at the corner of his mouth. “Get over here, Little Trespasser.”
Joy left me on a yearning cry, and I flew across the small room, aching to throw myself on top of him. I settled for grabbing his giant hand in both of mine and pressing his palm to my face. I planted kisses all over the surface. Inhaling everything that he was.
Citrus and pine. Love and loyalty.
My home.
My safe place.
“What were you thinking? Storming in there like that?” Desperation abraded the words. “That was a little overbearing, don’t you think?”
I struggled to make it a tease. To make it light.
It croaked out, instead, and the latent fears tumbled out with it. “I could have lost you. Your kids could have lost you.”
Shifting his palm, he set it on my cheek, and his thumb softly stroked as he looked at me with those warm, honey eyes. “And I could have lost you.”
His return was thready, harsh and cut with emphasis.
His head angled farther to the side as his gaze ran over the wounds that littered my face.
His eyes flicked back to mine. “Do you think I really would have waited one second, Savannah, knowing you were in that basement? Do you think I could have turned a blind eye? Pretended my heart wasn’t already in there with you? I would never abandon you. Would never leave you.”
Tears fell harder.
“You are worth every sacrifice,” he continued in that gruff voice, “but I wasn’t about to let that bastard steal you from me or me from you, either. This wasn’t going to be our end. Because we belong together. You, me, and the kids.”
