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Zeth and Cade do as they’re told and wait in the hallway, and Rebel and me follow after the nurse, down the corridor, into an elevator, up three awkwardly silent floors, and then into the ICU. I should feel at home here—the majority of my trauma patients either start off or end up in a ward just like this one at some point within the length of their treatment—but I don’t feel at home. I feel sick. The smell of disinfectant and the chorus of life support machines blipping from behind closed doors ignites a level of panic inside me that I’ve only ever experienced once—yesterday in Julio Perez’s kitchen. The nurse guides us to a room and opens the door, giving both Rebel and me a glance of warning before disappearing. Rebel walks in before me, his hand covering his mouth.
Alexis is bundled up in the hospital bed, thankfully not hooked up to life support, but she looks bad. Her face is pallid and drawn, and her eyes are bloodshot. But most importantly, her eyes are open. She sees us the moment we enter the room and her mouth falls open. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “Sloane?”
I’m suddenly really fucking angry again. I’ve imagined this moment a thousand times before. A million. And in none of my imagined moments where Alexis and I are reunited does she look horrified. She’s overwhelmed, deliriously happy, crying with tears of joy. Not gripping hold of the blanket covering her legs so hard her knuckles turn white. She swallows, looking from me to Rebel and back again. “What are you doing here, Sloane?”
“What am I doing here? What the hell am I…” I can’t. I can’t even…
Rebel, a towering pillar of muscle and tattoos, moves around the side of her bed and sits on the edge of it, taking hold of her hand. “Are you okay?” he asks softly.
Alexis’ gaze flickers to him; she nods her head, the robotic movements of someone completely at a loss for words.
“Good. I’m glad you’re okay,” he says carefully. “Babe, remember when we got married? And you said it would have been the most perfect day if only your sister could have been there? Well, about that…”
Alexis tries to pull her hand away, but Rebel’s got a decent if cautious grip on her. “I’m sorry, baby,” she says. “I just…I didn’t...” There are tears welling in her eyes. Alexis was always one for crocodile tears when she wasn’t getting her own way, but these look genuine enough. She’s shaking. “I swear I didn’t mean to lie to you. And I swear I’ll tell you everything. But…can I just have a moment with her?” With her? Alexis sees how black my mood is becoming and amends her words. “ I need a moment with my sister.”
Rebel grunts, stands and then places a kiss on the top of her head. “Be careful,” he says to her. “Dr Romera attacks when provoked.”
He leaves the room, winking at me as he goes. I think about Zeth and how he would react to something like; probably smash his head through the observation window. If only I had Zeth’s body mass.
“You can stop looking at him like that.”
Alexis’ voice is a little stronger now, but still a shaken. “How the hell should I be looking at him, Lex? Should I be warmly embracing my new brother in law, the human trafficker?”
“Yes. No, wait. He’s not…he’s not what you think, Sloane.”
I can barely believe my own ears. He has brainwashed her. She has Stockholm’s or something. “So you weren’t kidnapped from outside college? And this guy didn’t force you to marry him?”
Alexis sighs, and then scrubs her hands over her face. The tears are falling now. “Yes, I was taken. But it wasn’t by him. He helped me,” she tells me though her hands. When she removes them, there’s a fierce set to her jaw. “And he didn’t force me to marry him, Sloane. You have to believe that.”
“Then why on earth did you marry the president of a bike gang? Because I’m really struggling to understand any of this.”
She sniffs, swatting the tears from her cheeks. “I married him because he’s the other half of me, Sloane. The slightly grumpy, slightly scary, and deeply wonderful other half of me. I married him because I love him.”
This is all just far too much for me to take. So it’s all true. She told Rebel that I didn’t care about her. That I couldn’t be bothered coming to her wedding. I need to know why, but right now I have a more pressing need, and that is to get away. After all this worrying, all of the nightmares about my poor baby sister being used and abused, she’s blissfully happy. And married. Fucking married. I can’t breathe. I need time to think. To process all of this properly.
I turn, and I walk away, and I don’t look back.
I make it down to the ground floor, back to where we were waiting earlier before—
“Hey, Sloane!”
It’s him, the tattooed bastard, following me down the corridor. I try to power-walk away from him, but he grabs hold of my arm. I spin on my heel, ready to lay into him again, but he lets go of me, holding his hands in the air.
“Don’t be mad at her, babe. She’s been through hell and back.”
“And was it you who put her through it?”
He clenches his jaw, eyes narrowing—I barely took notice before, but the color of his eyes is so blue that they look like flints of ice. “No.”
“Then how the hell did she end up with you?”
“Maybe that’s something she should tell you. I think you could probably hazard an educated guess, though.” Pulling on his leather jacket and wearing an infuriating smirk on his face, Rebel jerks his head down the hallway.
