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“Right here, sweetheart,” Conleigh called, smiling wide.
I frowned at her. “I hope you didn’t poop your pants. That would’ve been very awkward.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it just as quickly. “No, I didn’t. That urge left me really fast when everything happened.”
The certainty in her words made me relax. “Oh, good. After all that you told me about the paparazzi, I was so worried you’d shit yourself and then it’d be on the cameras. What happened to your forehead?”
She pointed at her husband, who didn’t look the least bit sorry for hurting his wife.
“This man right here tackled me to the ground. It hurt really, really bad.” She paused. “I asked him to do that to me once, and he said no. Now I understand why he told me no.”
With that ringing in my ears, I went to sleep.Chapter 18Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and walk away. Just kidding. Turn around and knock that mofo’s teeth out.
-Wade to Landry
Wade
“I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry,” Linc said softly the moment Landry’s eyes closed.
I closed my eyes as I replayed the last two hours in my head. Like a goddamn bad record on repeat, with the same fucked up problem every single time it started over.
“Hello?” I answered the phone.
“Got a problem. Shooting at the mall. Your woman was shot in the belly. She’s on the way to the hospital,” Bayou growled over the line.
The next five minutes had been the longest of my life.
I’d made that trip to the hospital hundreds, no, thousands, of time. It’d always seemed so short.
But all of the times that I’d gone, it’d never been Landry in trouble. It’d always been someone else.
Never her.
I’d driven like a maniac, and I prayed the whole way that she’d be okay.
Generally, I wasn’t a religious man. I believed in God, but I also believed in proven facts.
Then, I hadn’t been able to prove a goddamn thing. All I could do was pray. So, that’s what I did.
Possible liver laceration. Severe concussion. Blood loss.
The list of her injuries were numerous, but the one that was the most worrisome was the liver damage.
“We’re going to take her up to the OR now,” someone said, causing me to blink and yank myself out of my head.
“What?”
“We have to assess the damage to her liver, and we’re going to remove the bullet,” the doctor said. He paused. “If you know anyone with AB negative blood, get them in here. We worked four traumas over the last six hours, and we haven’t been able to replenish our blood supply yet. O negative will work in a pinch.”
And that was how I found myself in the OR waiting room with my entire MC, waiting to hear the outcome of my wife’s surgery.
It was two hours into my wait when loud footsteps caused me to look up. Only it wasn’t the doctor like I was hoping. It was Castiel.
He looked pissed, too.
He’d left earlier once Landry had been able to identify her gunman. From there I hadn’t thought about him again until then, my thoughts too focused on Landry and whether she was okay.
But now, seeing the angry scowl on Castiel’s face, I stood up as I felt exhilaration start to race through my blood.
“Did you find her?” I called.
I hadn’t meant to say it as loud as I did, but I was too hopeful that he had.
“I did,” Castiel confirmed. “At her house, wrestling in the front yard with her daughter.”
I frowned. “What?”
Castiel nodded once. “You heard me right. They’re both pretty banged up…so I brought them here.”
I smiled for the first time since I’d gotten the call that my wife had been shot.
Moving swiftly to the young woman that was manning the front desk—the one in charge of letting people know how their loved ones are or if there were any updates to be had—I stopped in front of her and said, “I’ll be downstairs. Will you please call me if there are any updates?”
The woman nodded. “I have your number on file, sir.”
I’d already been up to talk to her eight times. She was likely happy to see me go.
“Thank you,” I replied gruffly.
And, as one, nearly eighty-five percent of the waiting room got up with me.
I held out my hand to them. “Stay.”
The men snorted, but Conleigh and Izzy retook their seats—both side by side.
The men followed me, and honestly, I couldn’t find it in me to care.
I liked that they wanted to be there, and I liked even more that I had their support.
Taking long, fast steps, I didn’t once notice the bite of pain in my leg, nor did I notice how angry I looked.
If I’d been thinking more clearly, I likely would’ve tried to control the look on my face, or change my body language to not give away my murderous intentions.
