Page 163 of Captivated

“Oh,” Jordyn said quietly. “About time you showed your face, don’t you think?”

Joe smiled a bit. “My apologies.”

“She asked about you.”

Joe nodded. “I figured she would.”

Jordyn said nothing else, but allowed her husband to help her from what looked to be the most uncomfortable place to sleep that he’d ever seen. Then again, it probably felt like a fifty-thousand dollar mattress when someone was exhausted enough to not care.

Who was he to say?

Lucian and Jordyn passed Joe by quietly, but not before the woman reached out and patted his cheek with a soft touch.

A mother’s touch.

He recognized it because of his own mother.

Joe was not the type to let someone else touch him—certainly not someone he didn’t know very well, and hadn’t spent much time with on a personal level.

And yet, Liliana’s mother felt familiar.

Fine, even.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Please don’t thank me.”

He really hadn’t done very much at all.

Nothing worthy of praise, or thanks, anyway.

Jordyn smiled, and shook her head. “Have a good visit, Joe. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of you.”

Lucian gave Joe a look. “Someday.”

“Yeah, someday,” Joe echoed.

Joe only moved once the two had left the room, and the door hissed as it closed. He pulled a chair away from the wall, and dragged it close to Liliana’s bedside. Her eyelids didn’t even flicker with a realization that he was there. Not even a twitch of her muscles. He had been told she was medicated—probably morphine—and that would force her to rest whether she wanted to or not.

In a way, he was grateful.

She needed to rest, and he didn’t want to wake her up just because he was selfish.

In another way, he wanted to see her.

Speak to her.

Tell her.

Tell her everything.

Joe settled himself on sitting in the chair, and imprinting her image to his memory. Her bruised face, and the bandages that had been carefully placed over welts that had broken the skin. Each mark made his heart heavier, and every bruise left his rage festering something awful. She hadn’t suffered any broken bones except for her foot—two toes, and a bone on the side of her foot, apparently. Or, that’s what had been told to him. Two to three months of recovery for that, and absolutely no dancing.

But it was done.

It was over.

Joe slid his hand in with Liliana’s beside the tucked in, stark-white hospital blanket. His fingers interwove with hers, and he stroked his thumb along the side of her hand. The only spot on her fucking hand that wasn’t bruised.