Page 23 of Jay Bird

She nodded.

He crouched beside the bed and helped Lily put on the headphones, patiently adjusting them over her ears before finding the show she wanted. Lily immediately scooted against Willow’s side, her attention completely captured by the screen.

Jay Bird tapped the headphones. “Can you hear me?”

Lily didn’t even look up.

“Guess that answers that,” he muttered.

Despite everything, Willow smiled. Then she looked back at Riley.

Here goes everything. And she told them. Not every detail. Willow wasn’t sure she could survive saying every detail out loud yet. But she told Riley about being taken three years ago. About waking up and realizing Chen had her. About the threats that made it clear running wasn’t as simple as finding an unlocked door. She explained how he controlled where she went, who she spoke to, what she was allowed to do. In a nutshell, he controlled her life.

She told them about Lily, and discovering she was pregnant and knowing instantly that everything had changed. From that moment on, surviving wasn’t only about her anymore.

Then she told them about the opportunity that had finally come. The tiny opening she’d been waiting years for. How terrified she had been that Chen would realize what she was doing before she could get Lily away. How she had grabbed whatever she could carry, taken her daughter, and ran.

She told them about the three weeks she spent on the run until she ended up in Virginia Beach.

By the time Willow finished speaking, her throat ached, and her hands trembled in her lap.

Jay Bird had been through some ugly shit in his life.

He had seen what people were capable of doing to one another. His job had taken him into places most people only saw on the news, and there were things buried in his memory he’d be perfectly happy never thinking about again.

But sitting there listening to Willow calmly describe the last three years of her life hit him differently.

Maybe because she didn’t seem to realize how damn remarkable she was.

She wasn’t telling the story like someone looking for sympathy. Half the time, she seemed almost apologetic, as if she needed to explain why she hadn’t escaped sooner. Jay Bird had to bite his tongue more than once, because from where he was sitting, she hadn’t failed to escape—she had survived, and there was a difference.

For three years, Willow had done whatever she needed to do to stay alive. Then she had gotten pregnant and somehow found enough strength to protect a little girl in the middle of a nightmare. She had kept Lily sheltered from enough of it that the kid could still laugh over French fries and get excited about a cartoon pig.

And when Willow finally saw an opening, she had taken it. No backup. No team waiting outside. No weapon. No guarantee she would make it farther than the front door. She had just grabbed her daughter and run.

Jay Bird glanced at Lily. She was tucked against her mother, pink headphones covering her ears, completely engrossed in the tablet. Every so often her little feet kicked beneath the blanket.

Then his gaze shifted back to Willow. There was something about the two of them that had gotten under his skin from the second he had seen Willow standing outside Nova’s gym.

He still couldn’t explain it, and maybe he never would. He had spent enough of his life watching people he cared about get hurt to know exactly why he usually kept a certain amount of distance.

Being the last unattached guy on the team had become a running joke, and he had been perfectly fine with it.

That was until a terrified little girl had latched onto him as her mother collapsed into his arms.

Now, sitting there listening to everything Willow had survived, that same protective pull he had felt yesterday settled even deeper.

He didn’t know what happened next. He didn’t know what Willow would want or whether she would even let him close enough to help.

But Chen was still out there, and Willow and Lily had already spent far too long facing him alone.

Jay Bird rested his forearms on his thighs, his gaze lingering on the woman and little girl sitting together on the hospital bed.

If Willow let him, he wanted to be the man who stood between them and Chen.

“How long do I have to stay here?”

“The doctor mentioned coming back to check on you this morning. If everything looks good, I don’t think they’ll keep you much longer,” Riley told her.