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His clothes were rumpled. Stained with blood. My blood, I deduced. Fortunately, his cut covered most of that.
And he was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I smiled. The gesture stretched skin that felt foreign, numb and tight.
But I did it anyway.
His eyes glistened, and he laid his forehead on our hands for a moment. “Thank fuck,” he muttered.
He stood then bent over to lay a kiss on my lips. The gentlest kiss he’d ever given me. As if I were made of glass. He brushed the hair from my face with that same gentleness. His face hovered inches from mine. A tear ran down his cheek.
“Never been so afraid in my life,” he whispered, resting his forehead against mine. We stayed like that for a long time.
A gloriously long time.
Until we were interrupted by a very pretty doctor named Sarah. She checked my vitals and informed me that I couldn’t speak for another forty-eight hours at least, due to vocal cord injuries.
The burning throat made sense.
Swiss stayed at my side during the checkup. He didn’t let go of my hand. I suspected that he hadn’t let go of my hand for however long I’d been out. There was dark scruff on his jaw that could almost be called a beard.
I had been meaning to ask about how long he’d been here, if he’d slept, eaten. Or at least gesture for a piece of paper or phone where I could write such questions. But I quickly became very tired and had to fight against my drooping eyelids.
Swiss’s thumb rubbed circles on the top of my palm. “Sleep now, Countess,” he murmured. “You’re safe now. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
His promise wrapped around me like a warm blanket.
I forced my lids open and saw a wretched apology swimming in his eyes. There was blame there. A whole bunch of it. For letting me leave in the first place, I guessed.
Preston, I assumed was somewhere in the clubhouse. If he was alive, that was. I didn’t waste more than a second thinking about that.
But something else sparked in my mind, and my eyes jerked open despite the fast-approaching oblivion.
My hand squeezed tight against Swiss’s, and he sat up in response.
“V—” I managed to get the single letter out before my voice broke completely. As it was, it sounded more like a scratch than a letter.
But Swiss knew what I was talking about immediately.
Who I was talking about.
“She’s fine, baby,” he reassured me. “She doesn’t know you’re here.”
I sagged in relief.
I couldn’t bear the thought of my daughter rushing home from the time of her life to see her mother half dead at the hands of her father.
No. I would not sentence her to that memory. Ignorance, whether it was ethical or not, was going to be my gift to her. For now, at least.
“I’ve got your phone.” He reached into his cut. The screen was smashed, but it was still working. “Been holding her off with texts. Well, I had to get Caroline and Freya to do a lot of the texting for me since I have no fuckin’ idea what she’s talkin’ about half the time.” He scrolled through, turning the phone to show me photos in the text thread.
My heart bloomed with warmth, seeing my daughter’s smiling face. Her black hair was whipping around her face in the wind. Her eyes seemed to glow purple against the lavender field she was posing in front of. Her shoulders were dusted with freckles I hadn’t seen before.
Swiss scrolled slowly, letting me take in my happy, healthy, unharmed girl until I lapsed into darkness.
I woke again in the middle of the night.
The only light in the room was from a lamp in the corner and a sliver coming from the bottom of a closed door.
