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“If you think that’s enough answer—"
“Mom, let it go,” Reed cut in, and with that, Mom slammed herself back in her chair and crossed her arms. She very clearly had not let it go, but she’d pulled it back for now.
Lyra had talked enough with Zach, and watched Pop and Reed’s assimilation into his club enough, to understand that there was no point demanding details about where they were and why they were there. Especially not where outsiders might hear. She could ask Zach when they were alone; she’d told him she wanted to know everything he could tell her, and she understood more clearly than ever how much she’d meant that.
But not here, and not now.
So she asked what she could. “Why here? Why’d you come all the way home with him? He could have died on the way.”
Cooper surprised her with a small, lopsided grin. “He wanted to come home. Said he felt okay enough for that, and the bullet went straight through. He made it, and this is best case, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey,” she snapped. God, she hated when guys threw out words like that for women they didn’t care about. It was so fucking condescending.
Cooper coughed out a laugh. “Not one goddamn Bull settles down with an easygoing woman. They all want bossy women withopinions. It’s like a disease.”
Pop’s friend Lonnie stepped up and crouched before Lyra. “It was the right call, Lyra. Zach’s hurt, but it’s not a killing wound. He needs treatment, but he’ll be okay. Friendly territory is better. Especially right now, after the Cadence, you don’t want him in a hospital around here with a gunshot wound—he’d have a line of cops outside his room, waiting to make life hard for Zach and all of us. You know how it is on the rez—outside law can’t get to us here unless the tribe says they can, and that ain’t happening. We’re safe here.”
Lyra finally widened her perspective and saw everyone around her—Pop and Reed, and Mom, Cooper and Lonnie. Another man she didn’t know, but he was clearly Native and clearly part of this group. Clearly part of the Bulls. He seemed to be somewhere in his twenties, built like a Marvel superhero, with long, undercut hair and traditional Mojave tattoos on his face and neck, and probably on his chest as well.
She realized she was looking at the Laughlin Bulls, and that all the men she loved were among them.
Yes, this was her life now.
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~oOo~
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About an hour later, the doctor came out to the waiting room to say that Zach really should have gone to a trauma center, but they’d patched him up and run some tests, and it appeared that the only significant damage had been to his liver, which they’d been able to repair. The liver was a resilient organ that took care of itself pretty well. He was getting transfusions to replenish his blood supply, and antibiotics to stave off infection—basically everything Reed had told her he would need.
The doctor said Zach was sleeping, but they could release him in a few hours, after he got some blood and if his vitals were good.
Then he’d said he could have visitors, but only one at a time.
The men around her, even those she didn’t know, had stepped back and let her be his visitor.
Now she was sitting beside the gurney, holding Zach’s slack hand while he slept. A tube full of blood trailed up from his arm to a bag of it, but his color still worried her.
However, he did look better than he had when Cooper had lifted him from the van. The bandage around his middle was clean, bright white, his breaths were long and deep, and he seemed to be truly resting. They were monitoring his heart, and the beats were strong and regular. His blood pressure was really low, but that was why there was a tube of blood going into his arm.
She leaned forward and kissed his hand, then rested her forehead there. God, she was tired. So fucking tired.
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~oOo~
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She woke to the sensationof her hair being stroked and discovered that she was using Zach’s thigh as a pillow.
“Oh, sorry!” she gasped as she sat up and tried to get her bearings. Right. Idaho, gunshot wound, clinic.
“Don’t be sorry. It made me happy to wake up and find you right there. Hi, beautiful.”
He looked so much better! She checked her Apple watch and was stunned to see she’d slept for almost an hour.
She caught his hand and put it to her cheek. “Hi. You got shot.”
