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Except it didn’t matter, because her dad would never let her use his phone to call her mom.
Not ever.
4
ROMAN
For the first time in his life, he was hurt.
No, that wasn’t accurate. He’d been hurt before, had felt the pain of his father’s abuse, the times he’d taken a licking at Basil’s. But that pain had been distant, a subtle vibration in his body that had been easy to ignore in favor of the accompanying emotion — fury at his father, the post-fight euphoria that came after a match at Basil’s.
This pain was bone deep and radiating from the wound in his chest. He’d been given a stern talking-to by the doctor, a woman in her thirties who made it clear she took no shit: you can’t get shot again.
The bullet that had hit him in the chest at the funeral had traveled on a parallel trajectory to the one that had hit him in Ruby’s apartment.
And both of them had come far too close to his heart.
This one had nicked a valve, an injury that would have killed him if he’d gotten to the operating table even a half hour later.
In the past, the warning wouldn’t have mattered. He’d always taken pride in the fact that he wasn’t afraid of death.
What a fool he’d been.
He hadn’t been brave, as he’d thought. He just hadn’t had anything to live for.
Now, he had Ruby. He had Olivia, out there somewhere with Adam (Roman was going to kill the bastard when he found him, end him once and for all). It didn’t matter that they weren’t exactly his.
He loved Ruby, needed to know she was okay before he left this world. And Ruby being okay depended on getting Olivia back, on making sure Adam could never hurt either of them again.
The door opened and Ruby breezed in carrying a cardboard tray with three cups.
“Sorry I took so long,” she said, setting the tray on the table next to his bed. “It was packed.”
“No apology necessary,” he said. “I’d wait forever for a good cup of coffee.”
I’d wait forever for you.
“Right?” She shook her head. “You’d think they’d offer decent coffee in a hospital with so many people relying on it.”
She smelled like jasmine and winter cold and coffee. He wanted to pull her — coat and all — into his arms, wanted to bury his face in her dark hair, pulled back into a ponytail that made her look every bit as young as her twenty-six years.
She handed him one of the cups and started stripping off her scarf and coat. “I gave one to Officer Patronnetti outside too,” she said, removing the lid on one of the two remaining cups. “And Georgiy. I need to take the last one to Max.”
It was a veritable Who’s Who of security — the cop ostensibly assigned to make sure Roman wasn’t assassinated in his bed (Roman suspected the stone-faced cop’s actual directive was to gather intel on Roman and any visitors he might receive), Georgiy making sure the cop did his job, and Max, who ambled into Roman’s room at all hours, dragging his IV pole and looking every bit as pissed off to be there as Roman felt.
Ruby took a long drink and closed her eyes with a sigh. She’d gone back to the loft only once in the two days since he’d regained consciousness, and then only because he’d asked for some of his things — not because he needed them but because by then he’d realized she didn’t plan to leave his side.
“You didn’t have to do all that,” he said.
“Well, Georgy won’t let me leave the hospital without him. I’m assuming that’s your doing?” He didn’t answer, but she was right: he’d given orders for Georgiy not to let Ruby out of his sight. “Right, well he walked with me to get coffee, so I wasn’t going to leave him out, and then it just seemed rude not to offer one to Officer Patronnetti.”
Roman wasn’t surprised. Ruby had a way of looking out for everyone in her orbit even when she was the one who needed looking after.
“I’m sure you were richly rewarded with a nod and a blank expression,” Roman said, taking a drink of the coffee.
She laughed. “He’s just doing his job.”
“If you say so,” Roman grumbled.
