No one had ever put it to him like that before. He kissed her, on impulse, because she was too right and too perfect, in that moment, dressed like a hooker in the woods.
A sound startled him, a suddenwhoompand a rush, like steam escaping a tight pot lid. An explosion, he realized.
He turned to look back down the hill, Sam clasped tight to his side. They’d set the house on fire. It was still contained inside, but he saw the bright tongues leap in the first floor windows.
He also saw his club, all his brothers, dark shapes walking across the lawn, moving toward them. He thought he could pick them out through general size and shape, but really he couldn’t. They were all the same, from this vantage point. Just his brothers. His family.
Thirty-Seven
They were in someone’s house. Maggie, the woman had said her name was. A pretty blonde with an unmistakable aura of authority. She’d led them down a hall to a bathroom, and then a set of bedrooms. Whitney had been handed clothes that she’d since changed into: sweatpants, a sweatshirt, pale gray and feminine in cut.
She sat now on the edge of a bed, in a warm room full of gentle lamplight, alongside Kev, who lay back against the pillows, smelling of soap, glistening with healing ointments that had been smeared on his neck, his arms, his face. Maggie and her daughter, Ava, had been waiting with warm towels when a huge man named Mercy brought Kev from the shower, his big hands gentle and sweet as he’d laid him out on the bed. The women had dressed him, doctored him.
Maggie had finally looked at Whitney, afterward. “Oh, baby, you ought to sleep.”
Whitney had shaken her head. “No.”
“Coffee?” Ava had guessed.
“That’d be great.”
She curled her hand around the warm mug now, and stared down at Kev’s unconscious shape beneath the sheets.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered to him. “I wish I could take what happened to you and put it on myself.”
His eyes flipped open, and his voice croaked from between split lips. “Don’t say that.”
It filled her with joy to see his eyes open. Such pretty eyes, baby blue and liquid with emotion, though his face was stiff with bruises and swelling.
“I do wish it,” she said. “I hate what happened to you.” Her eyes filled with tears at the memory.
“No,” he said. “Don’t cry.” His own eyes fluttered shut, his face going slack.
Whitney thought about going back into the main part of the house, with the murmuring crowd of people.
Instead, she lay down beside Kev, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.
~*~
Aidan took a long swallow of whiskey-laced coffee and set it down with a deep sigh. “Shit,” he said, for the sake of his bruises, those of his brothers, and his own shaking fallout of adrenaline. He couldn’t remember being this exhausted in his life. Nothing had ever tasted as good as this spiked coffee. Nothing had ever been as beautiful as his family standing around him as he sat at Maggie’s kitchen table with his father.
“Kev’s asleep, I think,” Maggie said, sipping her own coffee.
Aidan felt his father’s gaze and glanced toward him.
“You’re an idiot,” Ghost said, then grinned. “But damn. I raise my glass.”
Aidan knew that there would be a real discussion later, but for now, he clinked his mug against Ghost’s.
The women were sitting at the table with him – his women. Sam, Mags, Ava. “You three,” he said, giving them a pretend stern look. “You rats.”
“Don’t wanna hear it,” Maggie said.
“Someone had to be the brains of the operation,” Ava added. “And we figured none of y’all were up for it.”
Where he stood leaning against the cabinets, Mercy chuckled, and Ava’s eyes darted to him a moment, her quick smile warm.
Aidan felt Sam giving him that same look: thatI love you, you big idiotlook. He gave her back his own version:I love you, baby. Don’t give up on me yet.
