“For now, I’m going to my fucking woman.”
Lucky exhaled a loud sigh. “You’re back together now? I don’t have to worry about me getting shot because I drank the last beer?”
Gage glared at him. “My woman was almost burned alive tonight. What the fuck do you think?”
Lucky’s expression sobered. “I think maybe you’ll shoot me anyway,” he murmured.
“Might, if I didn’t have somewhere better to be.”
And he did.
Home.
Seventeen
Lauren
Two Weeks Later
I couldn’t go anywhere alone.
Anywhere.
Even to freaking work.
There was someone on a motorcycle sitting outside the offices all day.
All freaking day.
Like some gorilla group might come up and try to kidnap me in the middle of the office.
Jen had peered out the window on the second day I was cleared for work—which was only three days ago, and that had not been Gage’s choice. In fact, there was talk of handcuffing me to furniture.
“Gage, I’m not going to stop living life because of pain. You taught me that,” I whispered.
His eyes hardened. “This is not the kind of pain I was fuckin’ talkin’ about,” he said, cradling my hand. “You should never fuckin’ suffer this. You’ve had enough.”
I didn’t release his gaze. “No, I’ve never had enough. Not when it comes to pain.”
And then the handcuffs were used. But for a much different reason.
So there I was, working. I couldn’t do much, on account of Niles barely letting me do anything because “I’m not getting scalped by your boyfriend if you burst a blister.” But I was there. And keeping busy.
“Wow, this man must be super serious about your safety,” Jen continued, still peering out the window, cradling her coffee. “And these guys are also seriously hot. He’s kind of doing us a favor, even if it’s unnecessary.” She glanced back to me. “The fireman said it was accidental, right?”
I screwed up my nose to fight the stab of pain at the thought of my charred home. It was going to take months to repair—fully rebuild in some parts. I obviously had full insurance coverage, because I was me, but insurance couldn’t replace what had taken me years to put together.
“You’ve got your life, Will,” Gage murmured. “And I’ve got you. The rest of it can be rebuilt. Together.”
I blinked away the tears. The trauma of having my house almost burn down—with me inside—had kind of distracted me from having to face reality. The one where Gage was back and holding me and not letting me go, his entire form squeezed into my hospital bed, me lying pretty much on top of him. The nurses had tried to stop him, of course, but Gage had glared at them and they’d backed away. And he held me, gripped me like a life raft in the middle of stormy seas. After he’d seemed so adamant to never let me hold him again.
“Together?” I whispered, the one word a pathetic plead. I didn’t even care at that point.
He tightened his hold around me. “Of fucking course, babe. You think I’m gonna be stupid enough to let you go when I literally pulled you out of the flames and you’re somehow still here? Either the Devil or God has given me a miracle. Not stupid enough to let it go.”
A tear ran down my face.
Gage wiped it away.
“But you said you couldn’t… you didn’t want—”
“I was a fuckin’ coward. Not sayin’ it’s gonna be tomorrow. But I’m gonna be ready to give you everything one day. ’Cause you’ve done that for me. Made me stop cravin’ nothing. That deserves everything.”
Everything.
Marriage.
Kids.
The things he said he’d never have, the things I understood why he could never have. Because his soul was more scarred than his skin could ever be.
“Gage, you don’t—” I started to say, realizing a dream of kids or marriage was nothing when my beautiful nightmare was right here.
And that beautiful nightmare interrupted me, as he was fond of doing.
“You never tried to change me,” he muttered, not meeting my eyes.
That’s when I knew how much this was hitting him, how much it was scarring him, because Gage never avoided my gaze. Not once. Not when I told him about David with a pain that I guessed was hard to witness. Or the first night we became us, when he told me he’d just killed a man. Not even when he recounted the story of his daughter’s death.
“You should’ve, you know. But you didn’t. I showed you how fucked up I was, how wrong, and you didn’t try to do shit to make it right.” His arms flexed around me. “Didn’t try to make me right.”
“Just because you’re not right doesn’t make us wrong,” I said. “In fact, it’s what makes us. You. Because I don’t have to battle being broken anymore.”
He stared at me for a long time.
“Neither do I,” he said. “And that means I want to try with you. Give you things I thought I’d never have again. Because thinkin’ even for a moment that I’d never have you here in my arms again, it almost killed me. And I need to give you life in order to make sure I don’t die again.”