Finally, there was fear in his eyes and his body stank of it, of sweat and somethin’ more metallic.
“You go back to Danner and you tell him to get his glory on his fuckin’ own. The Fallen is not helpin’ anyone but their own,” I growled then shoved off him before I throttled ’im and stalked off to take my frustrations out on a fuckin’ punchin’ bag instead of Garrison’s motherfuckin’ face.
I woke up crying.
There was no gap between unconsciousness and waking.
I knew the second I opened my eyes that Mute wouldn’t be there because Mute was dead.
I couldn’t remember any other details of that night, which the doctors would later inform me was normal after a traumatic event, but I remembered immediately and brutally that Mute was dead.
The tears fell hotly down my face, burning so badly I thought they’d leave scars. A part of me wanted them to. I felt mutilated by the pain of his loss.
It took me a few minutes of deep, thready breathing to open my eyes and take in the hospital room around me.
Everyone was there.
My entire family.
Harleigh Rose was curled up on a sofa with her bandaged calf in King’s lap and her head in Cressida’s.
Bea sat in the cradle of Nova’s arms against the wall in a long line of bikers—Cy, Lab-Rat, Curtains, Bat, Priest and Boner—that extended out the open door and into the corridor.
Ruby lay on the ground beside my bed wrapped in a thin hospital blanket with Lila curled up behind her for warmth and comfort. Maja was curled up in Buck’s lap in a huge chair someone had dragged in from another room, and Hannah, Cleo and Tayline lay curled up liked kittens against the sofa at King’s feet.
They were all asleep.
Even my guardian monster.
He sat in chair that was too small for his enormous frame, the upper half of his torso collapsed on the bed at my side with one of his big hands curled around my thigh and the other tangled tightly with one of my own.
Even in sleep, his handsome face was tense with worry. I pressed my fingers to the crease between his thick brows and over the fan of wrinkles beside his eyes but he didn’t wake up.
I wondered how long they’d been there.
“You’ve been out for days, honey,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.
I couldn’t have been more shocked to see my mother standing there, not only because she was there but because she wasn’t wearing makeup—something I couldn’t ever remember happening—and she was wearing a tracksuit. It was a designer one but still, my mother didn’t wear anything more casual than slacks on her worst day.
“Mum?” I croaked through a painfully dry throat.
She rushed as quickly as she could pick her way through the sleeping bodies on the ground to my side to pour me a cup of water from the pitcher on the bedside table.
“Here you go, sweetie,” she said as she tipped it up to my lips for me.
I had a déjà vu moment, remembering her doing the same thing for me when I was first diagnosed with cancer as a kid.
When I was finished, I turned my face away and asked, “What are you doing here?”
Pain slashed across her features like a blade but she recovered admirably. Her hand shook slightly as she put the cup on the table and perched on the side of my bed without the mammoth man half on it.
“It kills me that my daughter has to ask why I would visit her in the hospital,” she admitted.
“It’s not something you’ve done much of before,” I reminded her. “And you recently told me that you’d never talk to me again.”
Her lips rolled under her teeth, a habit I realized with surprise, that we shared.
“I’m so sorry. I…The truth is I never knew what to do with you. You were born this beautiful, vibrant little girl with a personality that developed very quickly and it was one I didn’t understand. Then you got cancer and…” She brought her hand to her mouth and pressed at it as if that would stop the tears that coated her words. “I didn’t know what to do with a little girl with cancer. I was afraid to get close to you because you were so close to dying and then what would I do?”
I tried to remain unmoved by her speech and mostly it was easy because my heart was preoccupied with mourning Mute, but I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt because honestly, I didn’t really want to lose another person close to me.
“You’re supposed to love them anyway.”
She nodded empathetically. “I know, I know, and there’s no excuse but you can’t understand what it’s like to have a daughter who’s so sick. It feels like your fault. Maybe if I hadn’t eaten starch when I was pregnant with you or if I hadn’t let you get so close to the microwave when we cooked together or—”