I’m pretty sure my blood pressure skyrockets the second we step out of the waiting room, and it doesn’t go back to normal. I wasn’t even the one to get shot. I was only a witness. No—can’t think about that now. I shake the memory out of my head and keep moving.
A row of black SUVs waits for us at a secluded exit at the side of the building. They’ve set up a tent to cover us as we go from the door to the third SUV in the lineup. Leo rolls his eyes at the tent. “This is the last time I let you plan anything with Lucian,” he says to Gerard.
“We had your approval,” Gerard points out.
“I missed the part of the proposal where we became paranoid.”
Gerard says nothing, but my heart pounds. Leo’s dry jokes don’t hide the way he scans the sidewalk, the street, the SUVs. The way he keeps his hand firmly on the small of my back and steers like he can’t stand to be outside. A bodyguard holds the door open, and Leo helps me in without looking at me. He’s tracking a car as it goes by on the road.
I can’t take my eyes off him.
It hurts to see the way his jaw tightens as he climbs into the SUV and the series of quick breaths he takes. It hurts more that he’s still so beautiful. His eyes are a glittering dark against skin made paler by the days spent inside. Leo’s body might be wounded but it’s a wounded masterpiece.
The bodyguard closes the door and the row of SUVs moves out.
Leo pulls away from me.
I only notice because I’m watching him like a lovesick heroine from one of my books. Maybe I am lovesick. Maybe that’s what this pain is, and what this relief is. Maybe I’m overtired from sleeping on hospital beds and the couch in the waiting room.
Or maybe it’s because I know what I have to do, and Leo isn’t going to like it.
The city rolls by outside the windows and Leo shifts to put more space between us. “Is it too much?” His eyes meet mine at the question. “To sit in the car, I mean.”
“It’s tolerable.”
“Is there anything I can do to make it easier?”
“No.”
Leo doesn’t want to talk, then. I swallow my questions and look out the window. He’s obviously in pain. The bullet wound in his chest isn’t done healing and his back will bother him from touching the seat. That’s what this is. He only seems like a different man because we’re in one of those weird transitions between worlds. Hospital to home. And after that—
He’ll still be the man who touched my face and told me he wanted to be better for me. Leo said that while he was bleeding out on the floor. While he thought he didn’t have any time left. He tried to say he loved me.
My heart misses a beat and my throat goes tight. I didn’t expect him to wake up and finish the sentence. What he did when he woke up finished the sentence. The way he was, all wild-eyed and afraid until he saw me, finished the sentence.
I don’t need him to say it to know how he feels.
I steal a glance at Leo, but he’s watching the road ahead of us with resolute concentration.
Maybe I do need him to say it.
I slide my hands into the pockets of the borrowed coat from Eva—it’s a deep pink with a white inner lining that’s soft as clouds—and say nothing.
The other SUVs split off from the line around us, joining back up at intervals I can’t keep track of. By the time we’re on the road to Leo’s house all of them are back. I count four turning off ahead of us, and then we’re going through the gates, too. The metal that Ronan destroyed has been replaced and two bodyguards wait, one for each stone pillar. My heart, which had settled slightly on the ride, picks up the pace. People line the driveway. The grounds. Far away, at the edge of the forest, men patrol.
If these are the guards being so obvious, there are others I don’t see.
The SUV stops in front of Leo’s castle-house. Gerard is already there, heading for the front door. He opens it. Speaks to someone inside. There will be more people inside, won’t there? The first time I came here, two guards waited for me on the steps. Now there are