The Shadows (Black Dagger Brotherhood #13) - J. R. Ward Page 0,134

room. As his breath gradually came back to him, he felt as if he were surrounded by his brothers even though he was alone: Whether it was the bench press that was still set to the six-hundred-pound load Butch had put it at yesterday or the barbell that Z had been doing curls with or the chin bar that Tohr had been crunching up and down on, he could picture each of the fighters with him, hear their voices, see them walk by, feel their eyes on him as they talked.

And all that should have made him feel more connected, instead of less so.

But the reality was, even if the forty-by-sixty-foot space had been crammed tight with all those big bodies, he would still have felt isolated.

Passing that towel over his face again, he closed his eyes and was transported to a different place, a different time … to a memory that he knew now was what he had been trying to put behind him ever since it had threatened to resurface.

Bella’s white farmhouse. That porch of hers, the wraparound one that was so New England cozy you wanted to either vomit … or cop a squat and eat some apple pie on the bitch. Him walking out that front door, head hanging like he had been decapitated and only the gristle of his neck was keeping his basketball still on.

His beloved Mary upstairs in that bedroom, having just told him to fuck off.

Although, of course, she hadn’t been so crude.

His life had been over as he’d left that house. Even though he’d been ostensibly alive, he had been a dead male walking …

… until suddenly she had exploded out of that doorway in her bare feet.

I’m not okay, Rhage. I’m not okay …

“Why are you thinking like this, buddy.” He rubbed that hard towel over his face once more. “Just drop that shit … come on, think about something else…”

Except his brain wouldn’t be rerouted. And the next memory was even worse.

A hospital room, but not one here at the compound, or even at Havers’s clinic. A human hospital room, and his Mary was in the bed.

Shit, he could still remember the color of her skin. Wrong, all wrong. Not just pale, but beginning to go gray.

To save her, he had done the only thing he could think of, thrown the only Hail Mary he had: He had sought out the Scribe Virgin. Had left that human hospital and gone home to his room, and lowered himself down on cut diamonds until his knees had run red with blood.

He had prayed for a miracle.

With a curse, he stretched out on the bench, leaning his torso back on the unforgiving wood while keeping both feet on the floor on either side.

His Mary wasn’t coming home today. She was staying at Safe Place.

The mother of that child had been taken back to Havers’s. After slipping into a coma.

The staff had decided to keep the young at the house for the day, and Mary wanted to be with the girl.

God, he remembered that anguish of daylight when Mary had been sick in the hospital. It hadn’t been safe for him to be with her during the sunshine hours, and he had been terrified she would die when he couldn’t get to her.

Guess they could drive that young over to see her mahmen if shit came to that. As a pretrans, she could go out even at high noon.

Staring up at the ceiling, he thought of Trez and Selena. Their date. Their escape from downtown. The fun they’d had evading the human police.

That was so worth fighting for. All of it.

His Mary wasn’t coming home today, and he didn’t know how he was going to make it through the next twelve hours until he saw her in person again. And that was even knowing he could call or text, or Skype with her at any moment for as long as he liked.

That little girl was probably going to lose her mahmen.

And Trez was probably going to lose Selena.

Rhage was pretty sure all of them were praying for a miracle just as he had. And maybe that was what he was having problems with.

Why had he gotten lucky? Tohr hadn’t. Well, yes, the brother had found Autumn, and that was a blessing beyond measure. But as much as he loved that female, his losing Wellsie had nearly killed him.

He just didn’t get it. Unless the Scribe Virgin stepped in again, or someone found a