as I took that in. I was clearly dehydrated and a little bashed up, but I had to think that it was something close to miraculous that these few injuries were all I’d ended up with after surviving that carnage.
I took in the lavish hospital room I'd been set up in. Lavender walls surrounded me, and a tall vase of flowers sat in a wide windowsill.
"Shit," I muttered, glancing at the needle threaded into the back of my hand and the bag of fluids attached to it. "We should get the fuck out of here before they come asking how I'm going to be paying for this place."
"It's taken care of," Fox said firmly. "The Harlequins look after their own."
"Are you saying my gang membership comes with a health care plan?" I teased but when neither of them laughed, my amusement fell into a frown. "What aren't you telling me?"
"You should get some more rest," JJ said softly, tugging on my blankets to tuck me in better.
"Just spit it out," I demanded as he avoided my eye and Fox sighed, dropping into a chair beside my bed and giving me an intent look.
"They called off the search, hummingbird. They've stopped looking for survivors in the rubble," he explained slowly.
"So?" I demanded. I might have been out of it a lot, but I'd had enough lucid moments to understand that it must have been days since they'd pulled me out of that building.
"So...Chase didn't make it out," Fox breathed, his face written with pain as those words passed his lips.
I heard them. I understood them. But they didn't make it beyond that part of my brain. I interpreted the words, and I knew what they meant but I rejected them as fast as I computed them.
"No," I said simply.
I'd been away from my boys before. I'd been far away and aching for them and hurting over all they'd done, but deep down inside me I'd still felt them there. Sometimes it felt like a splinter of glass driving into my heart and other times like a kiss whispered across my lips while I slept, but either way, I felt them. I felt them then and now and always and I still felt him.
"No," I repeated more firmly.
"Pretty girl," JJ croaked, his hand finding mine again and his honey brown eyes filling with tears as he looked up at me with more hurt in his heart than I'd ever thought possible. "We stayed out there for days. We didn't sleep, hardly ate...all we did was dig and dig, but it's been too long. The rubble is too dense. The authorities called off the search for survivors and-"
"No!" I yelled at him, snatching my hand out of his and slapping him when he fought to take it again.
JJ jerked back at the feeling of my palm striking his cheek, the pain in his eyes cutting into me like razor blades, but I didn't care. Because it shouldn't have been there at all. There was no need for it.
"I feel him," I snarled, jabbing my chest above my heart so hard that it hurt. "He's still here, which means he's still out there. So stop looking at me like that and let's go and find him."
I grabbed the line attaching the needle to my hand and yanked it out, cursing at the pain of it but throwing the blankets off of me without even looking to see how much I was bleeding.
I just needed to get out there. I could find him. This hurt in my heart was tethered to him and it would draw me to him. All I had to do was get back out there and I knew I'd figure it out. He was waiting for us to save him. I could feel it. And I wasn't going to let him down no matter what other shit had passed between us.
Fox and JJ grabbed me, trying to wrestle me back into the bed but I smacked their hands and knocked them away, ignoring the things they were saying to me as I focused on the only thing that mattered.
Chase was out there somewhere, and he needed me.
That was all I cared about.
I shoved out of the bed, but a cry escaped me as I tried to stand and my legs gave way, leaving me to crash to the floor.
Pain radiated through my feet and legs, clearly the result of the hours I'd spent trapped in that hell in those fucking shoes,