sounded.
“They’re coming, Finn,” someone told him, and there was a lilt of Irish to the tone that comforted me. In fact, Finn had it too, which was funny because I knew he hadn’t been raised in the Old Country. His mom had been though, just like mine. We both had sayings and particular phrases that came from them—even if Finn had run from his mother while I’d clung to mine.
“Please, Aoife, let me see those beautiful eyes.”
Finn? Being charming? In front of someone else?
Christ, was I dying?
That thought, not his request, had me tearing my eyelids open. I wasn’t ready to die, dammit. I had so much sex to make up for. And not just any sex, but sex with this crazy, beautiful man. A man who made Jamie Dornan look like a six out of ten. Yeah, that hot.
I heard a groan escape him, one so filled with relief that I frowned in confusion.
“Finn?” I repeated, my eyes foggy as I stared up at him. I couldn’t seem to say anything else, my tongue incapable of forming other words. He was my anchor in that moment. My everything.
“Aoife,” he breathed, then he squeezed my hand and whispered, “Let the doctors take care of you. Be a good girl.”
More confusion filled me, but he squeezed my hand just as a team of people surged in from a door to his right.
Not people.
Doctors.
Finn backed up to let them move around me, but I wanted him close. I needed him at my side—I was scared and hurting, dammit. I needed him, where was he going?
“Her pulse is spiking.”
“Finn,” I moaned.
I heard him as he gritted out, “Aoife, baby, I’m here. I’m over here.”
“And he shouldn’t be,” someone mumbled under their breath as they touched me, moving me and prodding me here and there. Places where it stung, places that sent shards of agony slicing through me.
“He’s a Points man. You don’t argue with them,” another person muttered.
“They’re all thugs.”
Didn’t they know I could hear what they were saying? About my husband?
Because, yeah, I remembered that.
I remembered saying ‘I do,’ and hearing him say it in return. I remembered walking down the aisle and seeing the white peonies and baby’s breath that Lena, Finn’s adopted mother, had strewn along the pews in heavy garlands. I even remembered the feel of those silky flowers brushing against my hands as Aidan Sr., Lena’s husband, passed me my bouquet.
We’d been in St. Patrick’s and now, we were here.
Trouble was, I just wasn’t sure what had happened between walking down the aisle and this moment.
I dozed off, which might have seemed impossible considering how the rude medical team were attending to me, but I was tired.
Bone deep tired.
I awoke to the sounds of Finn’s luscious voice rasping, “You’ve done everything you can?”
“Of course!”
The affronted tone had my lips twitching. Finn did that to people. He was a bit of an asshole, but I loved him anyway. Yeah, I did. I loved him in spite of his being a dick. Which made me either too stupid to live, or just someone who let hope run their lives, not realism.
“You’d better have,” someone else growled, “I made it a point to find out where your family lives.”
“Oh God! I-I promise. She doesn’t even need it,” came the panicked squeak. “It’s just her spleen. She might have some digestive issues as a worst-case scenario but otherwise, many people live comfortably without them.”
“Like tonsils?” Finn asked, his tone doubtful.
“Yes,” the other person seemed to clutch at Finn’s question. “Exactly like tonsils.”
“What else?”
Finn’s demand had the woman—my doctor?—audibly gulping. “She was incredibly fortunate that the bullet didn’t hit her stomach or damage her pancreas. We performed open surgery and as a result, she will have scarring. As it stands, she has some faint damage to her ribs that will take a few weeks to heal.”
“Why has she been out of it for so long?” That wasn’t Finn. I didn’t know who it was, but he sounded like he took my lack of consciousness as a personal affront.
“For several reasons. Her lung collapsed and then we had to deal with two nasty infections at the incision site.”
“But she’ll be okay now?”
She sucked down a sharp breath at the man’s question—I didn’t know who he was just that he wasn’t Finn—and seemed to brace herself. “While you can live without your spleen, it does put her at risk for infections. Before she leaves, we’ll vaccinate her against several viruses and bacteria. There are annual