the small white bandage there. “It’s nothing. Probably won’t even scar.”
Her voice had notched up, so he thought she was lying to him. His eyes turned to slits as he gazed at her bandage.
“Nothing,” Victoria said again. “A flesh wound. He didn’t cut me deep enough for permanent damage. I don’t think Flynn wanted to kill me in the alley. He had other plans for me.”
His gaze shot to the door. “Is he in this damn hospital?”
“He’s in the morgue.”
Wade didn’t move.
“My knife attack killed him. Mine. I just—I don’t want you carrying that around on you, too. I knew when I drove that knife in him, I knew where to put it in. He wasn’t going to recover. He only had seconds left. So by the time you got to him . . . he was just a walking dead man.”
“I would have killed him a dozen times if it meant you were safe.” She needed to know that brutal truth.
Victoria sucked in a sharp breath.
“Does that . . . scare you?” His voice still sounded rusty as all hell.
Victoria pulled her hand from his and picked up a pitcher on the side table. She poured water into a plastic cup, her fingers trembling. “Nothing about you scares me.” She put a straw into the cup, then used the remote to lift him up in the bed. When the straw touched his lips and the water rolled down his parched throat—paradise.
“But like I said before,” Victoria murmured, “I see what you meant about hospitals.”
He slid back against the pillows. Slowly, she put down the cup. Then her gaze came back to him. It sure looked as if there were tears in her beautiful eyes. “When I was in here, watching you . . . when you were so pale and still, I was terrified.”
The machines kept beeping. He lay there, frozen. Wade couldn’t look away from her gaze.
A tear spilled from the corner of her eye. “You were bleeding out at the scene, do you know that? I had to—I had to stop the blood. I had to hold—” Victoria broke off, shaking her head. “Promise me you won’t ever do that again. Promise me that you won’t make me think my entire world is ending . . . because you’re trying to leave it.”
“Baby . . .”
“I was scared.” A hushed confession. “From the very beginning. No strings . . . no strings because I was scared. I didn’t want to open myself up. But I did—to you. With you. Then I was so afraid—every time we touched—because I needed you, too much. Was that natural? Or was I being like my father?”
“You’re not.”
She swallowed. “But none of that fear compared to the way I felt when you were on the ground in that alley. And when I was in this hospital, and I was praying for you to wake up, I swore that if you came back to me, I wouldn’t be afraid any longer.”
The machines beeped a bit faster.
Her lips rose in a wobbly smile. “I love you.”
Hell, yes.
“I’m not saying things will be easy between us. Nothing is perfect, no one is. But I want to try. I want to try being with you because I don’t want to live without you. You make me happier, you make me feel . . . free. And I know that’s crazy, but when I’m with you, I don’t have to hold back. I can just be . . .” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “. . . me.”
He caught her hand. Pulled her onto the mattress beside him. His thumb brushed away her tears. Then he kissed her wet cheeks. Her soft lashes. Her sweet mouth.
“Wade? Please, say something.”
“Marry me.”
“Wh-What?”
“Tomorrow or a year from now. Whenever you’re ready . . .” He kissed her again. “You’d make me the happiest—and damn luckiest man—alive, if you’d marry me.” He pulled back, just enough so that he could stare up at her. “I want you to be my partner, baby. Forever. Only you. You fit me. You make me happy. You make every damn thing in my life seem worthwhile. If I have you . . .” It was simple for him. “. . . I have everything.”
Her breath choked out. Ever so carefully, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “I have everything, too,” Victoria whispered. Then she kissed him. He could taste the salt of her tears in that kiss, but he could also taste so