Vivid Avowed (Evelyn Maynard Trilogy #3) - Kaydence Snow Page 0,68

my shoulder, rubbing lightly.

Silently, I got back to eating as Ethan brushed my damp hair. He was so careful, so gentle, I never felt a painful tug at my roots, never had my head jerked back.

Once we were done, they led me to the bedroom in the back.

My body was ready to give in. All my basic needs were taken care of—food, hygiene, sex. Now it was time to rest. But a faint blue glow was peeking through the curtains, and I made myself stop at the threshold. “It’s morning. We should go back to the hospital.”

Josh reached out to me. “Eve, you need to rest.”

Ethan, on the opposite side of the bed, did the same. “Uncle Luce said he’d call as soon as there was any news.”

I looked between them. I couldn’t crawl into a warm comfortable bed when Alec was lying in a hospital with a bullet wound—that he’d taken to protect me. “He needs me.”

“Yes, he does.” Josh didn’t argue. “But you’re no good to him dead on your feet. You can’t pour from an empty cup.”

As if to illustrate his point, I swayed and caught myself on the doorway. In two long strides, Ethan reached me and swept me effortlessly into his arms.

“Sleep for a few hours, and then we’ll go straight back,” Ethan said close to my ear. “The doctors said they were keeping him under for most of today anyway.” He didn’t give me a chance to argue before he lowered me to the bed and pulled off my pants.

I didn’t have any more energy to object. The pillow was really soft, and my limbs felt heavy. My guys climbed in on either side of me, cocooning me with warm, hard bodies and gentle, tender caresses.

Fourteen

Alec had a private room at the hospital, but even Lucian’s money couldn’t buy more space, and it was crowded with all of us in there.

I sat in a chair, holding his hand in both of mine and trying to stay calm. It really wouldn’t help if I started crying again. I’d been doing it on and off all morning—when Lucian called to tell us they were going to wake Alec up, as we hurriedly dressed, when we made a quick pit stop for pastries and coffee. I was so over it; I felt as if I had no control over my own tear ducts.

Lucian looked like I felt. He was in the corner by the door, disheveled, his head drooping. He looked as if he might pass out at any moment but was refusing to leave until Alec woke up. If he woke up . . .

The doctors had kept Alec in an induced coma overnight. They’d already given him the medication that would wake him up, and we’d spent the past twenty minutes holding our collective breath.

He had to be OK. I needed him to wake up and scowl at something, or I was going to lose my mind.

Tyler was asleep by the window, in the only other chair. His head rested against the back, and his legs were splayed out in front of him. It didn’t look comfortable at all, but he’d been up all night. Soft snoring sounds drifted from his slightly open mouth.

Ethan and Josh leaned on the wall behind me, too on edge to sit down.

No one spoke. We just breathed and waited.

Dot, Charlie, Olivia, and Henry were in the waiting room just outside. So were Kyo, Marcus, and Jamie, still in their Melior Group uniforms. Dana was there too, along with a handful of other agents I hadn’t met. For someone who pushed people away so expertly, Alec sure had a solid group of people who genuinely cared for him. Loved him, even.

There was that word again—love.

I could see it in his eyes every time we had sex, every time we shared a moment of tenderness, a deepening of our fraught bond. I’d said it to Ethan and Josh easily. I was so sure of my feelings for them. They were my world, my home. They all were.

I was waiting for the right time to tell Tyler, but when it came to Alec . . .

Did I love him?

I raised my head to look at him. My eyes landed on his strong, stubbled jaw first, then his nose with the slight kink in it. His eyebrows were relaxed as he slept. His beautiful ice-blue eyes—the eyes that had haunted me for a year, watched me with derision, studied me with abandon, then