Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(268)

A single, glistening drop of rain trickles down the outside of the window of the hospital room. It stutters and then speeds up, hitting other droplets along the way as it meanders down the glass before falling away from my view. My eyes focus instead on the grey metal of the city beyond, my brow knitting and my teeth grinding together.

The room behind me is still the expected chaos in the aftermath of something like this, and my back isn't turned because of callousness, it’s because I need to remember to breathe.

And I need to let the rage build. I need to steel my frame and close my eyes and let the hurt and the pain inside boil and bloom into something else; something I can work with. I learned a long time ago where blind rage and anger gets me, and it's nowhere good, and nowhere productive. I need to focus the rage right now; I need that fuel. It’s the alchemy inside that’s going to turn that into something focused; something I can use.

Because this shit ends right now.

This time, we're a shade past the pale; they've taken things too far this time. Letting Benson and his Blackriver shit-heads off after the whole thing with Javier and Chelsea was a mistake. We turned our backs on the wolf; we let our guard down.

And now we're paying for it.

I grit my teeth as I take a final calming breath and turn around; He's gonna be fine; they're both going to be fine. I repeat it twice in my head, feeling the rage and the hurt spike inside as I look over the scene in front of me. My family in pain, my friends suffering. Yeah, this ends now.

Hudson’s going to be OK. I mean the guy's a fucking brick-house, and the doctors pretty much said as much after they took the bullet out of his side and patched him up. Of course, and rightfully, that doesn't mean Reagan isn't still still curled up next to him in the hospital bed, crying and holding his sleeping form tight.

Quinn is- well, I'd say she's a mess but it's nothing you can see on the outside. She's as quiet as I am, sitting in a chair across the hospital room with a frozen look on her face that honestly looks a hell of a lot like mine.

You picked a good one, Logan.

I know that look; it's rage, it's fury, and it's revenge. Is she upset? Is she broken, and shattered, and terrified about the fact that men with guns dragged away the man she loves? Of course, but that look says exactly what I know it says; she's ready to walk into hell itself and tear the devil apart with her bare fucking hands to get him back. Jesus, like those two haven't been through fucking enough already.

We're getting him back, Quinn; I swear it.

Chelsea sits next to the bed rubbing Reagan’s back while Javier paces the room, swearing and muttering under his breath. If we weren’t in the situation we were in, I could almost smile at how insanely similar he and Logan really are; both on a hair trigger and ready to jump in with both fists swinging. Javier turns again on his heel, swearing in Spanish as he looks at Hudson resting in the hospital bed, and he shakes his head furiously.

And then there's her.

Peyton is quiet in the corner of the room, but I know that kind of quiet. It's the calm before the hurricane, the lull before the tempest. God, I fucking miss that look-

Stop it.

I'm letting the emotion of the moment and situation cloud my eyes, and I shake my head to clear it. That chapter is closed, and it needs to stay that way. But that look. She's roaring inside, I can tell. She's ready to tear someone’s fucking head off to get back the one blood relation she's got in this world.

There's a knock at the door, and a secret service guy pokes his head in the door and nods at me before ducking back out. Major Lawson storms in, his face grim and cloudy as he nods at his patrol and closes the door behind him. He turns back, catching the bottled fire in my eyes as he surveys the room; “This ends, now.”

Reagan looks up at the sound of his voice and smiles bravely through the pain on her face. We all try and push through the pain. This is a family, however fucking weird a family it is, and one of us has a hole in his side, and the other one is gone.

They stole part of our family, and that shit is just not going to fly. I nod curtly at the Major; “Done. Let's go take these assholes out right now.”

“It's-” The Major slowly shakes his head, his face grim; “It's not that simple, I'm afraid.”

“Simple?” Quinn’s voice is like gravel as she looks up from her corner of the room; “It’s exactly that simple. We send in everything you've got and get him out of there.”

“Quinn,” The Major’s face is tight, and he looks even older than he usually does; “You know I help whenever and however I can, but my power is not omnipotent.” His jaw tightens as he looks at her; “Believe me when I say I want to, but I can't just send the U.S. Military into another country to drag someone out.”