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Honor held up her hand wrapped in my shirt.

“When people come in bleeding, they get higher priority.”

Oh. Well. That was good. “How long do we have to wait until she gets seen? She’s been through a lot. She needs fluid and a bed.”

She pushed a clipboard at me. “Sign in.”

I signed in. Under my name. For some reason, having a record of her being here for anyone to see didn’t sit well with me.

The nurse glanced up at me and then at Honor bundled up in my arms. Her eyes softened. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said low and then disappeared.

There wasn’t an empty chair in this place. Not one.

I took up position against the wall, planted my feet, and tucked her a little closer to me. Honor seemed to be floating around somewhere between consciousness and sleep. It made me worry she had a concussion. She did have that bump on the back of her head.

Fifteen minutes later, the nurse from behind the desk motioned to me. I pushed away from the wall and followed her back along a quiet hallway and into a small area with a bed and a curtain all the way around it. “Someone will be in as soon as they can.”

“Thank you,” I told her, and I meant it.

She smiled and disappeared behind the curtain. Even though my arms were shaking with the effort of holding her for so long, I was hard pressed to put her down. I stood over the white bed for long minutes, debating, until I gently laid her out on the covers.

Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled. “Thanks.”

“You look like shit,” I told her tenderly and brushed a strand of damp hair off her face.

Her eyes widened and focused on my face. I opened my mouth to tell her I was teasing when she said, “There’s lights in here.”

Yeah. She hit her head too hard. “Yeah,” I drawled slowly.

“I can see you.” She said it like she was in awe.

“Well, I ain’t much to look at.” I started to pull away, but she grabbed my arm and yanked me back down so I was leaning over her body.

“Stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t sure why I just said that, but it felt right.

Her eyes—a crystal-blue color—roamed over my face, taking in every feature, every scar I knew was there. I was probably unshaven, dirty, and looked like crap.

“You look…” she said, her voice trailing away as she looked me over again. I braced myself for some polite answer. But what she said surprised me. “Like a warrior.”

I lifted my eyebrow. “A warrior, huh?”

She nodded. “Strong. Capable. Rough.”

I grunted, not sure what to make of her words.

“I won’t tell your secret,” she said, a small smile playing on her lips.

“And what secret is that?” I asked, amused.

“That even though you look like a warrior and act like a warrior, underneath all that toughness is really a big mushy marshmallow.”

I snorted. “There is nothing on me that resembles a marshmallow.” I flexed my bicep for her to feast her eyes on.

She placed her palm over the center of my chest, right above my heart. All sense of joking totally left my body. I swallowed.

“It’s why you need all those muscles, isn’t it? To protect what’s in here.”

And those were the words that wrapped me right around her little finger.





19




Honor

I never thought I might actually enjoy being a patient at a hospital. Of course, when your options are that or death… being in a hospital scores a ten out of ten.

I didn’t even mind the ugly gown they put me in because it meant finally getting out of my muddy, wet clothes. The IV hurt like hell, but whatever meds they put in it sure were nice. Finally, I could draw a breath without feeling like someone was stabbing me with a butcher knife.

The silence of the room was welcome. I liked silence. I knew some people who kept themselves so busy—their lives so full of all this… crap—that they never had a spare moment. I always felt bad for those people. It was almost as if they couldn’t stand the thought of being at rest—of being alone with themselves.

Of course, even when I was alone and sitting in the silence of a room, I was never actually alone. The voices in my head—the characters that I put down on the page—they were always with me. It wasn’t something I went around telling other people because they would likely put me in a padded room, but other writers understood. It was probably the reason I liked the silence so much, because then there was no exterior noise competing with the constant activity that went on within the confines of my brain.

Or maybe the silence was just welcome because it meant no one was throwing oranges at my head and trying to kill me.