Chapter 26 – Corvus
CORVUS
I came around with a weight on my chest and a thudding in my skull. My jaw tightened at the persistent and fucking obnoxious ache that didn’t seem to want to quit. My body sank deeply into the thin hospital mattress, left arm numb.
Despite my distaste for the aftereffects, I clicked the switch in my hand with prickling fingers, giving myself another small dose of morphine.
A sigh left my lips and the weight on my chest shifted, sending a stream of fresh blood into the dead arm. Dark hair brushed against my chin and I blinked, forcing my burning eyes to open, my lips parting.
Her body curled against mine on the small bed, a leg tossed over my thigh. Her arm across my chest. Head in the crook of my arm. My chest tightened, a different sort of ache twisting deep there, making my throat burn.
I discarded the morphine switch and wrapped my arms around her, feeling her sleeping body adjust to my movement, nuzzling in deeper. I suppressed a hard sob, not wanting to wake her.
Not wanting to wake me, in case this was a dream.
Jesus fuck, it better not be a dream.
I bent my head to hers, pressing my lips to the top of her head, breathing her in. Her sharp spring herb and sandalwood scent was almost entirely overpowered by hospital soap and something sour, but it was there. I couldn’t dream that up.
This was real.
They found her.
They brought her back like they promised. And they did it entirely without my help.
I peered through blurred vision over my Sparrow’s head, catching Grey’s eye where he sat in the corner of the room. He nodded slow, but I could see the strain still in his face. In his clenched fists on the armrests of the chair. It wasn’t over. They brought her home, but Drake was still out there.
The Kings were still on our doorstep and there was no telling if they’d walk away or use a battering ram to try to knock down our defenses and take everything we had left.
I let out a shaky breath and nodded back.
My Sparrow let out a little whine of discomfort, shifting, pulling her arm in close. The arm covered in a thick coating of bandages and gauze from her wrist up to her elbow. Angry red skin poked out from the top edge of the bandage that’d slipped since it’d been applied and my stomach twisted.
Rook crashed through the door, making Ava Jade spring up like a fucking jack in the box with a gasp on her lips. I sent him a scathing glare as he righted himself, a drink tray filled with iced coffee in one hand and a greasy paper bag in the other.
“Sorry,” he grunted, pacing to the window to throw back the curtains to a bright and blazing afternoon.
“What the fuck, Rook?” Grey shielded his eyes, and I averted mine, the pain in my head that’d only just started to numb from the morphine returning in full force.
“ Rook ,” I growled, and the blinds closed again.
“What? It’s dark as fuck in here.”
“Rook, what are you doing?” Grey demanded.
I could hear Rook’s indecisive footfalls thudding and squeaking across the linoleum.
“I figured you’d all be sick of the hospital slop by now. I got takeout.”
When I managed to see through the brightness, Rook and Grey’s argument fell to the periphery as my eyes locked with hers. She looked down at me over her shoulder, with shattered ice in her blue-gray eyes, her jaw working.
“Hey, Sparrow.”
She shoved me, hard in the chest, making me cough. My ribs creaked, screaming in protest. “You idiot .”
“Uh, AJ,” Grey said uselessly. “He’s got a few cracked ribs.”
She shoved me again, and I sucked in a breath, letting her get it out.
“I—”
Shove.
“Fucking—”
Shove.
“ Know .”
When I was finished coughing, I swallowed hard, grimacing at the coppery taste in the back of my throat. Sort of wishing I hadn’t tossed away that morphine drip cord. “You… finished?” I wheezed.
“I haven’t even started.”
I braced myself for her next attack, ready and willing to accept any and all forms of punishment, but she pressed her lips to mine instead.
I grunted in surprise against her mouth, but that only made her kiss me harder, her lips almost to the point of bruising before she finally pulled back.
There was fire in her eyes when I opened mine to find her inches from my face. “I hate you for this.”
“You should’ve hated me already, Sparrow.”
Her brows drew down, confused.
“I should never have said those things to you at the Docks. I didn’t know what I was—” I cut myself off, heat rising up my neck.
“No, that’s bullshit. I knew exactly what I was doing.
Because it’s the same bullshit I’ve always done.
It wasn’t fair to lay the blame for Grey…
for all of that shit on your shoulders.”
She rocked back to sitting, her face paling. “If I hadn’t taken that shot at Lenny Ace then maybe?—”
“ I sent Drake after you,” I blurted before I could change my mind, hammering the final nail into my coffin. “I fucking fell for his shit. I didn’t see him for what he really was. After you took off, I asked him to find you and…”
The bed dipped, and I found Grey sitting on the bottom right corner with Rook at his back. “We don’t have to do this now, man.”
“I do,” I corrected him. “She needs to know. She has to know that I’m the one that did this to her.”
Sparrow frowned, a muscle flexing in her jaw. But she wasn’t looking at me anymore. Wouldn’t meet my stare.
Good. It was what I deserved. And more.
She didn’t have to forgive me. Not now. But I would earn her forgiveness. No matter how long it took to do it. For whatever fucked up reason the devil wasn’t ready to claim my soul and I wasn’t about to waste this second chance at life with anyone else but her.
“You can hate me for as long as you want, Sparrow, but I’m not going anywhere. You’re it for me. And I’m going to make you believe it.”
She’d have to kill me to get rid of me.
“Did you lock me in a cell, Corvus?” she asked so quietly I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “Did you drug me? Tie me up? Make me watch a man I love fall to his fucking death?”
“I—”
“You didn’t do this to me. You fucked up. Royally. So did I. If I was able to control myself?—”
“We might all be dead right now if you’d let Lenny Ace walk off that pier, AJ. No one knows what could’ve happened. We only know what did happen. And what happened was we annihilated the Aces before they could take us out. And all of us are still standing.”
Grey’s gaze found me lying in the bed and guiltily darted in Rook’s direction. He shifted foot to foot, holding most of his weight on the rail of the hospital bed.
“Well, mostly,” he amended.
“We had casualties,” Sparrow continued to argue, and the way she said we made me sag with relief even if that we didn’t include me. She still counted herself a Saint and that was a fucking win to me.
Rook shook his head. “There are always casualties. That’s the cost of doing business.”
Ava Jade’s cheeks tinted pink, and I could tell there was more she wanted to say but wasn’t sure how. She hadn’t expected us to forgive her almost as much as I thought she’d never forgive me.
She was making it clear as fucking crystal that she was angry, but anger I could work with. I couldn’t work with indifference.
“Grey’s right,” she said, leaning over to snag one of the iced coffees from the tray balanced on my shins. “It’s done now. There’s no point in dwelling on it.”
Her hospital gown fluttered open in the back, revealing a slice of peachy ass and the little hollows at the top of her hip bones.
Not even near-constant pain and morphine could dull the start of a raging boner as it began to take shape beneath the thin hospital sheet. I lifted a knee, groaning at the movement to cover it up, nearly spilling the rest of the coffee.
Rook was fast enough to save it, a curse on his lips. “Corv,” he growled. “That’s it. No coffee for you.”
He took the iced americano that was clearly meant for me and removed the lid, tossing it into the trash to drink straight from the plastic cup.
His nose wrinkled. “How can you drink this shit, man?”
“What? Not a fan of my quad shot americano, black, no sugar?”
He thrust it in my direction with a scowl, and I struggled to sit up and take it, thrown onto my back again when my Sparrow shoved me down, climbing from my side to stand on the floor beside the bed and hit the button to lift the top end.
The motor whirred as my back rest rose, pressing me up to a sitting position.
“I’m not a fucking invalid.”
She fixed me with a look that brokered no argument.
“…but I’ll be one for you.”
She rolled her eyes, taking the americano from Rook to hand to me, but she pulled it out of my reach before I could take it. “Wait a second. Are you even allowed to have coffee right now?”
The door opened behind her, and she turned, the ice in the coffee rattling as she jumped.
My doctor poked his head into the room, his gaze settling on Ava Jade instead of me.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, entering the room, leaving the door open behind him. “Thought I might find you in?—”
“Is he allowed coffee?” she interrupted.
The doc lifted a brow, glancing between my hard ass stare and the cup in Ava Jade’s hand.
“Uh, well, no. Probably not the best idea unless it’s decaf. It’s a natural blood thinner and…”
He trailed off halfway through his explanation since Ava Jade was done listening and had already crossed the room and entered the small private bathroom with the cup. The toilet flushed, and she came back empty handed.
She lifted her brows in challenge at my glare. “Doc’s orders,” she said with a wide grin and settled into the chair in the corner of the room where Grey had been. She fingered the greasy paper bag from the floor and settled it into her lap, digging into the food. Clearly pleased with herself.
“Do you need the room?” Grey asked the doctor, glancing between him and me. “More tests, or?”
“No, I’m not here for Mr. James at all, actually. I was looking for Miss Mason. I’ve gone over all of your test results and was wondering if I might have a word in private?”