Chapter 35
My stare shifted to the door when it shoved open, already knowing Thatch would be next.
“Waiting in the hall?” I assumed, and watched as a smirk stole across his face.
“Obviously,” he muttered as he grabbed the chair I’d ignored and carried it over to the same place Briggs had stood.
“Your nurse threw a fit when I followed her and Briggs down here, but they made us wait long enough to start coming back here. I wasn’t going to let her change her mind once Briggs had his turn. ”
An understanding rumble built in my chest, but I didn’t respond otherwise as his amusement was replaced with grief when he did the same thing Briggs had done: taken her still form in. Studied her. Mumbled, “She’d be mad that they have her sleeping like this—it’s vulnerable.”
A breath left me that might’ve been laced with amusement. “Thought something similar. She doesn’t sleep like this.”
He swallowed thickly as his head bobbed. Without taking his stare from her bandaged neck, he asked, “Can I see?”
Didn’t take long to figure out what he was referring to, because I knew it wasn’t the wounds on her neck. “Briggs tell you?”
“Never seen him cry, even when his brother died. Of course he told me.”
That same possessive feeling coursed through me, but I lifted the photos for Thatch to take. “Probably because this could’ve been him,” I explained roughly. “It could’ve been Lai—” I choked over the name and the rest of what I’d been saying and locked my trembling jaw.
It could’ve been Lainey.
It could’ve been Kaia.
It could’ve been their unborn baby.
There’d been near-constant threats on Briggs’ family because it was Briggs’ company. He felt the weight of this too well, and now he was seeing it play out with people who were as good as his family.
Handing the photos back to me, Thatch leaned over the bed to grip my shoulder and waited until I met his stare. “I’m sorry,” he said, letting me hear all the worry and fear he’d been masking just seconds before. “What do you need?”
“For her to wake up.”
His head bobbed slowly. “From us,” he amended.
“There’s nothing,” I said immediately, knowing it was true. “Y’all are here, but you don’t have to be. I don’t know how—”
“That’s funny,” he said over me. “Almost sounded like you were saying we didn’t need to be here.
” With a squeeze to my shoulder, he released me and shifted slightly away.
“We’re family. We don’t go through things alone.
You know that. And I know if it were me and Chloe right there, no one would be able to get you farther than the waiting room until she was cleared to go home. ”
When I eventually nodded, Thatch’s focus shifted to Mallory as he bent closer to her.
His voice was low when he said, “Monroe, this guy’s insufferable on a good day, and that’s with you smacking him every five seconds.
Need you to wake up so you can keep him in his place.
Yeah?” Placing his hand on top of her head, he whispered, “Come on, little sister.”
With a slow exhale, he straightened away from her, only to sit in the chair he’d brought over. “I don’t understand, the surgeon didn’t say she was in a coma.”
I was sure my jaw would shatter at some point before this new day was over.
“They haven’t officially said that to me.
When I was brought back here, the nurse said they were waiting for Mallory to wake up from surgery.
She didn’t. The nurse just told me the pain meds could also be making her tired, but to focus on the positive that she’s breathing on her own. So, I don’t know.”
Thatch grunted.
“Thatch, I don’t know how long she’s been like this.
I don’t even know what time it is,” I said on a humorless laugh.
“I don’t know where my phone is. That clock’s broken.
” I gestured in the direction of the analog clock on the wall without looking away from him.
“And Briggs was talking about everything from yesterday, so all I know is it’s at least a new day. ”
Pulling his phone from his pocket, he said, “It’s just after eight in the morning.”
We’d gotten back to her condo close to six last night. Which meant we’d been here for around fourteen hours.
“Go home,” I told Thatch. “Tell everyone to go home.”
“No,” he said as if the idea alone was insane. “Not only does no one want to, it probably isn’t safe right now. We’re still waiting to hear from Rush anyway.”
My brows drew tight, but my stare drifted over Mallory like a magnet drawn before snapping back to Thatch. “What do you mean? Where’s Rush?”
“Right,” he began, drawing out the word, “you don’t know.” Shifting forward in the chair, Thatch gripped his hands and released a harsh breath. “Remember how Rush left the office yesterday in the middle of us trying to figure everything out? Didn’t say a word to anyone, just left?”
I thought back through what I could remember of yesterday that hadn’t been life-altering. News that Mallory was pregnant. Mallory bleeding out in her kitchen.
Life-altering.
A grunt rumbled from me when I vaguely remembered Rush stalking through the main office in the middle of Briggs giving out orders.
“It’s because he was heading out to take care of his part of the plan.
Briggs sent him to New York to get Peyton—to make sure there weren’t any ‘Davises’ there—because she still wasn’t answering their calls or texts.
” The way he drifted off let me know that wasn’t the end of it, so I just waited as he glanced from the door to Mallory.
“Briggs has been in a bad way,” Thatch muttered. “With what happened to Monroe and because he almost abandoned his part of the mission before he could finish it when he got a text from Rush, mid-flight.”
A curse slipped from me. “What happened to Peyton?”
Thatch lifted his hands before clasping them again. “It was a screenshot from Peyton with an address and the word help. It’s the first either of them have heard from her since Briggs’ wedding, and Rush was telling Briggs that she still wouldn’t respond after that.”
Unease slid through my veins as I thought over his words. “That . . . Thatch, he’s walking into a trap.”
“Walked,” he corrected. “This was still yesterday. And they both knew that, but it’s Peyton.
Briggs already lost one sibling, he wasn’t about to lose the other.
And Rush . . .” Silence settled between us for a second before Thatch continued on a sigh.
“He’d go running into battle unarmed for Peyton. ”
My brows shot up. “Does Briggs know this?” I asked slowly, cautiously, then demanded, “Wait, how do you know? And why didn’t I?”
“Because it was a lifelong secret Rush only admitted to me when I thought he was going after Chloe, and I think he’d planned on taking it to his grave.
” Hesitation bled from Thatch before he mumbled, “No way Briggs doesn’t put it together after this trip though.
I don’t know how he didn’t put it together with how Rush nearly came unglued at the thought of Peyton being in danger yesterday. ”
A confirming grunt rumbled in my chest.
And knowing Briggs, he’d either lose it and unleash his fury on Rush, or he’d shut his best friend out completely. I didn’t envy Rush either way.
But that was the very least of my worries right then.
“You said walked,” I realized. “Did he find a Davis there?”
“I don’t know,” Thatch said as he leaned back in his chair, shrugging as he did. “All Briggs knows is that Rush found Peyton. Rush didn’t say if she was okay, alive . . . nothing. And now he isn’t responding. Briggs is close to a breaking point.”
My head dipped as I thought through everything he said as we settled into a weighted silence. “I heard you, but get Briggs to go home.”
“No chance,” Thatch muttered, then jerked his chin at me. “Sleep. I’ll let you know if there are any changes with Monroe.”
A smirk tugged at my mouth, but there wasn’t an ounce of amusement in my body. “It isn’t that easy. I—”
“Gray, I get it,” he said softly but earnestly.
“Your eyes have darted to the monitor behind me about a hundred times since I’ve been in here.
You’re not sleeping because you’re studying that thing and tracking the changes every time it goes off.
” He gave me a look full of understanding. “Trust me to take this watch.”
I held his stare a while longer, mentally going through every argument against why I shouldn’t let myself relax enough to truly sleep. But each one only led down a path I refused to go down.
With a reluctant nod, I settled deeper next to Mallory, my body still tense as I waited for the next time the blood pressure cuff would start up again.
But the next time my eyelids shot open, it was to the nurse coming in to get the baby’s readings as my chest pitched and heart wrenched in the most bittersweet way, because a dizzying array of memories were flooding my mind . . .
I remem—
“Time for you to go,” the nurse said unapologetically to Thatch, who just smirked at me.
“Good nap?” he asked, then jerked his head at the monitor and whispered, “Look at your girl.”
Hope flared so fast and so great that I nearly choked on it as I tried to understand what I was seeing.
Higher numbers.
All of them.
“You know the drill,” the nurse said once the door had shut behind Thatch.
I numbly slid from the bed and dropped to my knees, clinging to Mallory’s hand like a lifeline as the nurse came up on the other side of the bed with the machine to get the baby’s heartbeat.
“Well, would you look at that?” she murmured, wonder in her voice as she gave a quick glance at Mallory’s monitor. “I’m not one to give false hope—we’re still deep in the woods, but improvement is improvement. Now, let’s see how your baby is doing.”
Letting my eyelids shut again, I pressed my forehead to mine and Mallory’s joined hands as the nurse searched for the baby’s heartbeat, the same way I had every other time, and mentally recalled the whoosh whoosh whoosh I’d memorized over the night and morning.
A sound I was sure I’d hear with perfect clarity for years to come in a haunting, hopeful way.
And then it was there. That whooshing sound that filled my destroyed soul in an inexplicable way and had the corners of my mouth tugging up before I ever looked at the nurse’s little monitor, because I knew.