EIGHTEEN
Rivers hadn’t slept. Didn’t plan to, until he saw her eyes open.
The hospital chair had left a permanent dent in his spine, but he would have sat there for a year if it meant she woke up.
Caryssa’s face was pale against the stark white sheets, her hair tumbling across the pillow, and the bandage over her shoulder where the bullet passed through was stark white too, though a small bloom of blood already soaked through the gauze.
He counted her heartbeats on the monitor. Three thousand two hundred and something, and he still wasn’t done counting.
She stirred with a soft groan, eyelids fluttering against the harsh light, and he was on his feet and at her bedside in a heartbeat.
“Hey.” His voice wavered. “Hey, Ryss. I’m here.”
Her gaze fixed on his chest before flicking up to his face, at first unfocused and then sharpening. She ran her tongue over her dry bottom lip. “Did you get him?” she rasped. “The fireman. The one who shot me.”
Of course that was her first question.
Not am I okay, not what happened. Her mind went straight to the case, even half-conscious with a bullet wound in her shoulder.
Christ. He couldn’t believe she’d been shot. As if the shooter knew she was wearing body armor, he aimed for her high shoulder and caused enough damage to require weeks of healing time.
Reid also didn’t want to answer her.
He searched her beautiful eyes, still hazy from anesthesia. “He got away. Dumped the fire gear in the woods about a quarter mile out. No trace of blood from where I shot him. He must have been wearing body armor too. We sent everything off for DNA.”
“Good.” She let her head fall back against the pillow, eyes slipping shut again.
His heart squeezed at the sight of her—pale, bandaged, but alive.
He didn’t know if he’d ever shake the vision of her cold and still on the gravel after he got her out of that building.
All of his skills in field medicine couldn’t have saved her if she had been worse, and that tore him up every time he thought about it.
He crouched beside the bed and took her hand. Bringing it to his lips, he let his eyes slip shut with a silent prayer of thanks that she was alive. She made a small noise, and he looked up into her eyes.
“Am I allowed to have water?” she croaked.
He stood and reached for the cup on the rolling table. He held the straw to her lips, and she drew a sip into her mouth.
“Thank you.” Her lips curved at the edges, leaving his heart soaring with hope that she would be back to her old self very, very soon.
If not the Ryss he’d known way back when…at least the healthy version of who she’d become. And he loved that woman with a ferocity that could bring him to his knees.
He dragged the chair close to the bed and enveloped her hand in both of his. “You needed surgery.”
She nodded.
“Nothing is permanently damaged. You’re going to be all right, Ryss.” He bent to brush his lips over her knuckles again.
“I’m sure you took care of me out there.”
He had to swallow hard before speaking. “I’ll always take care of you, baby.”
Her eyes softened with emotion. Before he could pour out everything he’d been rolling around his head during these dark hours, a short rap came on the door.
It cracked open and a bouquet of flowers appeared before the man carrying them. Rome came forward awkwardly and set the bouquet on the table in front of Caryssa. “You’re looking better than I saw you last.” His voice was gruff.
She smiled up at him. “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”
“Got them at the gas station.”
She issued a small laugh.
Rivers watched Rome shift awkwardly beside the table. He’d told the team more than once that not everyone outside Blackout was the enemy. That Caryssa could be trusted.
Maybe they were finally starting to believe him.
Next Rorke entered with O behind him. He leaned against the far wall, arms folded, and updated her on the DNA processing timeline in his own version of a hospital gift.
“I appreciate you telling me.”
“I’m glad to see you’re doing better. You scared ten years off all of our lives.”
Rivers looked at Rorke. The man who was so typically stiff and stoic had a new fissure running through him that Rivers had never seen before.
He traded a look with Rome, whose brow winged upward at the corner as he registered the same change in their brother-in-arms.
O perched at the foot of her bed, waiting his turn.
Caryssa looked straight at him. “Onyx.”
His mouth quirked. “C’mon. Do I look like an Onyx to you?”
She laughed, a light sound that made them all smile and Rivers felt his shoulders relax a bit.
Through their visit, Rivers stayed rooted at her bedside, one hand covering hers, aware of all the little beeping noises of her vitals, her pallor and whether she was taking deep enough breaths after surgery.
Cannon entered the room last. He stood at the foot of her bed, studying her with the same assessing look he’d given Rivers after he came out of surgery. “How you feeling, Lane?”
“Like I got shot and dragged through a burning building.” A ghost of her usual dry humor was a ray of light beaming through the clouds. “I don’t recommend it.” She shifted a little, and Rivers hurried to fluff her pillow.
Cannon’s mouth twitched before it settled into a more serious line. “Doyle’s been calling. Wants to know when we’re sending you back to DC.”
All eyes fixed on Cannon as everyone waited for him to make the call.
Rivers did it for him. “She’s not leaving.”
Cannon’s stare lifted to him, unreadable for a long beat. Then he gave a single, slow nod—no argument, no pushback, just acceptance, as if he’d been waiting for this since the day she entered Sierra base.
“I’ll handle Doyle.” He glanced at Caryssa. “Rest up, Lane.”
He was gone a moment later and the rest of the visitors filtered out with him, murmuring well-wishes until the door clicked shut and Caryssa and Rivers were finally alone.
Silence settled between them, and he scanned her again for signs of distress but only saw the small bruises of fatigue beneath her beautiful eyes. And in the green and gold and amber depths—worry.
He moved to sit gently on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle her as he gathered her against his chest. God, feeling her in his arms left his insides shaking.
He was so damn glad she was okay. He hadn’t let himself think of the worst, of what could have happened in the chaos between the inferno and the gunfire and the van flying through the night to the hospital. He couldn’t imagine a world where she wasn’t in it anymore.
He’d lived without her, but just knowing she was out there somewhere, living a life he didn’t get to be part of, had been enough to keep going for six years. Losing her entirely wasn’t an outcome he could have borne.
And he knew it with a force that scared him.
“What if Doyle makes me go?” Her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
“You can hide in my bed.” He said it lightly, a joke wrapped around a seed of dead seriousness.
A small, surprised laugh burst against his chest.
“Reid.”
“I’m serious.” He pulled back enough to look at her and cradled her face with so much tenderness that he had to swallow thickly again. “I’m not letting you leave, Ryss. I just got you back. And I can’t lose you twice in one lifetime.”
Her eyes were bright, swimming with tears, and she didn’t look away. “I don’t know how this works. I don’t know what a life looks like. Do I stay in the FBI? Split my time between here and DC?”
He traced his thumb along her cheekbone. “We’ll figure it all out when it’s time. Right now, your only job is to heal.” He leaned in and kissed her lips in a soft sweep. “I don’t care about the logistics—only that you’re with me. Forever.”
Silent tears tracked down her cheeks, and he wiped one away with his thumb.
“I love you.” He said it plain, no more circling, no more swallowing it back for fear of what it cost either of them to hear.
“I’ve loved you every single day since the moment I met you.
Even the ones where I convinced myself I’d made peace with losing you.
I never made peace with it. I just learned to survive without saying it out loud.
” His voice grew hoarse. “I’m done surviving without you.
I love you, Caryssa Lane, and I’m not letting you walk out of my life again. ”
She issued a broken sound, half sob, half laugh, and gripped the front of his shirt, refusing to let him slip away either.
“I love you too. God, Reid. I never stopped. I built an entire life around not loving anyone else because some part of me always knew it was still you. It was always going to be you.”
He cupped her face tenderly and kissed her, careful with her fragile body while pouring years apart into the press of his lips. She kissed him back, slipping her hand upward from where it was balled in his shirt to cup his jaw.
His heart soared. This was it. Their forever was within his grasp, and he was going to hold on tight with both hands and never let go.
When they finally broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers. “Stay.” The single word vibrated with the bare truth of what came next between them.
“Yes.” Her voice wavered, but her gaze was steady on his. “Yes. I’m staying.”
* * * * *
Caryssa had survived a bullet and a burning building. Watching grown men argue over curtain rod placement made her stitches hurt from laughing too hard.
She gathered with a few of Sierra team in the corridor where they’d congregated to marvel at the new addition to the base—a large painting of a landscape with curtain panels hanging around it.
The image of a mountain was blanketed in wildflowers, the snowcap long since melted in a view Caryssa imagined the world outside these walls resembled in summer.
It was her first day back after three days in the hospital. She kept forgetting that her arm was strapped into a sling, and attempted to gesture to the new art installment on the wall.