Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
CLOVER
Four hours later, I’m standing outside Savvy’s hospital room, attempting to ground myself so I don’t walk in a complete and utter mess, but the usual tactics are failing me.
Hospitals smell like antiseptic and fear. The fluorescent lights are too bright. Too many people in too-small spaces. My skin feels like it’s trying to crawl right off my body.
“You don’t have to go in,” Valen says. He’s my shadow these days, and sometimes he’s the only thing that keeps me vertical. Almost as though he’s slowly restoring my confidence, my strength with each innocent touch. “We can come back another time.”
“No.” I unclench my hands. “She asked for me, and I’m here.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t push. Just exists next to me like a wall I can lean on if I need to. “I’m right here.”
If only he knew my body developed Valen-radar early. I feel him in the tank. I know when he’s on the front porch. My skin prickles when he enters a room.
The door opens, and Grey appears—looking exhausted and relieved and devastatingly in love all at once. “She’s ready for you, but you only have five minutes.” His face drops. “She’s still weak, okay? And I’m fucking terrified. She always pushes too hard.”
I nod into Grey’s chest as I hug him.
Valen squeezes my shoulder, then steps aside for me to enter Savvy’s room.
Savvy is so tiny in the hospital bed. Bruised. Bandaged. But her eyes are open and bright and so completely her that I press my hand to my mouth to keep from sobbing.
“Stop staring at me like I’m going to die,” she says, her voice raspy but firm. “I’m fine. I’m going to be fine.”
“You were in a coma,” I manage.
“Details.” She waves a hand weakly in the air. “Now, are you going to tell me who that new bodyguard out there is, or do I have to guess?”
I feel heat rise high on my cheeks. “It’s…Valen.”
“The childhood ghost has come to life,” Savvy says, staring at him through the glass in her door with surprising sharpness for someone who was recently in a coma.
She turns back to me. “Madi filled me in. The packages. The stalker. All of it.” Her expression hardens—this version of her is the person who never let anyone fuck with me, who held my hand when the power went out, who dragged me from my bed when all I wanted to do was lie there.
“Roman confirmed that your ex isn’t Clover’s stalker,” Grey says, frustration weaving around his words.
“Then who?” Savvy asks.
Grey shakes his head. “Later, Sav. Right now, you need to rest.”
“I’ve been resting for weeks, Greyson.”
“Doctor’s orders.” He’s gentle but firm. “You’ve got five minutes, that’s it.”
Savvy huffs, but I know she’s seeing the same dark circles and fear etched in Greyson’s face that I see, and she lets it go. “Fine. But Clover?” She catches my hand. “I’m glad you’re okay.” She eyes Valen with suspicion. “I love you.”
Her lashes flutter closed.
“She’s recovering,” Grey explains.
Leaning in to hug my friend, I say a silent prayer that this is the last hospital bed we’ll see for a while.
We make it back to my house just as the sun is setting, and it’s absolute chaos.
While we were at the hospital, the Harringtons decided to throw an impromptu welcome party on my front lawn.
There’s a grill I don’t own. Folding chairs that aren’t mine. A cooler full of beer. Chief holding court in the middle of it all as if he’s been best friends with these people for years, not hours.
“What,” Valen asks slowly, “is happening?”
“Party!” Chase calls out, flipping burgers at the grill. “We figured since we were all here, we might as well get to know the neighbors.”
The neighbors apparently includes half of Happiness.
“I told them to wait,” Roman says, appearing next to Valen with a beer. “I specifically said wait until Valen gets back before you throw a party on someone else’s lawn.”
“They listen well,” Valen grumbles. “This is such a—”
“Vivian Harrington thing to do,” Roman says solemnly.
It’s then I remember that the first time I met him and Grant, they told me their mother had recently passed away.
“I think I need a drink,” Valen says under his breath.
I think I need to hide in my house and spy from an upstairs window until all these people leave my property. But Madi appears at my elbow, and I know my dreams of escape are over.
“Eat,” she orders, glaring at the group of men in overpriced button-downs while she shoves a plate of food at me. “Then breathe. Then we’ll talk about how there are suddenly a half-dozen Harrington men with too much money and too many smiles camped out on your lawn.”
Elle joins us a moment later with her daughter Keela on her hip.
“This is wild. Chief took over their command center while you were out, and then invited them to stay for dinner, which turned into those brothers snapping their fingers. Before I knew what was happening”—she spreads her arms wide to encompass the entire spectacle—“this all showed up.”
“Chief doesn’t even work for them,” I point out.
“No,” Elle’s grinning. “But he thinks he owns the entire operation.”
We drift to my porch steps and watch the chaos unfold. The Harrington brothers congregate around the grill, arguing about something that involves a lot of hand gestures and what sounds like a debate about proper burger temperature.
But it’s Valen I can’t stop watching. He’s with them, but not quite of them—I recognize that distance. I’ve lived in it for as long as I can remember.
But the distance doesn’t last because his cousins are trying.
I see it every time Chase’s smile slips while looking at Valen.
Every time Grant asks him a direct question.
Every time Roman physically tugs him into their circle or when Sterling gently angles his body toward Valen, silently urging the others to do the same.
They meet him where he is and adapt to bring him into the fold.
It’s what my friends do for me.
“Your guy looks stressed,” Madi observes.
“He’s not my—”
Madi scoffs. In my face.
“He likes order.”
“And he’s currently living in…this,” Elle says. “Must be killing him.”
Biting my lip, I nod. Valen’s still standing slightly apart from the group—not uncomfortable, but monitoring. Like he’s trying to track seventeen conversations while also eyeing the perimeter.
Then Chase says something that catches him off guard, making him laugh—really laugh, with his head thrown back and a hand on his stomach.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him do that.
When we were kids, laughter was always muffled, if it happened at all.
Silent smiles and shoulder bounces were the extent of our joy so I didn’t get punished.
“He’s different with them,” I say quietly.
“That’s family,” Madi says. “They know how to push his buttons because they were the ones to install them.”
Grant throws an arm around Valen’s shoulders.
Roman steals his beer with a ghost of a smirk.
Chase says something that makes Valen shove him away like brothers do.
All the while, Sterling adjusts his glasses while everyone else waits patiently for him to finish pointing out various aspects of the grill.
He’s still Valen. Still serious and careful and methodically organized. But with them, he’s someone else. Someone lighter.
Someone who’s experienced innocent joy.
“He’s been staying close to you,” Madi says. It’s not a question.
“For protection,” I mumble absently, my focus on the family whose stories used to get me through dark nights.
“Do you really believe that’s all it is?” Elle asks. There’s no judgment in her tone, just love and understanding.
“I’m not sure,” I whisper. “The relationship I had with him is now a one-sided love story between two children. He doesn’t remember who we were, and we don’t know each other as adults yet. I’m building on that foundation while he’s just…meeting me, as I am now, with all my…baggage.”
Madi’s hand slips into mine, and Elle rests her head on my shoulder.
It’s exactly what I need.
As though Valen hears me thinking about him, his gaze finds mine in the waning sun. The man might be a mind reader because he nods as if he’s unearthing my secrets.
“I think you both have baggage, Clove,” Elle says next to me while her daughter fights sleep on her shoulder. “Maybe what you’re both waiting for is a suitcase with wheels to hold it all so you can finally move forward.”
“From what Braxton’s told me, the Harringtons are a good family, and they protect their people,” Madi says. She too is staring at the GQ cover spread of bachelors that’s currently playing out before our eyes. “And you’re definitely his people.”
Our eyes meet once again across the lawn. He raises his beer slightly, as though he’s asking if I’m okay.
I nod.
My heart does something stupid and hopeful when he begins to walk in my direction, but Pops intercepts him, and he shoots me an apologetic look over his shoulder while I bite back a laugh.
He smiles, then mouths something I can’t quite make out. But the way his eyes soften, the way they hold mine for a beat too long before returning to Pops…I feel whatever he said in my chest like a promise.
I’m better than okay.
Life isn’t perfect. We still don’t know who’s stalking me. Savvy’s still in the hospital. Shadows of the unknown still loom over everything.
But in this moment, with Wrecks barking at the brothers and Chief telling an increasingly ridiculous story about his days on the force and the smell of burgers on the grill—
Right now, I’m not counting.
I’m simply living.
And that, more than anything else, makes a flicker of defiance flare in my chest because this, right here, is a life worth fighting for.