Chapter 46
After the night air, the snow and the moonlight, the emergency room hit Jen hard—harsh lights, shoes squeaking on linoleum, phones ringing. Someone had wrapped a hospital blanket around her shoulders, the weight of it a soft comfort.
A nurse shone a penlight into her eyes. “Follow my finger.”
Jen followed. Left. Right. Up. Her left eye barely tracked, the eye swollen to a slit.
Her fingers were thawing, and the pain was extraordinary—a deep, prickling burn that started in her nail beds and radiated outward. Beneath the temporary dressings, her torn nails pulsed. Her cheek burned where Akilov had hit her, every nerve protesting.
The antiseptic smell turned her stomach. Or maybe that was the adrenaline crash. Her body was doing strange things—shivering when she wasn’t cold, going still when she should have been shaking—hollowed out and overfull at the same time.
Since the ambulance, Wyatt had refused to leave her.
He sat beside her bed now, still and watchful.
His broken hand rested on his thigh, blotched purple, the knuckles distorted in a way that made her wince every time she looked at it.
A nurse had tried to assess it twice. He’d waved her off without ever taking his eyes off Jen.
“Everything seems okay. Just cuts and bruises. You’re going to look awful for two weeks and feel sore for longer. Your face will heal just fine.”
The nurse cleaned the split skin on her cheek before applying butterfly strips. The relief was absurd—she’d been dragged by her hair, shot at, backhanded across the face, and thrown into the snow, and some vain part of her was relieved she wouldn’t have a scar.
Wyatt watched everything as the nurse worked. His good hand rested on her knee, heavy through the hospital blanket.
“Wyatt. Your hand.”
“After.”
Jen blew out a breath. “It’s broken.”
He looked at her now. “It’ll still be broken in ten minutes.”
The nurse caught her eye from the other side of the bed. Her eyes widened, a smile lifting one corner.
Her Wyatt.
The words came without permission—and didn’t leave.
Stubborn, battered, immovable.
But something settled into place inside her—into a space she hadn’t known was empty until him. This was how he loved. Not in words, but in the stubborn, immovable certainty of putting her first. Even when the cost showed in the swelling of his hand.
She wouldn’t fight him on it. Not tonight.
But someday she was going to make sure that love came back to him, too. Not as a debt but as a choice.
“Everyone still alive?” Ryder appeared in the gap in the curtain, still in his vest.
His gaze switched from Jen’s face to Wyatt’s hand. “Is that—”
“Ryder.” Wyatt arched an eyebrow.
Ryder’s grin widened. “Your Volvo got shot.”
Silence.
“Straight through the rear quarter panel. Total tragedy.” He shook his head slowly, his expression caught between grief and delight. “It’s the most interesting thing that car has ever done. At least now it has a war story.”
Jen laughed.
The sound surprised her. It hurt her face—a sharp pull across her bruised cheek—but it came up from somewhere deep and unexpected. The first laugh since Sophie’s kitchen.
A lifetime ago.
The curtain shifted as the nurse stepped out with her tray of swabs. Caleb slipped in behind Ryder, dragging a chair with him. He swung it around and dropped into it backwards, arms folded across the back.
“Do join us,” Wyatt said dryly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Plenty of space.”
Caleb ignored him. “Sarah’s on her way. She’ll have an update.”
He turned to Wyatt. “You good?”
Wyatt nodded.
Caleb’s eyes dropped to the hand. “Are you going to let someone look at that?”
“When they’re done with Jen.”
Caleb rolled his eyes.
“Is he always like this?” Jen asked.
“He is.” Ryder grimaced. “Welcome to the family.” He pushed off the wall. “I’ve gotta call Ivy. Let her know everything’s okay before she organizes a search party.”
Wyatt squeezed Jen’s knee.
Her eyes stung, but she blinked it away.
This was the world he’d opened for her. The closed book had let her into every page, and the pages were full of people who showed up armed and stayed until morning.
Ryder stepped aside as their sister strode through the curtain.
“I hope you are behaving yourself.” Sarah fired Ryder a look.
She crossed straight to Jen and wrapped her in a careful hug.
“So glad you’re okay,” she murmured against her hair.
When she released her, she moved to Wyatt and hugged him hard.
“And you.” She stepped back, eyes narrowing. “I distinctly remember telling you not to engage alone.”
Wyatt shrugged.
Sarah sniffed. “Stubborn idiot.”
She pulled up a chair.
“I’ll need statements from both of you,” she said, professional again. “But it can wait until Wyatt’s hand is dealt with.” She glanced at him. “Which is going to be soon.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Your hand looks like a boxing glove.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Akilov is in surgery. He’s cuffed to the operating table with two armed guards scrubbed in. His team is in custody or in the morgue.”
Wyatt grunted.
“I think you can take five minutes to get your hand seen to. Jen is safe.” Sarah pinned her brother with a stare.
Matter-of-fact, but he didn’t move.
“Akilov’s not going anywhere, Wyatt.” Sarah stood and looked at her brother with the expression of a woman who had exhausted her professional patience approximately three minutes ago. “Get your hand looked at, or I’m calling Mom.”
Wyatt finally pushed to his feet and hesitated as if stepping away from Jen required actual effort.
Caleb snorted. “Man survives a tactical assault, but the threat of his mother gets him moving.”
Wyatt cuffed him lightly on the ear as he limped past.
Jen smiled.
It hurt.
She didn’t care.
Sophie and Ty arrived minutes later, as if Sarah’s threat had summoned them from the ether. Ty came through the curtain first. His gaze found Jen, and something fierce and protective crossed his face—the same expression she’d seen on his son. “You’re okay?”
“I’m okay.”
He nodded once. “Where’s Wyatt?”
“Getting his hand sorted,” Caleb said. “Finally.”
“I’ll go check on him.” Ty kissed Sophie on the forehead and left to find his son.
Sophie sat on the edge of the bed. She smoothed Jen’s hair back from her forehead gently, the way you touch something precious that’s been hurt. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Jen pressed her lips together hard and breathed through her nose so she wouldn’t fall apart. Sophie just sat there, holding her bandaged hand, rubbing her thumb over the gauze, letting the silence do what words couldn’t.
Another hour passed before Wyatt returned. By then everyone else had gone, and the hospital had settled back into its late-night rhythm.
The curtain rattled.
Her breath caught.
The adrenaline faded. What she felt for him didn’t.
His hand was splinted and wrapped, white bandaging running from his knuckles to his forearm, the splint holding his fingers rigid.
His face was gray. Dried blood crusted his shirt, and a fresh bruise was darkening along his jaw.
The mattress dipped under his weight. There was a tremor in his good hand, exhaustion carved into his face, but his eyes still roamed over her, even now. Even here. Even with the danger cuffed to a hospital bed three floors above them.
“You okay?” he said.
She almost laughed or cried, landed somewhere in the middle, and reached for him instead.
His splinted hand rested in his lap, useless and swollen, and she covered it gently with hers because she wanted to hold all of him, even the broken parts.
Especially the broken parts.
Wyatt leaned forward until his forehead rested against hers. The same way he’d held her thirty feet underwater and in the lifeboat. But this time there was nothing between them and nothing chasing them.
His eyes closed, and his arms came around her—carefully, as if she might shatter. His shoulders dropped, and his breath left him in a long, unsteady exhale that carried the last of whatever he’d been holding since he closed the bathroom door.
This time there was no snow.
No moonlight or blood on the ground. No sirens coming.
Just warmth. The scratch of hospital sheets. The hum of fluorescent lights.
His heartbeat against her chest, steady and sure.
Tomorrow they would figure the rest out.
Together.