Chapter Twelve #3
The cut on her lip opens against my mouth, and the taste of copper nearly takes me back to the edge.
I cup her face with both hands, careful of the bruise blooming along her cheekbone, careful of the split in her mouth, careful because everything in me wants to crush her against me just to prove she is alive.
She makes a broken sound, and I stop instantly.
“No,” she whispers against my mouth. “Stop acting like I’m glass.”
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m alive.”
“Harper.”
“I need to feel alive.”
Those words go through me like a blade. The whole building might be watching, and I don’t care. I care only that Harper’s hands are fisting in my shirt, that she is shaking but still choosing, that her mouth is on mine like she is trying to stitch herself back together with heat and breath and me.
I kiss her again. Deeper but still careful.
My hand slides to the back of her neck, fingers threading into her hair. Her body presses into mine, and I feel every tremor, every breath she drags in because she is alive and furious and mine.
She opens for me, and the kiss turns hungry. Too hungry for a slaughterhouse. Too much for a room with blood on the floor and my enemy screaming behind us. But grief and fear and want don’t wait for clean places. They take what they can get.
My other hand settles at her waist. She leans into it, and a sound leaves her throat that I will remember until I die, and my body answers so hard it hurts.
I pull back before I forget where we are. Before I do exactly what Reaper wanted and become nothing but instinct.
Harper’s eyes are dark and wet and furious.
“Later,” I say, voice wrecked.
Her fingers tighten in my shirt. “Do you promise?”
My chest locks. “Yes.”
“Good.” She swallows. “Because I am absolutely not having sex in a slaughterhouse.”
Raven says, “Thank God. I was starting to worry about the aesthetic.”
Harper laughs, but it breaks halfway. I close my eyes for one second, because that sound saves more of me than she knows.
Savage’s voice comes from behind us, low and deliberately neutral. “County’s ready.”
Harper doesn’t move away, and neither do I.
“Good,” she says. “Because I’m going to need stitches.”
My head lifts fast. “Where?”
Her mouth curves faintly despite the blood. “There he is.”
I glare, and she smiles before she leans into me, just enough that I know I’m allowed to hold her. So I do, carefully, like she is breakable even though she has proved, again and again, that she is not.
Raven steps closer, touching Harper’s shoulder. “You did good.”
Harper laughs weakly. “I got kidnapped.”
“And stabbed a man with half a pair of trauma shears.”
“Technically, I sliced him.”
“Don’t undersell yourself. It’s unbecoming.” She gives Harper a withering look that makes my girl smile.
Savage watches Raven with something dark and quiet in his eyes. She looks back at him. “Don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You were thinking it loudly.”
His mouth tightens. “You shouldn’t have come in.”
“And yet, here we all are, enriched by my presence.”
Saint mutters, “That’s one word for it.”
For a second, in the middle of the blood and rust and old death, something almost like family breathes around us. Damaged, armed, and completely unsuitable for greeting cards. But real.
Outside, sirens begin to wail in the distance. Reaper is dragged past us, cursing through blood. He looks at Harper once.
I move before thought. A single step.
He looks away, and Harper’s fingers tighten in my shirt. “Precise, remember?”
I look down at her. Bloodied, bruised, beautiful, furious, and alive.
“I’m trying,” I say.
“I know you are.” And because she knows, because she sees every terrible thing and still stands in my arms by choice, I walk her out of the slaughterhouse and into the harsh wash of headlights.
Not healed or forgiven or even clean but together. And for now, that’s more mercy than a man like me ever thought he’d get.
****
County takes her from me for forty-seven minutes.
Raven sits two chairs down in the waiting room, letting a nurse clean and bandage her arm while she pretends not to wince. Savage stands near the doors, arms crossed, watching both of us like he is one bad update away from tearing the building open with his hands.
Saint brings coffee no one drinks, and Fury gives us an update on Tyler. He’s alive, critical, but alive, and Harper did that. She kept him breathing even after the crash, even through the fear, even after deciding she needed to leave me.
That’s who she is.
The door opens, and I stand as a nurse steps out. “Harper Quinn?”
Raven’s voice follows me as I move. “Try not to loom until after discharge.”
Harper is sitting on the edge of a hospital bed in a small treatment room, lip stitched, cheek bruised, wrists wrapped. Her eyes find mine immediately, and the knot in my chest loosens just enough to hurt.
“You look terrible,” she says.
“So do you.”
“Wow! How romantic of you.” She tries to hide a smile as she gives me hell.
“I’m honest.”
I step closer, stopping before I touch her, and her face softens. “You can come here,” she says.
When I stand between her knees, she tips her head back to look at me. There’s no fear in her eyes now. Just exhaustion, and surprisingly, heat.
“I’m not leaving tonight,” she says. My heart stops. “But I’m also not making forever promises while concussed, stitched, and wearing hospital socks.”
“That sounds fair.”
“But I meant what I said.”
My hand lifts to her jaw, stopping short, and she leans into it before I touch her. “I don’t walk out clean without you.”
My thumb brushes carefully beneath the bruise on her cheek. “You should rest.”
“You should stop telling me what I should do.”
“Probably. But if you took better care of yourself...”
She grips the front of my shirt, pulling me closer and cutting off my words. “I’m serious,” she says. “You promised.”
Heat coils low in my gut. “Harper.”
“Not tonight. I know. I’m bruised, not brainless.”
“Thank God.”
“But later, when there isn’t blood on the floor or a psychopath within stabbing distance, you are going to remind me that my body still belongs to me.” Her eyes darken. “And that I can choose pleasure after terror.”
My hand tightens lightly at her waist. “I can do that.”
“I know.” Her mouth softens. “That’s why I’m asking you.”
I lower my head and kiss her carefully, so carefully. The kiss is slower this time. Less desperate than the slaughterhouse but more dangerous because it feels like a promise neither of us has language for yet.
When I pull back, her fingers stay tangled in my shirt. “Steel?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t disappear.”
“Never.”
Raven’s voice comes from the doorway. “I would make a joke, but this is disturbingly sweet, and I’m very fucking uncomfortable.”
Harper closes her eyes. “I liked you better when you were silent.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“No,” Harper agrees with an exaggerated sigh. “I didn’t.”
Raven steps in, gaze flicking over Harper’s bandages. “Are you okay?”
“Define okay.”
“Alive enough to make bad decisions.”
Harper looks at me, then back at Raven. “Yes.”
Raven nods. “Good. That’s always a good sign.” I look between them, and something settles in my chest I don’t know how to name. Harper has Raven now, and Mama M. She has Milo, and the club, whether she wants to admit it yet or not.
She isn’t alone in my world. Maybe that means I don’t have to be the whole wall. Maybe I can just be the man who stands closest when she asks.
The nurse says Harper can leave once paperwork is done, Savage arranges transport, and Mama M arrives with clothes. Milo calls and threatens to murder everyone, which Raven finds adorable, and Harper keeps hold of my hand through all of it.
When we finally walk out of County, dawn is bleeding pale over Vegas. My bike waits near the curb, as does Savage’s SUV.
I look at Harper. “SUV?”
She glances at the bike, then at me. “Obviously. I’m injured, not trying to become a cautionary pamphlet.”
“Good.”
“But one day,” she says quietly, “I want to ride with you.”
My chest tightens. “One day,” I agree.
She leans into my side, and I wrap an arm around her because she lets me. Because she chooses it. Because she knows what I am and still has not let go.
Raven walks past us toward Savage, shaking her head and muttering, “Men and their bikes.”
Harper laughs softly against my chest. The sound is tired, and I hold her closer, careful of every bruise. Neither of us are healed, forgiven, or clean, but we’re together.
For now, that’s more than enough.