Page 129 of Lesson In Forgiveness

“I did. I was dead for… well, almost too long.” She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch. “Jasper didn’t want to tell you until they knew for sure that the whole breathing and beating heart thing was permanent. By the time I was stable, you were gone.”

Her voice was like music. For months he’d heard it in his head but as the days went past, it started to fade. The excessive alcohol hadn’t helped either, he supposed. Hearing it again, watching her lips form words and her voice just flow over him… it was surreal.

“How…”

She hooked a finger into the high neckline of the dress and dragged the stretchy material down to reveal a scar sitting just above her left breast. The skin was puckered, pink and shiny. “I don’t remember a lot. McKee said my heart was on its last few beats when he got to me. I’d lost a huge percentage of my blood volume; the bullets ripped me up pretty good. They plugged up the holes, pumped bag after bag of fluid into me, and I still flatlined on them twice.”

Grit looked down, imagining his boots planted in the pool of blood she’d left on the floor. The blood that poured from the wounds in her body, through the fabric he’d used to try and stop it, over his hands.

“They got me to a hospital in Denver. I spent a few days in the ICU, doped up on morphine and strapped down because I kept trying to garotte the nurses with my IV line.” She smiled ruefully. “How, I don’t know because garroting is an artform which requires two hands, and I only had one.”

Ah, that was definitely her wit. He dropped his gaze to her wrist when she lifted it, showing off another scar, just as pink. Frowning, he remembered her left arm being strapped up in a makeshift sling; it just hadn’t been high on his list of priorities when she’d been bleeding out on the floor.

Fuck, he was a mess. His entire being was desperate to wrap itself around her, drag her against him and never let fucking go. Trembling with the urge to do just that, he let his hand fall away.

She’d been alive the entire time he’d been grieving. Four excruciatingly long months of hell, of running away from his life to come to terms with losing her, and she’d been alive the whole fucking time.

“Excuse me,” he said, stepping back.

The bubble around them shattered, sending him stumbling into the chaos of the party still going on all around them. The music had changed into a more upbeat rhythm, and people were dancing, laughing, having the time of their lives while his crumbled into dust.

Before he realized what he was doing, his feet were heading for the door.

His friends knew all along she was alive.

His friends knew.

Avoiding eye contact, he bulled through the crowd, grateful those friends were no longer hanging around the doors. He shoved through, forcing his lungs to work as he stepped out into the crisp, clean air.

He’d run, he reminded himself. Shut himself off from everyone who cared about him, who’d wanted to help, and when the pain became too much, he hadn’t gone to them even though they would’ve supported him. Instead he’d taken himself off across the country, then Europe, in an effort to escape.

If he’d stayed, if he’d let them be a part of his mourning, he wouldn’t have needed to grieve at all.

What a clusterfuck.

*

Tabitha

As far as coming back from the dead went, she supposed it could’ve been worse.

Four months of separation hadn’t quelled her feelings for him—on the contrary, every day he hadn’t been with her, she’d suffered. Not just physically, although recovering from three nasty bullet wounds and a shattered wrist was no picnic; emotionally, she was drained.

Tabitha watched him stride away, almost unsteady on his feet. He was leaner, his solid frame whittled down by pain, and there were new lines scoring his face. She liked the fullness of his beard—she’d been right about that, after all.

Did she stay here and wait for him to come back?

Should she follow him?

She imagined he was feeling betrayed. In his position, she sure would.

Jasper and Anarchy weren’t to blame, nor was Atticus. They’d made the choice not to tell Grit about her survival for the first week because, well, in her usual style, she hadn’t made things easy.

She hadn’t lied when she told Grit she was ready to die. At that moment, with Donaghue dead and her own body on the precipice, it felt like the right time to go, and it had reflected on her recovery. She’d given the medical team a run for their money, continually drifting back toward the light.

Ten days after the shooting, with too many surgeries to count under her belt, her subconscious finally made an effort to come back to the world and stay.

By that point, Grit was unreachable. No one had been able to reach him—his phone was no longer in service, his emails went unread. Elias tried to access his hotel room without success, and the team Atticus sent to Denver to retrieve him hadn’t found hide nor hair of him.

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