Page 28 of Savage Heart

Odin checked his watch and grunted. “Benson’ll be here soon.”

“You want me to talk to him…but I’m assuming I need to tell the LVPD something different,” Liz realized despite her brain slowly…slowlylosing the will to brain.

Odin nodded but Trouble remained silently brooding near the door. “You can tell him everything except who did it and why. Keep it vague. No need to get the messy hands of the cops all up in our shit, especially since the Bratva probably have a few of them on payroll.”

Suddenly exhausted beyond all measure, Liz closed her eyes. She could hear Odin and Trouble talking, trying to ask her more questions, but she just…couldn’t…think….

Finally, the lights went out, and she crashed.

Trouble stared at the woman sleeping in the hospital bed.

He was angry, so fucking angry…but he was also weary. So fucking tired. Tired of thinking of her, of wanting her, of wishing he’d never pushed her away. But he’d done it for her—it had all beenfor her. He’d admit that how he’d pushed her away was ugly, but he couldn’t think of anything else he could do to make her leave. And shehadto leave, her future wasn’t with him. If she’d stayed with him, she’d have lived a life of mediocrity, a life that was less than she deserved. With him, she’d have never reached her full potential, and Liz Simpson was a brilliant, beautiful, strong woman. She’d deserved the chance to become all that she had dreamed of being, and he would have just held her back. He’d been a war-hardened, twenty-eight-year-old asshole, who’d been raised by the king of assholes—what could he have offered a kind, sweet, smart twenty-one-year-old with her whole life ahead of her?

Nothing but disappointment.

That didn’t stop the regrets, though. Nor the rage. He was angry at himself for being such a thoughtless piece of shit tenyears ago, and he was angry atherfor keeping such a devastating secret from him.

Erika.

He was afather.

He had adaughter. A little girl. Half Liz, half him—but she had his eyes and his hair. It was like looking into a tiny, feminine mirror. He couldn’t say how long he stared at the pictures of her Skathi that Fae had texted him of her “sleepover” with them. Hours. He’d stared for hours, taking in every atom of her features, memorizing them, soaking them into his marrow. He’d never met her officially, but she was as much a part of him as his own heart and soul.

And Liz never planned to tell him about her. If those Russian bastards hadn’t beat the shit out of her, he never would have known about his own daughter.

Checking the time on his cell, he noticed it was only ten minutes after the last time he’d checked. How long would Liz be out? Understandably, with the head injury, the pain meds, and the exhaustion from healing, she’d probably be in and out for a few days. Could he wait a few days to ask her about Erika?

Yes. After what she went through in her own home, she needed that time to rest and heal, but that didn’t bank the bitterness and anxiety raging through him. Nor the pulsing fear.

She could have died….He could have lost her.

And that thought made his mouth dry and his stomach twist. No, she was no longer his, but…the world without her in it was a world where he wasn’t whole.

She was yours once, asshole….

Shit. Now was not the time to think about that. About what he gave up, and how he hurt her, and—honestly—how hekepthurting her. He wasn’t a fucking idiot; he knew that every time she came around the clubhouse and he made a point of making a scene with Amelia, it was like slapping Liz in the face. And itdidn’t help that Amelia felt she had the right to be a bitch to Liz just because Amelia was his regular piece at the club. She was getting clingy, thinking she was working up to owning his ass and wearing his property patch. The thought of making Amelia his ol’ lady never crossed his mind—honestly, taking an ol’ lady was about as probable as him striking oil by stubbing his toe on a rock. For years, he’d been adamant that uncomplicated fucks were all he was capable of…then he’d remember Liz. He remembered how it felt to care for someone, to careaboutsomeone. He remembered how sex with her was the most mind-bending, heart-stopping pleasure he’d ever felt—how it was lovemaking and not just rutting. He remembered how it felt to lie beside her, holding her, and watching her sleep…as he did now. He remembered…he’dhadan ol’ lady, and he’d lost her. No…he’d tossed her away.

In the dark of the night, when he lay awake in his bed, thinking on life, all the bullshit that came with it, and what his future might look like, Amelia wasn’t the woman he saw on the back of his bike, wearing his patch…and his ring.

The antiseptic scent and the bad lighting disappeared around him as a memory, haunting and stark, ripped him from the present and dropped him into the past.

He sighed as the groan of the A/C compressor turning on filled the room, and the cool air it spit out drifted over his sweat slick skin. He lay in the bed, his woman beside him, naked, her skin as sweaty as his—which it usually was after a long, savage bout of fucking.

Liz Simpson. He’d met her at Tipped three months ago, and it only took him a split second to know she was different. He’d been at that bar, ready to burn the night away with booze and barflies, but then a curvy goddess with long blonde hair in a messy top knot, bright blue eyes, and an easy smile slammed into him on his way to the table. He’d grabbed her arms tosteady her. She looked up at him, he looked down at her, and the world tilted on its axis. In that moment, he knew he had to have her.

Smiling down at her now, in their bed, she returned his smile with one of her own. It was sleepy, satiated.

She hummed, sliding her hand over his bare chest, making goosebumps rise in its wake.

“I love you, you know that?” she murmured.

He knew that. She’d said it for the first time a few weeks ago. It had been as surprising and terrifying then as it was now. At first, it had been difficult to believe, but then he considered all that she hadn’t said…the way she looked at him, touched him, the way she smiled at him when she saw him, how her heart shined through her eyes. He knew she’d had a hard life, a lonely one, but she’d given him nothing but the best of her, the most of everything she did and said. Liz loved him, and he saw it every day. It humbled the shit out of him.

He leaned over and nuzzled her neck, inhaling the scent of sweat and orange blossoms.

“I know, baby…” he drawled, his voice rough from their fucking. He sighed, throwing his head back onto the pillow and closing his eyes. “And I wish…I wish I could say it back….”

She sat up and pressed a soft, gentle kiss against his jaw. “Why can’t you?” she asked, a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

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