Page 108 of King of the Cage

“I have to get a doctor to check on you.”

“In a minute,” I told her firmly and used my grip on her hand to pull her closer. It was like winding in a wriggling fish. “I have to kiss my wife first.”

“Bran! You’re too injured to be hauling me around. Seriously, if you open your stitches, I’ll be really mad.”

“Kiss me then, selkie, and I promise not to move,” I told her and stopped reeling her in.

She gave a long-suffering sigh and scooted closer.

“Relax back,” she ordered, jerking her head toward the pillow behind me.

“As you wish, wee one.” I grunted, carefully lowering myself back to the bed.

She leaned forward and hesitantly cupped my cheeks.

“You were there,” I murmured, the sudden warmth of her hands on my face reminding me. Sudden warmth after cold, and the sound of humming. “I remember.”

“Don’t remember too much. Some days are better forgotten,” she said softly and leaned in. Cupping my face, she pressed a kiss to my lips. It was soft, and chaste, and utterly devastating.

“I don’t want to forget a second of you, selkie, even if it hurts,” I admitted, my lips brushing hers before she kissed me again.

When she pulled back, her gaze dropped to my chest. My hospital gown was open, wires snaking out. Giada touched the black lines of my ogham tattoo, over my heart.

“It’s about your mom, isn’t it? A lament,” she murmured.

I nodded. “You have no idea the pain of being forgotten, selkie. Yes, this ink is for her. My living elegy for the woman I knew… but who no longer knows me.”

She stared up at me. There was a lot in that look that I was sure I didn’t deserve, but was going to damn well hold on to.

“Well, for what it’s worth, I promise I’ll never forget you, Bran O’Connor.”

I gave her a crooked grin. “Oh, Giada, do you really think I’d let you?”

31

GIADA

Bran was in the hospital for nearly a week. I stayed in his studio above the pub and went to The Selkie’s Rest every night to eat.

I tried to sit alone in the apartment the first night, but a procession of people had tromped upstairs to ask me to come down. Finally, I’d given in, realizing that it was easier to show my face instead of having half of Hell’s Kitchen come check on me.

I was staying at Bran’s because it was closer to the hospital, and I went there every day. Or that was what I told myself, anyway.

Honestly, I didn’t know.

Something had happened to me. I wasn’t the same as I’d been the week before, and next week, I knew I might be different again. After a lifetime of being emotionally stunted, I was finally changing.

I didn’t hear from The Enclave beyond messages and flowers from Regina, which I scanned for listening devices and then chucked out. Apparently, they understood that when you lashedsomeone’s back until it opened, they needed time to heal and not just physically. They probably had plenty of experience with this kind of thing.

The day Bran came home, the studio was filled to the brim with O’Connors. It was a lot. Thankfully, as an Italian, I was pretty accustomed to family having loud conversations that sounded more like arguments.

Keiran and Declan brought him back from the hospital, and I waited at the apartment with Quinn and Aoife.

He walked in stiffly, leaning on a crutch, and glanced around. His eyes found mine, and his shoulders dropped their tension, and he grinned.

“I told you she was still here,” Doc muttered, clearly having had more than his fill of his argumentative patient.

Bran’s family fussed around him and fed him, and the studio was full of chatter and laughter.

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