Page 60 of Things We Burn

I could.

He must’ve had a head injury.

I swallowed the butterflies in my throat and steadied myself as the world had gone and tilted since he uttered that sentence.

“If that’s true, you won’t say another word, and you’ll let these nice people take care of you,” I ordered stiffly.

If Kane was upset about me not returning the words, he didn’t show it on his face. He just smiled lazily. “Yes, Chef,” he replied dutifully.

I sagged as the paramedics took this as permission, instantly getting to work on him. Although I rode in the ambulance, I opted to do so in the front. There was no room for me back there. Not with all the equipment, the people trying to help Kane and with those three words.

I was done for.

Kane was alive. For now.

But I feared our relationship was terminal.

Eleven

Considering how it had looked,Kane got off easy. A lot of bruises, a broken wrist and a ruptured spleen were what he had to show for crashing into the ground on a motorcycle flying sixty feet in the air.

I’d vocalized my shock at his injuries and lack of life-threatening ones. Kane had shrugged. “What can I say? I know how to crash, babe.”

It terrified me how blasé he was about death, his proximity to it.

It terrified me and shook at drawers I’d closed, locked and forgotten about inside myself.

The urge to run from him, from this, was tempting. Especially with the ‘I love you’ hanging in the air. My relationships ran their course far before such things could be uttered. I made sure of that.

We were in a private room at Mt Sinai. The room didn’t look so much like a hospital room but a suite at a hotel. I guessed that was what power and money and fame got you. Before this happened, I ranted on about the inadequacy of care in this country, but as horrible as it made me, I was grateful for thetreatment Kane was receiving. That Kane had the best doctors in the country making sure they didn’t miss anything. Making sure he didn’t die.

I slept there.

Not on the lush pullout bed across the room. No, Kane had demanded I curl up in the —admittedly bigger than regular—hospital bed with him. I’d fought him on it at first, but he’d simply said if I didn’t, he’d get up and go to the pullout. It wasn’t a bluff.

I wasn’t exactly hard to convince.

I wanted to be close to him. Feel his skin, smell him, have his heart beating against my cheek.

Which is how we went to sleep, until Brax woke us up in the morning with the clearing of his throat.

Seeing the man at all, let alone first thing while feeling emotionally hungover, was not my favorite thing to do in the morning.

I tried my best to plaster on a façade for Kane’s sake.

It helped that Knox was at his side. His eyes were on the two of us. He wasn’t smiling, but the edges of his lips were almost turned upward. An almost-smile.

The warm look I gave him was not forced.

“Don’t get enough attention as it is, brother?” Knox asked dryly.

Kane leaned over to kiss my head before replying. I self-consciously tried to sit up, feeling uncomfortable, cuddling in bed with him with the two men standing over us.

Despite his injuries, Kane’s grasp was firm, so I couldn’t move unless I wanted to fight him and risk hurting him. So I relaxed back.

“Maybe I just wanted the good drugs without the judgment,” he teased. “And to get Chef to try out her hands at being mynurse.” There was a sexual innuendo that I didn’t think I would have a carnal response to, but damn, I did.

I didn’t miss the way Brax rolled his eyes.

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