Page 148 of Price of Angels

Holly smiled. She couldn’t remember a time when she’d smiled so much. Stuck in the hospital with a painful line of stitches crawling down her belly, eating Jell-O and having to give bowel movement reports to the nurse, and yet she couldn’t stop grinning.

The Lean Dogs had been wonderful.

Ava came to visit every day, bearing more flowers and chocolates and paperback books, gifts addressed from the other old ladies and their spouses. Mercy had popped in a time or two to say hi, when he’d brought Ava. And Uncle Wynn had thumped in on his crutches every chance he could, chatting with her about how muddy the farm was as the snow melted, how Delilah’s pregnancy was progressing, how he’d gotten an extraordinary amount of milk from Daisy the cow that morning.

There was no equal to the force of Michael’s care for her. He made her feel as no one ever had. But with his club family, she felt human. Like a regular person. She almost felt like she had friends.

“Those are from Jackie,” Ava said, pointing to the lilies. “You haven’t met her yet.”

“They’re real pretty,” Wynn said.

“Whose old lady is Jackie?” Holly asked.

Ava made a face. “Collier. He’s…well, he’s incarcerated right now.”

“Oh.”

“And Jackie seems to think…well, I wish she’d come around more, so we could show her that she’s not been abandoned. She’s family, whether he’s inside or out.”

How nice, Holly thought, and for the first time in her life, she knew there was something she wanted to be a part of. A family. Yes, they were a family, even if they were a little more dysfunctional than most. And without one of her own, Holly wanted desperately to join.

She prayed Michael wanted it too.

“The girl talk drive you out?”

Bleary-eyed, so tired he was weaving down the hall like a drunk, Michael didn’t see Mercy until he was almost on top of the man. Running into him would have been about as fun as running into a closed door. People just shouldn’t be that big, he thought sourly. It wasn’t decent.

“Huh?” He tilted his head back, glancing up at Mercy’s alert, smiling face, his bright brown eyes alight with good humor.

“Holly and Ava. Talking. Girl talk.” He seemed to be enjoying Michael’s confusion too much.

It finally clicked into place, slow tumbling of the locks in his mind. “Oh. No. I was gonna go get Holly something to eat.”

Mercy snorted. “She’s not eating, huh?”

“It’s pissing me off.”

He laughed. “You might as well get over it, man. She’s not gonna eat till she gets home. She’s about ready to be released anyway, right?”

“Tomorrow, the doctor says.” Giving up pretension, Michael leaned sideways against the wall, let it brace his shoulder.

“That’s a good thing,” Mercy said, clearly reading the concerned notch between his brows.

It was, because it meant she was out of the woods. The doctor had said she’d make a full recovery. That the repairs were holding, she was free of infection, and that she’d be able to have children in the future. Children: that brought the reality of what was happening to the forefront. Holly was a free woman. Free of her family, free of the bargain she’d tried to make with him. Free to go and do whatever she wanted. She could start a whole new life. She could find some happy, smiling boy her own age, get married, have babies, leave behind every death-tainted detail of the Lean Dogs MC.

She had a shot at normal now. And even if she didn’t know it about herself yet, she had the strength to put the past behind her and walk out from beneath the shadows of memory.

“Did you fall asleep?” Mercy asked, jerking him back to the moment at hand.

Too tired to check himself, he blurted, “I don’t know what she’s going to want when she gets home.”

“What?”

“Her dragons are dead,” he said quietly. “And I think…I think if she wants to move on, and leave all of this behind, then I have to let her go.” That would be the noble thing to do. That’s what a true archangel would do.

Mercy sighed noisily. “Man…” He shook his head. “Can I give you a piece of advice? One fucked-up whackjob to another? We don’t get a whole lot of good things handed to us in this life. When a very beautiful girl is brave enough to actually want to stick around, you don’t let her go.”

Michael lifted his brows.