Page 79 of The Last Dance You Saved
I turned to Noah, acid burning up my esophagus as I said, “Go get my daughter and bring her to me.” I was desperate to hold her, to ensure she was safe and unharmed, but they were both right. If I was the target, going after Fallon might only put her in more danger.
My stomach curled, and my vision spun along with it. I clamped my jaw, fisted my hands, and met Noah’s hesitant expression with a fiery one. “I’m the one who pays your salary, Noah. Go get my daughter and bring her the fuck here.”
At the deadly seriousness in my tone, he whirled around and left.
Sadie’s shoulders eased ever so slightly, and she asked, “Where’s your first aid kit kept?”
“Mudroom. Cupboard next to the washing machine.”
I watched as she traveled out of the room and down the hall. I listened as she banged several doors before finding the right one and came back with the first aid box. She grabbed my hand and shoved me toward the chair she’d been in. The untouched bourbon sat on the side table. I picked it up and tossed it back as she set to work on the wounded arm.
It was nothing, a scrape, but it stung like hell when she poured the disinfectant over it. “I want to kill them. I want to cut off their balls and force them down their throat. For terrifying you. For making you relive that day. For bringing this terror to my daughter’s life.”
The thought of what could have happened to Sadie, to my child, to Lauren, if the shooter had decided to take aim when I’d been standing down by the river, watching the wedding rehearsal, caught my breath and took it away. I felt the color drain from my face, felt the room spin again.
And then Sadie’s hand was on my cheek, a soothing stroke that brought me back to her. “You going into shock, Slick? Wouldn’t have expected a tough, macho guy like you to give in to a sissy feeling like shock.”
I knew why she’d said it. To hit me in the ego and piss me off so I didn’t let the adrenaline leaving get the best of me. She said it to keep me focused on her. But it wasn’t shock that had a tremor running through me. It was agony at what could have happened to her just for being at my side.
In practically one motion, I grabbed her and hauled her onto my lap and planted my mouth on hers. Feeling the heat. Feeling the life. Feeling her instant response.
Her hands surrounded my neck, nails digging in. She leaned into the kiss, adding her own fire and strength to it. She bit my lower lip, and I growled, fisting her hair and slanting our mouths so I could deepen the kiss and slide my tongue inside those honeyed depths. She let me in, echoing every stroke with ones just as forceful, telling me as clear as if she’d said the words that she wasn’t giving me control just now. That I’d have to let her guide this embrace as much as me.
And I did. Because we both needed it. We both needed to find some power after those terrible minutes of having none, when our lives could have disappeared with a single shot piercing mere skin and bone.
Slowly, the intensity eased into something softer, more tender. Gratitude for being alive. Relief that we were both there. I lifted my mouth from hers, grabbed her chin, and put enough space between us that I could meet her eyes.
“You’re going home, Tennessee.”
“On Sunday, Slick.” Her chin jutted out in stubbornness.
“Tomorrow morning. Your ass is on my plane, and my pilot is taking you home.”
“I’m not leaving you or Fallon,” she said.
And the simple fact she’d included my daughter in that statement tore another hole through me larger and more lasting than the damn graze the bullet had caused. Larger and more lasting than any wound I’d ever earned.
Chapter Twenty-six
Sadie
LOVE I GOT LEFT
Performed by Max McKnown
He was an idiot if hethought I’d walk away when he was in danger. He didn’t know anything about me or my Hatley blood if he thought I’d turn away from the person I loved when their life was on the line.
The shots fired at us had triggered a whole slew of ugly inside me. For several horrible seconds, I’d been right back in that moment at the ranch with my desperate fear for Mila squeezing my chest. Right back to watching blood pour from my thigh as my tiny niece ran for her life just as I’d lost consciousness.
It would be so easy to slip into the intense emotions of that day. The terror and agony of not being able to go after her. The relief at seeing Maddox. The panic of coming awake after surgery, and the doctors telling me I might never get full use of my leg back.
I wouldn’t lie and say my hands weren’t still shaking. That the memories and fear weren’t still curling through my blood, but I refused to give in to it. Refused to let whomever this was coming for Rafe and his family send me cartwheeling back into the dark I’d been swimming against for nearly three years. I only wished, like I had that day with Mila, that I’d had a weapon to defend us. Some way of striking back as the bullets rained. A chance for a whisper of control in a situation where I’d had none.
His hand landed in my hair, drawing the strands around his finger, tugging so I was forced to meet his gaze again. “Sadie, I…” He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. “Damn it. I won’t be the reason you get hurt…or worse. I’m so sorry this brought back those memories for you. That you had to experience any of it again.”
The fact he was more upset about what this had triggered in me than being shot at snagged my heart and made it his more than it already was. I stroked his beard, hating the grief and remorse I saw in his eyes, the guilt and blame that would stick to him. I knew those feelings too. All too well.
“Some asshole shooting at you isn’t your fault.” When I saw he was going to argue, I shook my head and cut him off. “You want to do something for me, Rafe? Find out who it is and put them away.”
