Page 122 of Crossing the Line
He followed along behind Waverly’s gurney as they wheeled her into a private room with a host of IVs and monitors. The same nurse coaxed him into a chair next to her bed and suggested he talk to her while she slept.
He spent the next two hours doing just that.
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It was a wiggle of fingers that woke him. His head rested on the coarse cotton of hospital sheets, hand wrapped around Waverly’s cold fingers. They were wiggling against his palm.
He lifted his head, foggy and too terrified to be hopeful. But those sea green eyes were watching him.
“Angel,” he whispered it reverently.
“You found me. You saved me,” she whispered back, her voice raspy and weak.
He rose up, bringing his forehead to hers. When she winced, he pulled back. “What is it, baby. What hurts? Tell me, and I’ll call a nurse. A doctor. A team of doctors.”
She gave him a pale-lipped smile. “I head-butted him.”
“You remember what happened?” he asked, brushing his fingers whisper soft over her forehead.
Her eyes fluttered closed for a second before reopening. “I remember everything. I knew you’d come for me.”
He leaned in, stroking her face and hair. “I told you I’d never be done with you.”
“You told me you loved me.”
He opened his mouth, closed it. And then nodded. “I may have said that. I thought you were unconscious.”
Her eyes were heavy. She was having trouble keeping them open. “I won’t hold you to it. You were under duress.”
“I meant every word, Angel.”
That ghost of a smile played on her lips again. “Good. Because I’m pretty sure I love you, too.”
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It took three days, but Waverly was cleared by a team of doctors to go home. She cuddled up against Xavier’s side in the back of an Invictus Tahoe. Xavier had shrugged off her attempts at conversation in the car but wouldn’t let her wiggle out from under his arm. So she’d leaned against him and closed her eyes for the duration of the ride.
The foot of the driveway was a madhouse. There were twenty photographers waiting outside the gates, pushing back against the team Xavier and Micah had deployed to keep them off the property. She ignored the chaos on the other side of the tinted windows as the SUV slid through the gates.
He hadn’t left her hospital bed for twenty-four straight hours until she’d begged him to go home to grab a shower and some sleep. It was the last she’d seen him until he arrived to take her home looking just as exhausted as he had when he left.
She hadn’t been alone in his absence. Kate, Mari, Louie, and her father had taken turns guarding her bedside and driving her generally insane. Her mother had flown in, and, much to Waverly’s shock, flew back to finish out her rehab. She would be home in another week, and after seeing her in the hospital, sharp, focused, and sober, Waverly felt the first sparks of hope for her mother that she’d felt in a long time.
But Xavier’s absence made her nervous. She spent hours wondering if her confession of love scared him off. Perhaps he hadn’t meant it when he’d whispered it to her over and over again when he thought he was losing her and again when he thought she was sleeping.
They would talk, she promised herself. Saints were talkers, and they could clear the air. She wasn’t going to let him just drift away. Not now that she knew what love was and how precious life could be.
Her father had hired a private nurse for her for the next few days to help change Waverly’s dressings and keep an eye on her. The plastic surgeon was thrilled with how she was healing and was confident that most of the scars would be practically invisible.
Her doctors had been thrilled with how quickly she’d bounced back. “It must be all the hot yoga I’ve been doing lately,” she told them weakly, but Xavier hadn’t been there to get the joke.
There had been a lot of her blood pooled on the Walk of Fame and she’d learned just how touch and go it had been for a while. She’d yet to see the video of the… incident. But she did get to meet the bystanders who’d been dragged into her near execution. And, as a special thank you for his hard work, she’d smuggled Arnie the photographer into her room and let him take a photo of her with them. With her permission, he sold the picture to a big-budgeted celebrity news magazine for six figures and immediately quit his job.
Rumor had it Douchebag Joe nearly had a heart attack when he got his autographed copy from Arnie in the mail.
Waverly sat up when the SUV came to a stop in the driveway, but Xavier anchored her to his side and carefully lifted her out.
“I can walk, X,” she said, with a teasing smile. “I’m going to be hitting up barre class in a day or two.”
