Total pages in book: 147
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 136048 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 680(@200wpm)___ 544(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Ace scoffs from across the room, not having taken his eyes off Izzy since the moment we got here seven hours ago. “It’s Izzy,” he mutters. “You really think she’s just going to wake up and put us out of our misery? Hell nah. She’s gonna make us sweat it first.”
A small laugh rumbles through Harper’s chest. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she murmurs. “But on the other hand, she probably can’t wait to wake up just so she can bitch me out for getting her shot.”
Diesel smirks. “Do you need some armor?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” she says, her agitation visible in the way her knee bounces under the blanket.
I pull her in tighter to my chest, hoping like fuck that I’m not being too firm on her burned skin, because I’ve more than learned that she’s not going to tell me if I am. “She’ll wake up soon,” I tell her, my lips brushing over her temple. “She lost a lot of blood. It won’t be easy to bounce back from that.”
“But it’s Iz. She always bounces back.”
“I know,” I tell her. “But she’s also never been shot through the chest and bled out like that before. She’s okay. Her surgery went well, but she needs to rest. The more sleep she’s able to get, the stronger she’ll be. You know that.”
“Don’t use logic on me.”
I smile against her temple before kissing her again, and just as she goes to scootch down in her bed and curl herself around me, a soft, croaky voice fills the little room. “Bitch, did your mom seriously shoot me?”
Harper gasps and all but throws herself from bed as she lunges toward Izzy, grabbing for her hand. Ace and Diesel practically tackle each other to get to her other side. “Oh, thank God,” Harper cries, her voice breaking. “I’m so fucking sorry. I never should have—”
“Ugh. Don’t even start with the guilt-ridden sob fest. This isn’t your fault,” she tells Harper, her throat dry after surgery. “I didn’t have to get in your shitty little Honda, and I didn’t have to go inside that house, but I did. That’s on me, and you don’t get to claim my fuckups. They’re mine to sulk over.”
Harper’s bottom lip wobbles, and she slips straight up onto the edge of Izzy’s bed, doing what she can not to jostle her around too much. “I thought you were dead,” she tells her. “Elias dragged me away before I could call for help, and you were just lying there helpless. I—”
“Wait,” Izzy cuts in with a low groan. “I don’t . . . I don’t remember seeing Elias.”
“Shit, Iz. I’ve got so much to catch you up on. It was insane. There was a cargo ship, and people were being shot everywhere. I saw a guy with a snapped neck just soaking in a pool of someone else’s blood, and fuck. We had to literally jump off the ship because it was riddled with explosives and because I’d smashed some stupid oil lamp. The whole ship exploded. It was insane.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Izzy questions, her brows furrowed as though trying to follow along with Harper’s recount of our night is giving her a headache. “None of that makes sense.”
“Literally insane,” Harper says. “It was so shitty and scary, like flames actually trying to burn me alive, but like . . . wild. Sexy SWAT dudes everywhere doing their SWAT thing, and they had to fish me out of the water.”
“Mmmm. Love a sexy SWAT dude. I need one of those.”
“Uhhhh, right here,” Ace mutters.
Izzy shakes her head, her eyelids growing heavy. “Noooo,” she groans. “I mean a sexy one that can swoop in like a superhero with his muscles all muscling and save me. You’ve got the sexy part down, but you don’t strike me as a swooper.”
“I’m a great fucking swooper,” Ace scoffs. “In fact, I swooped your ass just last night. I get that you were out cold and had no idea what was even going on, but I literally saved your life after you got shot. That was all me, baby.”
Izzy glances up at him, her gaze narrowed. “Were your muscles muscling while you did it?”
“Umm . . . Well, no. Not exactly.”
She sighs, looking disappointed. “Then it doesn’t count.”
Ace gapes at her while Diesel just smirks and cuts in before Ace gets a chance to argue his point. “How’re you feeling, girl?” Diesel rumbles, that deep tone immediately stealing every bit of Izzy’s attention.
“Like I’ve been shot in the chest,” she states flatly. “I take it you were doing the whole sexy SWAT thing too?”
Diesel just grins. “You fucking know I was,” he tells her. “But what do you want to know exactly? How I had to scale the ship with my bare fucking hands? How I had to take out the men who were holding your best friend hostage? How I had to save the lives of my team while the ship exploded into a fiery rage around us?”