Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78587 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“He went after them because they tried to set that dog on fire.”
“He saw what they were doing, but he didn’t go after them until one of them knocked your ass to the ground.”
I should’ve told them to stop arguing, but their voices were oddly comforting. And it was good for Sergei to know that he wasn’t in that room alone. We were all there, right by his side, and we would be there until he found the strength to come back to us. God, how I prayed that he would come back to us.
“You got it wrong. He jumped in when the guy with the shaved head came at you with that rusty pipe.”
“That wasn’t him. That was me.”
“No way. That was Sergei. One hundred percent.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Viktor argued. “Sergei was too busy dealing with the other two, and when he finished beating the hell out of the bigger one, he said, ‘If you touch my brother again, I’ll…’”
A hoarse voice cut through the air, low and strained, “I’ll break your fucking hand and feed it to you, and it was a crowbar, not a pipe. And I’m Mom’s favorite. Always have been.”
My breath caught as I looked up to Sergei’s face. His eyes were still closed, so I thought I’d imagined it. Then, his fingers twitched in mine. I was up and out of that chair before I could even blink, and the sound that tore out of me was somewhere between a sob and a prayer. His eyes fluttered open. It was slow and just a little, but they were open, and they were locked on mine.
I cupped his face and pressed my mouth to his like I’d been drowning and he was air. He grunted against my lips with a wince. “Easy, baby. I’m wounded over here.”
I was outright crying at this point, and my words came out as a jumbled mess as I told him, “Don’t you ever do that to me again.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
Tears were streaming down Tabitha’s face as she stepped over and placed the palm of her hand on Sergei’s forehead. “You gave us quite a scare.”
“Nothing to be scared about. It was just a little graze,” Sergei grumbled. “Should’ve just slapped a Band-Aid on that shit and called it a day.”
Nikolai and Viktor stepped over to the bed, both looking relieved and exhausted. Viktor shook his head as he teased, “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
“Right back at you, brother.”
Viktor and Nikolai didn’t rush out after Sergei woke up. They both lingered near the foot of the bed, talking back and forth with Preacher and Tabitha, and we all watched quietly as the nurses checked the monitors and adjusted Sergei’s IV. None of us said it out loud, but we all felt it.
We were all worried that he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
He was trying, but it was a struggle for him to stay awake. The drugs played a part in that, but his body had taken a hard hit. It was going to take him some time to get his strength back, and until then, he was going to need rest and plenty of it.
Eventually, Viktor gave Sergei’s leg a careful pat and said, “We’re going to get out of here for a while. Let you get some sleep, but we’ll be back in the morning.”
“Try not to give the nurses too much hell while we’re gone,” Nikolai teased.
That earned him a faint twitch of a smile. Tabitha ran her fingers through Sergei’s hair in a way that only a mother could. “I don’t want to leave you.”
“I’m fine, Mother.”
“You’re not,” she fussed. “I almost lost you, and…”
“But you didn’t,” Sergei interrupted. “It’d take more than a couple of jabs to get me down and keep me down. Now, go home and get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Okay, but I don’t like it.” She leaned in and kissed him on the forehead. “I love you, son. I love you so very much.”
“Love you, too.”
They all said their goodbyes to me, and before slipping out the door, Tabitha leaned in and hugged me as she whispered, “Call me if either of you need anything.”
“I will. Thank you.”
She gave Sergei one last motherly look before she and the boys slipped out of the room. As soon as the door clicked behind them, I pulled the chair a little closer to his bed and sat where I could see his handsome face as I held his hand. He studied me for a moment, then whispered, “I should’ve gotten to you sooner.”
“Sergei, don’t.” I shook my head. “You saved my life.”
He started to argue, but I leaned in and kissed him before he could get the words out. It was soft and gentle, nothing like earlier, and it was effective. He stopped with the nonsense, and when I pulled back, I whispered, “You came. You got to me. Nothing else matters.”