Page 98 of Retribution
Me too. Me too.
With his free hand, he opens the door and nods to the guards as we wander down to Finn’s hospital room. Lorcan lifts our joined hands and kisses my palm before letting our hands fall again.
This is the moment of reckoning. Staying with him through this will either be the smartest thing I’ve ever done or the dumbest.
Chapter Thirty-Three
While I wait for Lorcan to emerge from Finn’s room, I try to stay as still and calm as possible. Inside, I want to fidget, jump up and pace around, anything to release this nervous energy.
When the hospital door swings open, Lorcan pauses at the threshold for a minute, scanning the hallway for me, and I almost collapse in relief. His expression is the one I’ve come to recognize so well. There’s no rage or confusion anywhere. Whether Finn remembers or not, he didn’t say anything to his brother.
“He wants to see you.” Lorcan nods at me.
We’re toe-to-toe and he still hasn’t moved from the doorway.
“You okay?” I ask.
A wisp of a smile flits across his face before it vanishes. His lips brush my temple as one of his arms circles my waist. “I’m headed home. I’m leaving one of the guys here to come with you.” He gestures to a man whose name I can never remember. Felix? Jorge? It’s strange to think how much I relied on Antonio. Lorcan’s hand slides away, and his footsteps retreat behind me, brisk, determined. Closing my eyes, I realize I forgot to mention telling Antonio’s family.
The metal door handle is frigid against my palm when I push on it. Finn’s icy eyes snap open and zero in on me. Unlike Lorcan, I can’t read him. I have no idea whether I’m in trouble or in the clear.
“How are you feeling?” I shove my hands into my pockets as the door clicks shut behind me. I hover inside the room, balanced between staying put and fleeing at the first sign of trouble.
“Like I was stabbed a bunch of times and left for dead.”
“Is that better or worse than normal?”
He chuckles and then coughs. With a breath in that appears uncomfortable, he says, “I heard you found me.”
With that, the tension drains out of me. He’s not going to grill me. He doesn’t know anything. I take my hands out of my pockets and inch closer to the end of his bed. “I did, yeah. Lucky find, I guess.”
“Thank you.”
A smile blooms in me, even as the sound of his skull connecting with the flagstones rings in my ears again. “You don’t remember?”
“Last thing I remember is kicking the shit out of Derry in the bathroom because he was putting his paws on you.”
That means he doesn’t recall any of the interactions with Malik either in the basement or before he got in the helicopter. I couldn’t have asked for a better head injury. “That’s what you told Lorcan?”
“Yeah. You didn’t tell him Derry was after you?”
I freeze. “No, no I did not.”
“Well, he was fucking pissed. Looks like we might have more than one war to worry about now. Not that I mind. It knits us together tighter.”
I run my hands down my face. “I should go talk to him.”
“Do you or Lorcan know who did this? He said he didn’t, but his face told me another story.”
“He has an idea, but he won’t tell me.”
He smirks. “Keeping secrets from you? How dare he.”
“What’s your prognosis?” There are the obvious bandages, and I wonder what else happened to him I can’t see.
“I’ll be out of here in a week.”
“According to?”