Better when He's Bold (Welcome to the Point #2)(85)
I felt my insides seize up and something in the center of my chest twist so hard, my heart couldn’t find a way to beat around it.
“All right, I won’t.” Even if it felt like it would kill me.
“Good, and then when I’m there—on the streets in the city, when I’m there every time you come home, you’ll know that’s the only place I want to be. It’s where you are, Race, so it’s where I have to be.”
I wanted to collapse in relief, but all I could do was lean over and kiss her in a way that probably wasn’t appropriate, considering her banged-up condition.
I would hold on to her with everything I had and I would make sure she stayed just the way she was. I would never take the little things for granted, and just as tightly as I planned on holding on to her, I was going to hold on to this dark and dangerous place that was my home. They were both mine, and I would give up anything and everything to keep them.
“It’s not a place anyone really wants to call home, but if you give me some time, let me figure some things out, I can make you the queen of my broken kingdom. I can make this a place that isn’t so terrible to be.” It was a bold claim, one I would battle through hell and move the very earth the Point sat on to live up to. Bax was willing to watch the city burn and eat itself alive for Dovie. I wanted the opposite. I wanted to build it up, give it legs, make it a place that could stand tall and proud.
“There is good on those streets. I know that’s what you’re fighting for, even if you have to do it in a nontraditional way.”
“How can you see that through all the messed-up stuff that has happened to you since getting involved with me? Why aren’t you running the other way?” It would have been the smart thing for her to do the second after I kissed her. Her fate was sealed from that very instant.
“That bad stuff didn’t come from you. Like Karsen said—bad things happen and we just have to deal with them, and I can see it because I’ve been looking at you for a long time, Race—all of you. I know exactly who you have to be and who you want to be.”
If I could rip my heart out of my chest and physically hand it to her for safekeeping, I would. For a long time I had avoided collecting things, avoided feeling attached to much of anything because of the fear that it would get taken away from me. I could tell by the look in Brysen’s eyes and the slant of her mouth that nothing was going to take this girl away from me, and that made risking everything I had for her a no-brainer.
“I’m not going to tell you that I’ll take care of you anymore. But I am going to make it my mission from here on out to see to it that you can take care of yourself. You already have the fight in you; we just need to give you a little oomph and some street smarts to go with it.”
She lifted a blond eyebrow at me and the conversation was cut short as the doctor finally made an appearance. He poked and probed at her until she growled at him, and he told her he did indeed want another CT scan of her head. That knot on her temple seemed to be a concern, but as long as she was awake and looking at me, I wasn’t going to freak out.
Before a couple nurses showed up to wheel her off to radiology, she flashed me a grin that looked an awful lot like the one Dovie had given to Bax and asked me, “Do I get a crown if I get to be your queen?”
That made me burst out laughing, which had the nurses giving me a scolding look.
“I’ll give you whatever you want.” And I would until both the parts of the man I was ran out of things to give.
We weren’t really a good bet on making this work, but I was a guy who liked the long shot, and I always put my money on the long shot. I was hoping the fact that we were undeniably in love with one another put the odds on our side.
THEY WANTED TO KEEP Brysen in the hospital overnight. Her CT scan came back all clear, but that knot on the side of her head was some cause for concern, so they just wanted to keep her under observation. Since there was only room for one of us to stay with her in the room they moved her to, I let Karsen curl up in the chair for the night and wandered off to find out what happened to Booker.
Karsen had informed me that he had taken two bullets in the chest. One went right through his shoulder and the other had lodged somewhere in a rib near his lung. Apparently, since the shots had been fired through the door, the momentum had been slowed enough to prevent the bullets from doing irreparable damage. The hulking giant was going to make it just as soon as he came out of surgery to dig the bullet out of his rib cage. He was still in post-op when I located the wing of the hospital he was in, and since I wasn’t family and he was still unconscious, no one would agree to let me in to see him. I was annoyed by that, but could understand it, and I think I shocked the hell out of the stone-faced nurse I was agreeing with when I told her I needed all his medical bills and expenses forwarded to me.
Ex-cons who offered themselves out to be hired muscle for other criminals weren’t the type of guys that had medical insurance, and even if his actions had been self-serving, Booker had still taken a bullet for my girl when I wasn’t there. There was no way I wasn’t going to repay the guy in the only way I could. Plus I liked him; he reminded me of Bax and I understood his motivations, the things that made him tick. He was the kind of guy I wanted to have on hand moving forward.
I spent the night in the waiting room. I wasn’t ready to leave Brysen alone just yet, even though I knew the direct threat to her was gone. I must have drifted off while I was sitting there, because when my hand that was braced under my chin got nudged, my head fell to the side and I jerked away to find Titus looming over me with two cups of coffee. I blinked my eyes and yawned and took the proffered cup as he frowned down at me.