Second Chance Summer(91)

“Damn,” Gray said on a heavily blown-out breath. “You tore the f*cker again, didn’t you?”

“Yep,” Mitch answered for him. “Rotator cuff,” he explained to a shocked Lily. “It happened when he kissed the rock.”

“Fuck you,” Aidan said, and dropped back to his knees. “Aw, hell.”

“Aidan!” Lily cried, dropping to her knees, too, facing him.

“I’m okay.” He locked eyes with her and held the eye contact as the medics fussed over him, dabbing at the cuts on his face, carefully restraining his arm and shoulder from movement.

“We’re taking him to General,” one of the medics said to Gray.

“No, I’m fine,” Aidan said again.

“You’re going to the hospital,” Lily said.

“Going to be fun to watch you two butt heads,” Gray said, and Aidan realized both his brothers were leaning over them, shamelessly eavesdropping. “Even more fun will be giving Mom a new couple to obsess over and bug for grandchildren.”

They began the hike back to Incident Command before he could try to kill Gray. Once there, he was taken into the ambulance.

“Let’s get his shirt off,” one of the medics said.

“Women are always saying that to me,” Aidan murmured.

And then the truck was gone, off into the night.

Lily stared at it until it disappeared and still she stood there unmoving.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Her heart was moving. In fact, it was cracking. Because though Aidan had listened to her very carefully and taken in everything she’d said, he hadn’t responded in kind.

Nothing less than she deserved after doing the same thing to him. And if it had hurt him half as much as it hurt her, she didn’t know how she could ever make it up to him.

Hudson grabbed Lily’s hand. Gray took her other side. They led her back to their truck.

“We’re going to the hospital,” she said.

Neither man answered her.

“We are going to the hospital,” she said.

“You’re shaking and frozen. You need a shower and dry clothes,” Gray told her. “And rest.”

“Is that what you would do if Penny was hurt?” she asked. “You’d go home to rest?”

He grimaced.

“Exactly,” she said grimly. “Hospital it is.”

Aidan always marveled over the fact that he could be dead asleep one second and in the next completely awake, a brand-new day. As he shifted into awareness, everything flooded back to him. The rescue. Slamming himself into the wall like a novice. The long hours on the ledge while the storm beat at him and Mitch.

Lily.

The beeping and antiseptic smell told him he was still in the hospital, but the scent of Lily’s shampoo told him he wasn’t alone.

He opened his eyes and homed in on her like a beacon.

She leapt out of a chair and came to his side. “Hey,” she said, in her throaty morning voice that he loved so much. “You’re awake.”

Which was more than he could say for Hudson, who had his long body sprawled out in another chair, head back, mouth open, snoring lightly.

“He had a rough night, worrying about you,” she said.

Her gaze said she’d had the same rough night, and he shook his head, knowing how hard it must have been reliving the nightmare of Dead Man’s Cliff, where she’d lost Ashley. “You okay?” he asked.

“That was my question to you,” she said.

“I meant about what happened, and where,” he said. “There’s going to always be risky rescues, dangerous fire conditions—”

“I know,” she said softly.

“I don’t know how to ask you to be with someone who—”

“You’re not asking,” she said. “It’s my decision. I want to be with you, Aidan, just as you are, whatever your job is, whatever you do. I just hate that you got hurt—”

“I’m okay.”

Her fingers ran lightly over the splint holding his arm to his chest while her gaze settled on the side of his face, currently burning like fire. Didn’t need a mirror to know what he must look like.

“Are you?” she breathed. “Okay?”

“One hundred percent.”

She arched a brow and he couldn’t help it, he smiled, and … split his lip again. “Dammit,” he said, and brought his fingers up to it.

She caught his hand. “If you’re fine, and I’m fine … are we fine?”

“You still love me?” he asked.

“So you do remember,” she breathed.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“I wasn’t sure,” she admitted, and he realized she was tense with nerves.

With some serious effort he lifted the covers in silent invitation.

She bit her lip. “It’s a hospital bed, I can’t—”

“Come here.”

She glanced at Hudson, found him still snoring, and then kicked off her shoes. “Are you sure I won’t hurt you?”

“He’s fine,” Hudson muttered, eyes still closed, body not moving a muscle. “But you’re killing me. Shut the hell up, the both of you. No talking until …” He opened one eye, looked at his watch, groaned, and said “until much later than seven a.m.”