Page 14 of In My Heart
“Grab some blankets, Arran. She runs cold and it’s not warm in here,” Cal requested.
Arran jumped into action right away, but not before leaning in to gently place a kiss on my knuckles before he released my hand.
“Let’s get you warmed up, okay babe? I’m sorry I had to leave you, but I’m here now, and I won’t be going anywhere from now on,” Cal promised.
If I could have, I’d have told him not to be ridiculous. He’d left me because he needed to go into surgery, and even then, he’d made Arran promise a ton of things before he went, the most important of which was not to leave me alone. And Arran hadn’t. He’d been with me the entire time. Between them they’d stayed with me every moment.
But it wasn’t as easy as telling him that, and I was too tired to start typing again so instead I just turned my face into his bare chest and laid a kiss there. I didn’t know if he felt all of the meaning I meant it to portray, but I felt he got at least some of it when he leaned down to kiss the top of my head in return.
When Arran returned with several blankets, he and Cal worked together to lower the bed so we were in a flatter position, me laid on top of Cal, my head resting against his heart and my frayed edges soothed by the steady beat.
Arran wrapped the blankets over me, and I found myself relaxing some. The pain was less if I remained completely still, which helped. Cal had both of his arms round me, holding me tightly, and Arran was leaning in to run his hand up and down my back soothingly.
It took a while, but eventually I calmed my racing and ravaged mind enough to allow my exhaustion to take over and I dropped off feeling safe and cared for.
***
A few hours later the doctors released us from the hospital. Cal needed to go back for follow-ups on his ankle, and I would need to have another appointment in a week to check the tearing and damage between my legs was healing as it should. I’d left with antibiotics in case of infection, after taking a cocktail of drugs at the hospital to protect me against a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy.
They’d also taken blood tests for diseases that wouldn’t show up immediately, like Hep C and many more terrifying possibilities, and those bloods would be repeated again in another six months, just to be sure.
I should have been more upset about it all, but I had cried my heart out the night before, and that day I was just back to numb again. I took what Rafe told me to take, and held on to him or Cal as they told me to, while nurses prodded and poked, trying to find veins in my apparently veinless arms, to take blood.
I just wanted it all to be over, so I could go home, and I selfishly left Rafe to make sure everything important was handled. Cal helped, obviously knowing the procedures for a rape victim from his studying, and between them and the doctors, I was sure they covered everything.
Rafe and Dio had helped me to change from the crappy hospital gown into the clean clothes, which Terza had brought for me. I was still in too much pain, and too exhausted to stand for long, and any time I tried, my head would start to spin and pound in tandem.
“Come here, Cara. You can ride with me,” Cal said, startling me from where I had been staring blindly at the ugly blue floor. I looked up and found him dressed in the long shorts and hoody Terza brought for him too, seated in a wheel chair. Arran was at his side, with Cal’s crutches in his hand. Cal was patting his lap and clearly wanted me to sit there.
I shook my head, too afraid to sit on him in case I hurt his ankle.
“You won’t hurt me. I’m fine. Come on,” Cal argued, like he could read my mind. He lifted his arm and beckoned me over, so I moved slowly towards him, Rafe moving with me every step. I knew he was afraid I would fall over, as I had when I tried to use the bathroom earlier.
When I got to Cal I perched tentatively on his good leg, but Cal wasn’t having that. He held me under my arms and moved me easily until I was right in his lap and pressed against his body, sat sideways across his thighs.
“There. That’s better,” he told me with a smile as he wrapped his arms around me and leaned in to kiss my temple. “Are you okay there?”
I nodded, snuggling deeper against him, as Rafe fussed, wrapping a blanket around me.
“I’ve brought more of my men in to escort us home, Cara, so I just wanted to make you aware. They’re going to be all around as we get to the cars, but they’re only there for our protection, alright?”
I nodded and tried not to allow my mind to run wild with questions about what exactly, or who, they were protecting us all from. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know if I were honest. Maybe it would be nice to bury my head in the sand for a while.
“You can just hide against me if that helps, babe. You don’t even need to see any of them if you don’t want to,” Cal told me quietly, and I nodded as I pressed my face against the soft fabric of his sweater and decided to do just that – hide.
“Do we have men watching over Brax?” Dario asked.
“Aye. I’ve arranged a schedule until he gets released, then he’s going to one of our safehouses to recover,” Arran replied.
Brax had been shot in the mess outside the plane. He was the only one of all of the men who were with us in Chicago, and there to meet us off of that plane, who had survived. He’d lost a lot of blood, but the doctor, who Rafe had called in, had been able to stop the bleeding until they got him to the clinic and into surgery. Now he was on the mend, apparently. I was relieved about that, but so many lives had been lost that night, and for no real reason really.
Gia’s plan had been half baked. I didn’t know if Mikhail contacted my supposed bio Dad to try and get what he wanted, but no one had reached out to ask about me, so either they didn’t, or they did and ‘daddy’didn’t care. Either way, he wasn’tgoing to give Mikhail a thing to save my life, and the plan was a bust.
So many lives lost. Cal, Arran, and Brax all badly injured. Gia gone. All for what? Money? Power? A botched plan?
Mikhail had gotten away from the warehouse, but I knew it was only a matter of time before Rafe tracked him down. The Russian was an idiot, trusting the word of a messed up kid and enacting a whole plan on it? He wouldn’t last long, and I knew when Rafe got his hands on the bastard, he would make him pay for taking our sister from us. I may have been angry with her for what she had done, but that didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t deserved to die that way, as young as she was.
“Cara?” Cal swiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb, and when I lifted my eyes to look at him, he was watching me with worry.
