Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134531 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 673(@200wpm)___ 538(@250wpm)___ 448(@300wpm)
She glanced down to Kate and then back to me. “With her windpipe how it is, she’ll need to rest it for at least a week before she even attempts to speak.” There was a loaded pause while Sarah’s eyes roamed over Kate. “And we have to wait until she wakes up to assess the damage. She should be able to speak fully in time, but I can’t make any guarantees.”
Her voice. I might never hear her fucking voice again.
Right then, I tried to call it up in my mind. And for the fucking life of me, I couldn’t remember what her voice sounded like. I couldn’t hear shit above the dull roar in my ears. The pumping of blood through my body. The need to get the fuck out of the room and pull the skin off the man who did this.
But I stayed still. Completely still. I held on to Kate’s pale, limp hand. It was my anchor.
“Was she…?” my voice broke. I sucked in a breath. I was stronger than this. And I deserved this fucking information. This was my fault after all. I deserved to feel every ounce of pain that came with these words. “Was she raped?” I asked evenly.
The handful of seconds between my question and Sarah’s response were some of the longest and most terrifying of my life.
“No.” It took a while for Sarah’s words to cross the chasm I found myself in. To descend into the hole of self-hatred I was residing in.
“We don’t have any physical injuries to suggest sexual assault,” she expanded.
I didn’t sag in relief. Not even a little. No injuries did not mean that he hadn’t touched her. That he hadn’t raped her.
At some point, Sarah had crossed the room and was squeezing my shoulder. “She’s going to be okay. She’s strong. A lot of people wouldn’t have survived this. But she did. She survived, Swiss.” She spoke firmly, as if she sensed that the words needed to be heavy to sink through the layers of panic and bloodlust in my system.
“I’ll also do my best to convince my colleague to forget about the gun you didn’t point at him,” she added, a hint of amusement in her voice.
“Much obliged,” I managed to bite out.
“I’ll be back to check on her,” she promised, giving my shoulder one last squeeze before she walked out.
“She survived.”
Yeah, there were machines telling me that she’d survived. There was the beeping of whatever was measuring her heartbeat. She was alive.
But it remained to be seen if she’d truly survived. What he did to her… What I did to her... Abandoning her when she needed me most.
It remained to be seen if I could survive that.
“Cops are here,” Hansen remarked.
It had been a while. A day. Maybe more. Maybe less. I didn’t fucking know. All I knew was that Kate hadn’t opened her eyes. Kate still had a tube down her throat.
I didn’t take my eyes off Kate.
Faint pulse. Faint pulse. Faint pulse.
“Figures,” I muttered.
“Want to arrest you,” he added.
My hand tightened around hers.
“They can certainly try,” I grunted.
He chuckled. “Yeah, I told them as much. When Kate wakes up, you’ll probably have to go down there, make some kind of statement.”
Faint pulse. Faint pulse. Faint pulse.
“Won’t be going anywhere until my woman walks out of this place on her own two feet,” I said, still not taking my eyes off her.
Hansen sighed loudly. “You pulled a gun on a doctor, brother,” he reminded me.
“I’m aware.”
“Doctor in question is luckily having some memory issues, thanks to Sarah,” he continued. “But there were witnesses in the waiting room who haven’t been as open to our… suggestions as we would’ve liked. Even with our connections, the cops still have to go through at least some of the motions. They are definitely takin’ it seriously.”
My jaw hardened. “And you can tell them I’ll happily hop down to the station, do a song and dance for them, when my woman walks her ass out of the hospital and gets off life support.”
Faint pulse. Faint pulse. Faint pulse.
“We pay them enough,” I added. “They should be doing the song and dance for us.”
Another chuckle. Hansen slapped me on the shoulder.
It was a dangerous move.
“Okay, brother,” he conceded. “I’ll convince them that it’s in their best interest to wait.”
My eyes ran over the bruises and cuts on Kate’s face. “You do that.”
His boots thumped against the floor as he walked out.
It was just me and Kate again.
Faint pulse. Faint pulse. Faint pulse.
Heels clicked along the floor.
I smelled her perfume, hating it immediately ’cause it drowned out the very faint smell of Kate, gettin’ lost amongst all the cleaners and disinfectants in this fuckin’ place.
Freya pulled a chair to sit down beside me.
I didn’t look at her.
“I can sit with her,” she offered. “So you can get something to eat. I know better than to ask an alpha male to go and get some sleep—even though he’s been awake for over twenty-four hours—when his woman is…” she trailed off, staring at Kate, probably. Her breath hitched. “When his woman is healing,” she finished, her voice stronger, after clearing her throat. “But I happen to have hard evidence that even though they may be able to exist on no sleep, alpha males do need to do things like eat. You know, to sustain life?”