“It is him. It does not matter what you call it.”
Cam closed his eyes. I let him and tangled my fingers in the silky hair at the nape of his neck. He had not left the hospital in days, but even ragged and grimy, he was still beautiful to me. The only man to hold a torch to Saint Malone.
I left Cam to his trance and gave myself over to Saint. The scruff on his face had thickened, dark smudges painted beneath his soulful green eyes. I missed them as much as his voice. Perhaps more. He spoke so much from them.
His skin was warm, a healthy colour from the IVs pumping fluids into his blood.
While Cam drifted, I’d hacked into his medical records. Studied the scans. The X-rays. The blood tests. The shadow on his brain was shrinking. The poison in his blood from the toxic smoke fading by the hour. He’d lost his spleen, but he could survive that.
Hewouldsurvive that.
All he had to do was wake up.
Slowly, I rose from my seat and leaned over him, trailing a finger down his face, cupping his jaw, thumb rubbing his cheekbone.
I kissed his bruised temple. His nose. His mouth. Music filtered from the earphone in his left ear, but his right ear was empty.
The earphone was on the pillow. I raised it to my own ear and soft eighties rock filtered into my brain. A song about a man with golden words.
A wry smile twisted my lips. I brought the earphone to Cam and fitted it to his ear. “So you hear what he hears.”
Cam opened his bloodshot eyes. “Mother Love Bone.”
“What is?”
“The band. I didn’t know he liked them. He doesn’t always tell me.”
“Someone knew, though?”
“Nash.”
“He is a sweet man.”
Cam sighed and removed the earphone. “I’m not. I didn’t even ask you how you feel about your mum dying. Are you okay?”
“Are you?”
“Lexi. Please. I can’t talk in circles with you. And I’m not Saint. I can’t tell how you feel just by breathing the same fucking air. Sometimes you just gotta tell me.”
In another time, another place, the pleading in his eyes would not have been enough. But the will to fight the convoluted mess of emotions I had become at the hands of these men was no longer there. “I was disturbed when Viktor told me. Like a great hole had ripped me open, but it was empty of the grief a man should have for his mother. Now I believe the grief is there, but it is for the mother I should’ve had, not the one who died alone in a nursing home.”
It was more than I knew myself before the words fell from me, tumbling out in one breath. I shivered. Not cold, but... something.
Cam reached for me. Hauled me into him. His heart thumped a steady beat against my arm. “I’m sorry it happened to you. All of it. You deserved better. You still do.”
“That is debatable considering the life I have lived since, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
A low growl rumbled from Cam’s chest. “It’s not a debate. It just is.”
“Okay.”
I let him win. Let him hold me and bury his face in my neck until Saint consumed us again.
Cam reclaimed his hand. The pink bracelet Ivy had brought was still wrapped around Saint’s wrist. Cam toyed with it, rolling the charm between his finger and thumb before he seemed to see it for the first time.
He frowned, then a bemused and tired smile warmed his face.
“What is it?”