Logan nodded. “I’d say so. He did say he loved you, though. It wasn’t all about bacon.”
My head bobbed of its own accord. Logan caught my chin and thumbed the stray tears from my face. He didn’t say anything else, but I didn’t need him to. He was here, and I realised that if such a thing were possible, perhaps I’d missed him all this time too.
“We should get back.” Locke slid an arm around my waist. “Cam won’t want you out of his sight.”
I wasn’t so sure Cam would even notice my absence, but I let Locke guide me back to the waiting room anyway, Logan a comforting heartbeat behind us.
We slipped inside. Rubi rose to embrace Locke and did a double take. “Shit the bed, there really is two of you.”
Logan’s lips twitched with a reserved grin. “So they tell us. Anyone need anything?”
No one did bar the obvious, and Logan couldn’t help us with that. He stayed by the door, surveying the room. His gaze lingered on Cam, and that faint grin flared again. “Nice shirt.”
Locke looked closer at Cam’s clothes and grinned a little, a sight that healed some of the open wounds in my chest. “Galen?”
Cam shrugged, bemused.
Logan rolled his eyes. “Little shit.”
There was nothing particularly little about Galen, unless I compared him to Logan, Locke, and Rubi, and I knew I was missing something else blindingly obvious, but I was too tired to figure it out. I leaned against Locke, more grateful for his solid bulk than I’d ever been. My eyes stayed open, I was awake, but the voices and faces around me merged into a buzz I could ignore, even when River ran out of spoons to be still and joined Mateo and Saint outside in the rain.
“He’s strong,” Cam said suddenly, drawing me out of my stupor. “Of all of us, it’s him that’d survive an apocalypse.”
Rubi cocked his head. “You’re betting against your lovers?”
“They wouldn’t want to.”
Dark words.Truewords. Saint and Alexei loved each other, but they lived for Cam. Nash, though. He was a different kind of force, and I realised that Cam was right. When the world fell, Nash would still stand, even on one leg.
“If it helps,” Logan spoke from the door, “I knew he was tough the second we locked eyes. When you see enough people in that kind of situation, you begin to tell them apart.”
“He told Logan he was hungry,” I said.
“That fucker.” Rubi laughed, remembering. Then he sniffed and we went back to waiting.
Waiting, waiting, waiting.
Galen came and went.
Logan stayed. For Locke. For me.
For Nash.
It was three in the morning when a surgeon finally delivered the best news and the worst.
Nash was out of surgery. He wasaliveand in recovery. But this hospital hadrulesand no club-associated nurse to bend them.
They were kicking us out.
We couldn’t see Nash until morning.
* * *
Cam wore Logan’s clothes.
“They look good on him.” Remy passed me a mug of lady grey tea.How did he know?“He’s not that much smaller.”
I glanced at my brother. Taking in the sight of him so beaten down by the crashhe could hardly hold his head up—the only reason he was here, with me and Locke at Logan and Remy’s house, and not guarding the hospital with the others.