I didn't even want to think about having to tell him what had happened since he was shot- how many men he would have to mourn while he recovered.
But if I could at least help eliminate the threat, I hoped it would mean he would take it easy and give his body time to heal. If he woke up while things were still crazy and up in the air, I could see him ripping out his IVs and trying to take off on a one-man mission to put an end to it all, likely making himself worse in the process.
I carefully boxed it up and made my way back to the car, keeping the gloves on even as I drove one town over where the idiots had luckily rented a very secluded three bedroom home on a cul-de-sac. Technically, there were two neighbors, but they were bank-owned and vacant. They didn't want to be seen. And, luckily for me, that meant I wouldn't be either when I parked on the street behind and cut through the woods, the night falling giving me perfect cover with my dark hoodie as I made my way across the backyard and toward the Bilco doors and greased the joints before pulling them open and slipping unseen inside.
It wasn't the kind of basement you wanted to be in. Me, I never really liked being in any basements, but this one was dirt-floored and spider-infested with old, forgotten rusted hoes and rakes leaning on the walls beside festering buckets of lord-knew what. Well, one smelled strongly of gasoline so, hey, that worked in my favor. Who the hell left buckets of gasoline laying about? That was just asking for an explosion.
A floor above me, I could hear the scrape of a chair, the thump of footsteps, and the muffled, low register of male voices talking.
My heart was a frantic, sickening thing, lodged up near my throat as I set the bomb down in the most central location then went back to drag the bucket of gasoline over as well, carefully pouring it on the floor as I set the timer then as quickly as I could while being silent as possible, I made my way back out, closed the doors, and booked it.
The timer was set for thirty minutes and I wanted to be back at the hospital like nothing happened by then. It was a believable alibi. The staff knew I pretty much never left and certainly never for extended periods of time. They would see me walking back up onto the floor with a vending machine coffee and assume they just happened to miss me walking past a couple minutes before.
On that note, I got my coffee that I desperately needed. Adrenaline drained, I was feeling the lack of sleep. Four days strong. I was going to need to crash, nightmares be damned. My body would only take so much.
I slipped Digger's keys into his pocket and went to move past him. But he snagged my arm. "What'd you do?"
"You'll know in about ten minutes. Tell Lo that I don't appreciate being left out of the loop."
With that, I pulled away, closed the door, and took my first deep breath in over an hour.
I kicked out of my shoes, took a long pull of my coffee, then put it down and climbed into bed with Wolf.
I really wasn't supposed to. There were rules.
But those rules flew out the window when they saw exactly the kind of fit I was capable of.
No one even mentioned it anymore.
Wolf was colder unconscious than he usually was. In bed at any other time, he was like a furnace; I barely ever needed a blanket. But in that hospital bed, he was almost cool to the touch, something I found unnerving no matter how many nights I curled up with him and felt it. So I kicked up the covers and pulled them up to my shoulders as I nestled my face into his neck, breathing in a smell that wasn't his own because it was all hospital soap and sanitizer and plastic and wrong.
But it was still Wolf.
He was still mine.
Even if he didn't feel and smell like himself.
Even if he didn't even know I was there.
I felt the tears well up at that and the hopeless feeling it brought with it, but fought them off until exhaustion finally took a hold of me.
--
"You smell like bombs."
I had been teeter-tottering between sleep and awake for what had to have been twenty minutes, my body knowing it needed more sleep, but my brain saying it was better not to risk a nightmare by allowing that.
But at those words, at those four, beautiful words coming from a rough, horse voice that was so, so incredibly familiar, I jolted fully awake, shooting upward, not realizing that by doing so, I had slammed my hand into Wolf's stomach until he let out a grunt.
Another sound that was genuinely music to my ears.
As soon as I looked down and I saw those amazing, beautiful honey eyes on me, well, I lost it again.
I thought I had sobbed hard when they first brought him in and, well, pretty much every single night that followed, but none of that even came close. Apparently relieved crying was even more uncontrollable than sad crying.
"Shh," he said as I planted my face into his chest to muffle the noise.
But I couldn't. I couldn't stop and I couldn't be quiet and I didn't even try until I felt the last of the tears slip out, until I felt bone dry inside. Then and only then did I wipe my eyes, press up, and look at him again.
"How long?" he asked, hand moving almost comically slow off the bed to touch the side of my face. He must have been weak. He had been wasting away little by little every day.
I swallowed hard, knowing there was no way to sugarcoat the truth. "About nine weeks."
"Nine?" he growled, trying to push up, but I scooted back and placed my hands on his shoulder, pressing him back.
"You still have stitches," I warned him. "No moving until the doctor looks you over."
"Fuck the doctor," he hissed. "Details, Janie."
"Can you at least get..."
"Details," he ground out and, well, I didn't blame him. I would have felt the same way after waking up and realizing that much time was gone.
"Alright, um. We got you here. You went into surgery. Reign and all the guys came back from their pointless trips. Then, ah..."
"Janie..." his voice had warning and I looked up into his eyes and saw the need to know there.
"Reign, Cash, Repo, Duke, and Renny are okay. The rest..." I trailed off, shaking my head.
"Fuck. Mother fuckers. Who?"
I exhaled hard. "They just figured it out a couple days ago thanks to a mix of Penny and the Grassis. It's the Abruzzo family. No," I hissed, pushing him back down again. "I smell like bombs, remember?" I said, voice low in case there was any chance of someone overhearing. "Reign and Lo conspired to keep me out of the loop because, apparently, I'm so damn fragile."
"Lost weight," he observed, pinching my upper arm.
"So did you," I countered. "Hell of a diet, multiple gunshot wounds and major head trauma."
"Missed me," he said, reaching up to touch the swollen mess that my eyes must have been.
"Of course I fucking missed you, you idiot," I said, smiling. "I haven't been able to sleep right in nine weeks. You don't smell like you and you're cold and," I swallowed as another sob rose up in my throat. So much for thinking I was done. "And I didn't know if you were going to wake back up."
"I'm up," he said, shrugging one of his massive shoulders.
I felt myself smile at that- big, goofy. Because he wouldn't say something sappy like 'I would never leave you' or 'I'll always come back to you'. Because he was a realist. He couldn't make those promises.
"Malcolm is going to be so happy to see you," I smiled. "He's been holding up and being all stalwart, but I know he's been worried. He's been staying at the compound. No, wait," I said when he went to shoot up again. "It's okay. They were at Hailstorm for a long time while they redid the compound. New fences and security and walls and this really nifty DARPA glass room. It's practically impenetrable now. He's as safe as can be. Reign would never bring the kids back if he didn't believe that. You know that."
"He okay?"
"He's... Reign," I offered, knowing he understood. Reign was a lot of things, but above all- he was a man of his people. It didn't matter what went down, he held it together for all of them.
"Hey, Janie, we
just want to check... oh!" the nurse started, stopping halfway across the room.
"He woke up," I supplied stupidly, unable to stop the big grin splitting my face.
"I can see that," she said, giving me just as big a smile back. I think the staff, after a while, started to lose hope. Not that I blamed them. It seemed hopeless. And they felt bad for me because I couldn't resign myself to the seemingly inevitable.
She was happy for me.
"Let me just go call for the doctor and tell him the good news. He is going to want to look you over."
She left with that and I turned back to Wolf. "Don't worry. I've been doing most of the... looking over. None of those nurses were going to get to wash you up."
"Washed me up, huh?" he asked, eyes getting a little heated.
"Oh, no you don't," I laughed, shaking my head at him. "You don't want the doctor coming in here to you with a hard-on, do you?"
"Fuck the doctor," was his very typical response and I laughed. God, it felt so good to laugh again. And not the kind of laugh I gave to friends who told a joke or Malc when he tried to lighten the mood- a laugh followed by a bone-deep guilt for feeling even the tiniest bit happy when Wolf's fate was unknown. It was a full, guilt-free laugh. "Didn't know I was gone," he said, his hand sliding to the back of my neck, pulling me forward. "Missed you anyway."
And with that, he pulled me close and sealed his lips to mine.
I wanted to be soft and gentle and keep him from getting too worked up. But the second I felt him beneath me, lips claiming mine again, there was no restraint. I kissed him with every second of uncertainty, every shed tear, every knot my stomach had been twisted in, every bit of fear and defeat and frustration and what was at the root of all those feelings- the seemingly bottomless pool of love I had for him.
"Alright, alright," a voice said from behind us, making me jump, but Wolf held me for a second more, giving me soft for a bit before pulling back. And when he did, my lips felt swollen, sensitive. I pressed them together and turned to see the doctor standing there, smile understanding, eyes as kind as I remembered them. "So, look who finally put his wife out of her misery," he said, coming closer as I slowly climbed off the bed, feeling my heart fly up in my chest when Wolf reached for my hand, held onto it, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. "That is quite the woman you have there. Thought half the staff was going to quit that first week," he added, looking at Wolf's monitors. "Do you have any pain anywhere?"
A minute or two later, still in the middle of a barrage of questions, the door flew open and there was Lo. "Jstorm, I swear on all that is holy, if I didn't love you so much I would... oh my God," she stopped, her jaw going slack, her eyes going wide.
"'Sup, Lo?"
Her mouth opened and closed twice before she shook her head as if to clear it. "'Sup Lo?" she repeated scoffing. "Got ten hours?" she asked.
"Take her," Wolf said, squeezing my hand again before releasing me. "Go on. Got enough sleep," he added when I stubbornly planted my feet.
To that, I gave him a small smile and followed Lo out of the room.
"Why didn't you call me?"
"He just woke up. Like... just. I didn't even get that far," I added as she reached for her phone to, no doubt, call Cash.
"Wolf is up," she said, then clicked the call off. "Bathroom," she said to me, leading me down the hall until we found the public one. We went in and she looked around before taking up guard just inside the door. "What the fuck, Janie?"
"I was upset, Lo," I snapped. "I wasn't broken. I wasn't weak. I wasn't too fucking fragile to be able to handle what was going on. I had nothing to do up here but sit and worry and wonder who might be next, who I would be mourning over, why we couldn't get a drop on anyone. And meanwhile, you've known for days who it was and that they were in town and you did nothing?"
"We didn't do nothing. We had everyone we could on it."
"You had everyone but me on it!" I snapped. "I love the people at Hailstorm and I love Alex but you and I both know that none of them hold a fucking candle to me, Lo. And you just got lucky that nothing else bad happened between you finding out and me handling it. How could you and Reign put everyone at risk like that? My son is in that compound."
"Janie, I know you think you were handling it, but you weren't handling it. You were a shell. You weren't eating or sleeping and you were always crying. We didn't think you had what it would take to power through and get answers."
"That wasn't your decision to make. And it wasn't Reign's either. This was not okay. And I am pissed at you for this. But right now, I'd rather go ahead and be happy that my husband is awake after two and a half months and that my son has his father again and that most of the bastards who did this to him and to me and to the rest of The Henchmen are in pieces right fucking now."
"I have to say," she said, calm, almost eerily calm despite the crazy situation and the fact that I was mad at her, something that hadn't happened in our friendship in many years, "for someone with no sleep and tear-swollen eyes... that was some fucking epic work, my little Jstorm."
"Was there collateral damage?" I asked.
"It was perfectly controlled. Eight bodies. It was a good hit to their organization."
"So what now?"
"Well, now... most of the men are on their way to Long Island right now. Renny stayed behind to watch the probates and the women and kids."
"Wait... probates?" I asked, stiffening.
It seemed so soon, but I guessed, it was necessary.
"Long story," Lo said, smiling. "And wait till you hear about Renny and Mina..."
"Renny and Mina?" I asked, face scrunched up. "No fucking way."
But her very distinctive, romance-obsessed smile was all that I needed to know to realize that yes, yes fucking way.
Apparently there was a new power couple in Navesink Bank.
TWELVE
Mina
His story didn't shock me.
That was probably the worst part about the whole ordeal. It spoke a lot to the darkness I had seen in my line of work that genuine psychological and emotional abuse toward a child by their parents who were even professionals in the field didn't phase me anymore.
It didn't mean I wasn't horrified by it. I was. It was despicable. It was absolutely unforgivable that someone would use their child like a lab rat. It was even more troubling to know that they were highly trained and must have known that detachment parenting and using negative reinforcement and withholding affection were possibly the worst methods they could have used for rearing a child.
But, then again, they themselves sounded genuinely cold. Maybe they didn't think anything of it. Which was just sad.
Really, it was amazing Renny was as warm as he was the vast majority of the time. I guess a lot of that was thanks to him getting out as early as he did. Seventeen with the world at his feet; he must have gone buck wild. He must have indulged in women and booze and lawlessness. And, eventually, he made real connections. He learned how to interact appropriately. For the most part.
I understood why he was the way he was.
Though, like I told him earlier, it didn't make it okay and he should try to not go so dark, but it was better to know there wasn't true maliciousness there. He was just raised that way and he hadn't been able to break the pattern.
I knew a thing or two about that myself.
And maybe that was the tipping point for me- maybe seeing a bit of my own shortcomings and insecurities within his, in knowing that there were very few people who could ever understand me the way Renny was capable of.
Whatever it was, by the time he stopped speaking, the decision had already been made somewhere deep inside.
It was going to happen with us.
I understood that, by making that choice, I was signing myself up for the good along with the bad. And Renny's bad could be very bad. But if he tried to control it at least a bit, if he didn't go dark over something as silly as me talking to Laz about our pasts, if he could make an effort t
o not deliberately use my flaws against me, I was okay with taking that chance.
Because, quite frankly, Renny when he was good, was really good. He was sweet and flirty and funny and silly and all the things I wasn't. I found myself almost insanely drawn to those parts of him- the warm he was capable of.
Apparently, he was also sexy as all hell to boot.
Always a plus.
So when the decision was made and I let my guard down most of the way, what I felt was connection and a desire so strong you would swear it was a need.
I didn't fight it.
I was done fighting.
"Oh, baby cakes," he said with a smile that threatened to split his face- open, boyish, contagious, "you're in for a real treat."
My sex tightened in response, already knowing he was going to make good on his promise.
He curled upward, coming chest to chest with me, his hands sliding down my sides until he snagged the tee and slowly slid it up over my skin, so slowly that my skin had a chance to goosebump in response before it finally fell from my wrists and was discarded to the end of the bed.
"Know how many nights I sat up thinking about these," he asked, his hands moving up my belly, touching the sensitive undersides of my breasts, then completely covering them with his palms. "Didn't even do justice to the reality," he went on, his fingers sliding to the sides and stroking his thumbs over the hardened buds.
My hips moved against his, feeling his hardness press against my heat and letting out a hard breath.
"Remind me to send Ashley flowers," he murmured, hands pressing into my sides slightly to anchor me as he bent me backward. "Have a feeling you normally wear goddamn flannel pajamas," he added but took away the insult by sealing his warm mouth over my nipple and sucking hard.
Besides, I couldn't even be mad, I totally did sleep in flannel pajamas.
His lips released me and his teeth snagged me instead, biting in just hard enough to make me let out a low moan before moving across my chest to continue the torment.
Renny (The Henchmen MC #6) Page 13