Battles of the Broken (Sons of Templar MC 6)

“I was terrified at the thought,” he continued, voice a low rasp. “Terrified enough that I itched for a needle to take the fear away. But instead I gripped on to you swelling with my baby. Giving me a light I didn’t know was left in the world for me.”

Tears streamed down my face. Gage’s hand left my stomach and brushed them with his thumb.

“That’s why I didn’t fuckin’ do shit,” he clipped. “I was too busy being fucking happy that I didn’t know my world was eating away at you from the inside out.”

I couldn’t take anymore.

“Stop,” I choked. “You are not allowed to do that, Gage. Blame yourself, punish yourself for being happy about that. She’s not taking that.” My voice was feral, as was my soul at that point. I needed her dead at my feet, for making Gage hope for something that scared him more than anything.

And for taking that away.

“She’s going to die,” I promised, and his eyes flared. “But that hope won’t. I won’t let it.”

I took his hand and placed it on my stomach again.

“One day,” I promised.

“After we make her bleed.”

I nodded. “After we bury her.”

My grandmother was decorating because she couldn’t do anything else to chase away the reality that she might’ve lost another grandchild, the last one she had.

Much like my parents were doing everything they could to chase away the fact that they’d almost lost their last remaining child. So where my grandmother was flitting in and out, trying to convince the doctors that “a coat of paint would be me doing you a favor instead of the other way around,” my mother hovered. Like didn’t leave my bedside. She fussed with my pillows, my water, my heart rate.

It got frustrating.

Especially the better I got.

But I knew I had to let her.

My father was different. Distant. Almost cold. But I knew he cared, considering he barely left either, sitting in the corner of the room, reading the paper, then a book, then another book.

I knew that meant it’d hit him, because my father was not a man to sit and read a book. To sit for long periods of time. My dad ‘puttered.’ There was always something to fix, a man to see, a job to be done. He was barely stationary. Increasingly so after David’s death. Like if he made sure the taps were never dripping, the lawn was always mowed and the gutters were always clear, it might mean he didn’t have to face the death of his only son.

But he didn’t leave to fix a thing. Barely spoke to anyone, as was his way. He barely blinked at Gage—who was as constant as my mother, but he slept here too, with me tucked in his arms, though I wasn’t sure how much he slept—which was not his way. My father was straitlaced. Sensible. Where my grandmother had abhorred all of my beige boyfriends, my father had adored them. Well, in the way he adored people, which was nodding and telling them their investments were “sound.”

And it had been in the back of my mind—before I almost died, of course—what would happen when he met Gage. There would be no nods, or comments on investments. There would be drama. Or at least his version of drama, which would’ve been a furrowing of his brows and a request for a “private word” with me.

None of those things had happened.

But I was finally out of the hospital and would make a full recovery with the proviso that I took it easy for the next month.

My parents had left.

I was glad of it. I loved them both dearly, but it was suffocating, especially since my mother had decided to resurrect David’s ghost. She never said his name, but he lingered in the hospital room with her sorrow. I needed to get better, and I couldn’t get better around their pain.

We were in my living room. I didn’t know how it was almost fully repaired; Gage had obviously stood over the contractors with a gun to get it done.

“Wanted you to come home to your sanctuary,” he murmured in my ear as he carried me over the threshold. “And I needed mine back.”

And he gave it to me.

For a time.

Gage

Two Months Later

He was uneasy.

It had been almost three fucking months and they hadn’t found Jade. She was smoke, had melted into the air as if she knew it was the one thing that would drive Gage to the edge of insanity.

Lauren was the only thing that held him back.

Barely.

And that was because she was breathing. Healed. Smiling.

Radiating fucking light.

And he had her in his arms.

They were going to find Jade eventually.

And they would kill her.

He needed to find solace in that.

For now, he found solace in the magical creature in front of him.