That tyrant who’d raged.
Torment clawed at my already aching chest.
Rhys had come. Had come to save me and his mama.
And he’d been…shot.
The air wheezed up my throat when the dream became a reality, and I flailed, the panic striking in a whole new way. I ripped and tore at the tubes and wires that I was hooked to so I could get up.
Find him.
Oh god.
No.
“No, no, no,” I mumbled frantically.
Please.
A sob burst as I fought to get free.
As physical pain tore through my shoulder and splintered down my right side.
As I felt my entire world collapse.
Then I froze when I felt the shift.
When that energy thrashed.
A shockwave of intensity.
Bright and blinding and the most beautiful thing I’d ever felt.
My attention shot to the door of my hospital room.
I squinted, praying that I wasn’t seeing things.
That a hallucination hadn’t taken me over because that hulking, beast of a man was there in the doorway. He wore a hospital gown over his massive frame and a soft, wistful grin on his face. “Whoa, there, darlin’.”
I choked over the sob, the sound shifting to a cry of deliverance. “Rhys. You’re okay. You’re here.”
He was here. He was here.
“Shh…” He hushed me as he pushed the door open wider, and he angled in pulling a wheeled vital-sign monitor that was hooked to the wires that weaved under his gown.
“Rhys.”
He lumbered across the room.
His pain palpable.
Slow and wounded but alive.
A whole, gorgeous, mesmerizing sight.
He wound around to the side of the small bed, and carefully, slowly, he crawled in beside me. Grunting and groaning as he went all while I couldn’t contain the emotion that crashed.
It banged the walls and sank in the most astounding kind of comfort into my soul.
Moisture overflowed my eyes and dripped down my cheeks, and I didn’t know whether to weep with relief or with the tragedy of it all.
“Rhys,” I whimpered as he wound those arms around me.
The two of us were nothing but tangled wires and beeping monitors and frantically beating hearts.
He tugged me against his chest, and he pressed his lips to the top of my head as he murmured, “It’s okay, Sweet Thing. I’ve got you. I heard you. I heard you in my dreams.”
A sob broke free, and he tightened his hold. “I’ve got you.”
“I’m so sorry I left. I should have known he was manipulating me.”
“Don’t apologize, Maggie. Know what you were doin’. Know you thought you were looking out for me. Protectin’ me.”
His arm curled fiercely around my body, and his words turned haggard, “That’s supposed to be my job, baby. You should have trusted me to be the one to stand in the line of fire for you. Turns out, you were standin’ in mine. Never wanted to put you in that position. Fuck…I—”
Determination shook my head, and I prayed that finally, finally he would understand. “No, Rhys…when two people love each other, they protect each other. They take care of each other. They are willing to sacrifice, and just like I know you’d willingly give your all for me, don’t you get that I would do the same for you?”
A remorseful sigh heaved from his lips, and it sent wisps of my hair fluttering through the night. His spirit burdened.
Yet, I could feel it catching up.
Coming to certainty.
To a place where it would fully meet with mine.
My fingers softly traced over his sternum. “That’s what you’ve always thought of yourself? As the one who was supposed to take care of everyone else? You thought it was your duty?”
A payment.
A penalty.
I still didn’t have the whole story, but the pieces were building into something devastating.
Shame shivered through the dense air.
“I have a tendency to hurt the ones I love most.”
His poor, beautiful, broken heart.
I didn’t need there to be light in the room to read the anguish inscribed on Rhys’ face. “I was nine when I caused an accident that made my father lose his arm.” The confession left him on coarse, cragged words that he uttered to the crown of my head.
Agony and grief.
He struggled, the man at war with his past, but he managed to continue, “He lost so much more that day, Maggie. I didn’t recognize it until I got a bit older, but I watched my family fall apart. He lost his job, of course, but as time went on, he lost his purpose. His will. He gave up, Maggie, and that was the worst thing I’ve ever had to bear.”
“And you blamed yourself.” It wasn’t even a question. I could feel the guilt radiating from his bones.
“How could I not when I know full well it was my fault?”
“You were just a little boy.”
“A little boy who destroyed his daddy’s life.”
Sorrow pulsed, and I burrowed deeper.
A promise that I would hold some of the weight.
Shoulder it.
Be there for him in every way.