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“You p-promised.”

I almost asked what I’d promised. But then I remembered. The last time I’d ended up in a hospital bed, he’d begged me not to do something that stupid and dangerous again.“Promise me… Don’t ever put yourself at risk like that again…”I’d promised. Sort of. I told him I’d try.

Well, leaping out of a car and into a rioting mob that had just thrown a chunk of pavement through the car window really didn’t seem much liketrying, even to me.

“I know,” is what I managed to say. “I’m sorry.”

“You aren’t,” he retorted.

“I’m sorry I upset you. Hurt you.”

“But you would do it again.”

I tried to hold back the emotion that was threatening to crash through me. It hurt my chest and my stomach—on top of the sharp, pulling pain in my side. “I couldn’t let them kill that cop.”

“You’d rather they kill you.”

“No,” I insisted, even though I knew it was all but impossible to explain. “I just couldn’t watch him die and not do anything.”

Taavi lifted his head, finally, leaning back against the mattress, and I could see the blotchiness of his skin and the red rimming his bloodshot eyes. He didn’t look at me—his gaze was unfocused, aimed up at the ceiling.

“Your dad dragged me into the bathroom at the ER to clean your blood off me.”

Oh, fuck. “I’m so sorry.”

“He told the hospital staff I was a service dog for PTSD, but he’d have to get a collar that wasn’t ruined, because I’d freak out smelling your blood on me.”

Jesus ever-loving fuck.

“So they let me stay in the room, just in case you woke up and panicked.”

“I—”

“You know I hate it when you apologize constantly.”

I did know that. “I know but—”

He turned his head and looked at me, now, and I could barely breathe at the pain in his eyes. “I thought you were going to get yourself killed. And then, somehow, you managed to diffuse things and calm most people down.” He swallowed. “You didn’t feel it at all, did you?”

I shook my head.

“It was a man in a blue coat. Light blue. He had brown hair, a beard, dirty white gloves that will have blood on them now.”

“You should tell Smith.”

Taavi just stared. “He stabbed you before you’d gone more than a few steps.”

I’d had no idea. I hadn’t felt a thing, high on adrenaline, focused on trying to keep everyone else from ending up dead on the pavement.

I swallowed. “That’s why you followed me.”

“I’d have followed you anyway.” To protect me. It wasn’t the first time. Clearly I had to stop thinking of myself as the protector here. Yeah, I’d rescued him from a dumpster and drove him to the ER after he’d been hit by a truck, buthe’d fucking taken on a truck and survived to walk home. And then he’d protected me not once, but twice, once up against some seriously fucked-up death-cult witches.

And here, again, he’d been the reason most people had backed down. This had been the third time. Because a hundred-pound snarling jackal-ass dog was not something you fucked with.

It seems I needed to learn that lesson, too.

“Iamsorry,” I rasped out.