Page 94 of At Your Mercy

“Love you,” I murmured shakily before placing my lips on the rim of the glass.

22

Ronan

It had been a week of long, blurry days of drifting in and out of sleep, of painkillers that made the ceiling shift and ripple if I stared too long, and of Wes’s steady presence at my side like gravity itself.

He wouldn’t let me lift a finger.

If I so much as tried to swing my legs out of bed on my own, he’d materialize out of nowhere—one hand on my shoulder, a quiet“not yet, doll.”He fed me, helped me sit up, changed the bandages when they needed it. The gunshot wound still burned when I breathed too deeply, but it was cleaner now, the edges less angry-looking.

The strangest part was the quiet—just sunlight sneaking through the blinds and the sound of Wes humming under his breath as he moved around the room.

Sometimes he’d sit at the foot of the bed, files spread over his lap, laptop open with reports of who knows what.

The patch over his eye was smaller now, the bruise along his jaw fading from purple to yellow. His wrist was still wrapped, a splint peeking from beneath the rolled sleeve of his shirt. I hated seeing him hurt, but he brushed it off whenever I mentioned it, more worried about how many spoonfuls of soup I’d managed than the fact that he could be facing permanent blindness.

He was gentle in a way that didn’t make sense for someone like him. For someone who’d seen the things he had.

At night, when the pain made it hard to sleep, he’d pull me against his chest, his palm splayed warm over the bandages as if he could will the wound away. I didn’t ask if he slept. I doubted he did.

He told me stories from the time he spent raising his nephews, regaling me with tales of “the first time they made a head shot” or “that time they almost set the elderly neighbor’s house on fire.”

Listening to how his nephews were, I suddenly understood why he didn’t seem overwhelmed by my personality.

He also told me more recent stories of them. About how the eldest had kidnapped his patient, who’d been seeing him for trauma therapy—which was… well, I imagined that wasn’t very helpful to the poor guy’s mental health. And about how the younger twins had kidnapped their partner, too.

I was glad that the kidnapping gene seemed to come from Wes’s brother, and not him.

I also learned that Wes had become their guardian after his sister-in-law had tried to drown the twins, which led to the eldest shooting and killing both parents.

Sometimes it felt like he was bullshitting me with these stories, becausefuck.

It wasn’t a big surprise then when he’d told me that Elias was being held in the twins’ basement until I was ready to deal with him.

Because apparently, keeping people locked in their basement was just a regular thing for them.

Even with all of Wes’s efforts to keep me entertained, I wasn’t used to sitting in bed all day. By the seventh morning, I’d finally had enough of being treated like I was made of glass.

“Wes,” I muttered, watching him pour coffee into a mug he clearly meant for me. “You don’t have to keep doing everything for me. I can get up and get my own coffee.”

He didn’t look up. “Not happening, doll.”

I rolled my eyes, but it tugged something in my chest, and I winced. He was at my side instantly, one knee on the mattress, concern etched between his brows.

“See?” he said, softer now. “Still hurts.”

“Yeah, but it’s already so much better. I’m going to go insane in here, babe.”

For a second, he just stared at me, like the words didn’t quite register. Then he reached out, brushing his thumb along my jaw the way he always did when he didn’t know how to answer.

“I like you calling me ‘babe’.”

“That’s all you got out of that?”

The corner of his lip turned up in a smirk. “Yep.”

I groaned, “I’m going to die of boredom, Wes.”