Page 62 of Keeping Kasey (Love and Blood #3)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Logan

The sterile scent of alcohol and the dry burning of my throat are the first two things to process. Quickly following is the dull throb of every single inch of my body.

Wow, that’s annoying.

I pry my eyes open with a groan that makes my lungs and chest ache like I’ve been hit by a car.

Was I hit by a car?

The small room I’m in has stark white walls with tasteless paintings on one of them and a window on the other. I glance over the bulky bed, tubes, wires, and IV rod at my side.

A hospital room.

Maybe I got hit by a car after all.

“About time,” a voice at my side deadpans.

My head snaps—painfully—to face the owner of the voice, and I realize that I’m not in a hospital at all.

“I’m in hell, aren’t I?” I rasp.

Joshua Moreno smiles, lounging in one of the upright hospital chairs to my left. He seems at ease, like my being in a hospital is just another day. While I can’t remember exactly why I’m here, it’s marginally—and I mean very marginally —comforting that he’s so calm.

“While I’m flattered to be your version of hell—no, you’re not going to die,” he answers, and there’s only a hint of disappointment in that answer.

The door opens so fast it slams into the wall, and I wince at the sound, my entire body throbbing in protest.

“Good morning, sunshine!” Damon announces in a cheery voice that grates on every single one of my nerves.

“Yeah,” I groan, letting my head fall back against the pillow. “I’m definitely in hell.”

Damon takes the seat beside Moreno, who cracks a smile.

“How do you feel?” Damon asks, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

“Worse now,” I grind out. “Could you tone it down a hundred notches? My head’s killing me.”

“Just your head?” My brother scoffs. “You’ve got nerve damage in your toes and fingers, frostbite on your feet, and have been unconscious for eighteen hours, but your head is what’s bothering you?”

For a second, all I can do is stare at him.

When I look over my body, covered by the thin hospital blanket, I don’t notice anything that looks particularly alarming. My body aches, sure, but if what Damon says is true, then…

I pull my hands slowly from beneath the blanket. Bandages cover them, but they’re loosely wrapped, giving me a peek at the blue and purple patches. Small blisters have begun forming under the skin, and a few areas are already on the brink of peeling. It hurts like hell to move them.

I go to flex my feet, but the pain is so intense that I immediately stop. If this is how my hands look, I can’t imagine what my feet must look like if they hurt that badly.

“What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” Damon asks.

I can recall the feelings without trouble: fear, hopelessness, determination, and the unrelenting cold. The images don’t come as easily, like they’ve been shrouded in darkness—or maybe the memories are darkness…

A singular picture breaks through the dark—a rounded face, beautiful even covered in bruises.

“Kasey!” I shout and jolt upright. “She’s hurt—we have to—”

“Woah”—Damon shoots to his feet to coax me back down—“you can’t be moving a lot right now. You almost died out there.”

I don’t realize I’ve used my hands to push myself up until they burn like I’ve stuck them in a blazing furnace, and I curse as I fall back into bed.

“Kasey’s hurt,” I say again, ignoring the waves of pain coursing through me. “She needs—”

“She’s here,” Damon says. “We found her, too.”

“Where is she? Is she okay? How did you find her? I need to see her.”

“She’ll be back any minute,” Moreno says, his tone condescending, like he’s talking to a lost child looking for his parents.

I glare at him. “What are you doing here anyway?”

“My wife asked me to stay while she and James meet with the hospital director to personally vet every doctor and nurse allowed in this room.”

“Feel free to get out,” I tell him.

“And miss this heartfelt moment?”

Damon curls his lips to suppress a laugh, and I wonder what I did to make my sister hate me so much that she’d leave me here with these idiots.

“What happened?” I ask, patience wearing thinner by the second.

“Dominic kept bugging Ryder about seeing the Lightning McQueen car, so he brought the kids to the hotel to see it, but it wasn’t there—and neither were you,” Damon explains.

“By then, you’d been missing for a few hours, and all we had was hotel security footage of Kasey leaving.

We tracked down the Cadillac, found her stuff, and her boyfriend’s corpse, but no sign of you guys. ”

“Then how did you find us?”

Damon answers my question, but I don’t hear a word he says. My eyes are drawn to the door before the knob turns. I know exactly who’s about to come inside—I can feel her.

The door swings open, and the moment my eyes meet Kasey’s, I’m struck with a relief so pure, the corners of my eyes sting with the force of it. The weight of fear and worry slides off me in an instant, and I’m overcome with peace, contentment, and love .

Just like that, the memories fall into place. The call from Diaz. The ultrasound. The list. The blizzard. Leaving Kasey.

Realizing I would die in my attempt to save us.

It makes this moment—seeing Kasey here, safe and smiling—feel like floating on air. I risked everything on the chance I might find help, and it very nearly cost us both our lives.

She looks a lot better than the last time I saw her.

The bruising around both her eyes is still dark and swollen, but the gash across her forehead is clean and neatly stitched. The arm that was dislocated rests in a sling, her left leg is in a thick cast, and the way she sits—straight-backed and stiff—makes me think her ribs are taped, too.

She wears a hospital gown, her hair bound in a messy pile on her head, and yet she still manages to be absolutely stunning.

“You’re awake,” Kasey says on an exhale. Her eyes glisten, and her smile is barely contained by the tape across her bottom lip in two different places, keeping the cuts from opening again.

“Are you okay?” I ask when the nurse pushes her wheelchair to my side. “What did the doctors say? Did they check for internal bleeding? Should you even be out of bed?”

She reaches her mobile hand up to cup my cheek. “I’m fine. Thirty stitches, two cracked ribs, a broken ankle, some swelling in my shoulder, a minor concussion, and a hell of a lot of bruising.”

“Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad,” I mutter with an eye roll, even as I shamelessly lean into her touch.

“It isn’t. It could’ve been a lot worse,” she says, and her fingers rake behind my ear, curling into my hair. “What about you? How do you feel?”

“I’ve been better.”

The nurse—now suppressing a smile—scans my hands warily. “Now that you’re awake, the doctor is going to want to do a full examination. Is there anything I can get you before I send him in?”

“Half an hour,” I tell her.

She hesitates, eyes flicking to my hands again, but she must conclude that I’m not in any imminent danger because she nods and leaves the room.

I reach for Kasey’s hand, and she hesitates before taking it gently in her own.

She runs her fingers over my hand with a feather-light touch, inspecting the damaged skin with a furrowed brow. “Does it hurt?”

“Not when you’re touching me.”

A stifled laugh cuts into the blissful moment, and I turn a vicious glare on Moreno, who presses his fist to his lips.

I’m about to part with the remaining feeling in my hands to send my fist through his face, but Kasey’s sharp tone beats me to it.

“Get out, Joshua,” she snaps. “You’re being an asshole.”

Moreno’s smile is unmoving as he rises from his chair, a thoroughly amused Damon at his side. “I’m going to tell my wife you’re awake. You have approximately five minutes until she’s busting through this door.”

“Make it ten, and I won’t tell her that you’ve been antagonizing Logan,” Kasey threatens.

He laughs as he goes, and I get the sense that it’s an agreement.

Damon lingers just long enough to make things awkward. “Well,” he says, looking down at his watch. “I’ll just, uh, go.”

The door closes behind them, and if I could walk, I’d lock it.

I arch a brow at Kasey. “Since when are you on a first-name basis with Moreno?”

Hearing his name on Kasey’s lips brings back murderous feelings I thought I had under control where my brother-in-law is concerned.

Kasey gives me an exasperated look, gently rubbing her hand over mine. If she means for the gesture to calm me, she nails it.

“Since he carried me a mile through the snow in the middle of the night.”

“He did what ?”

“Imagine my disappointment when I thought it was you coming into the cabin, only for him and Damon to show up.”

“Better than waking up to him here,” I mutter, and Kasey’s soft laugh eases me in ways nothing else in this world ever could.

When her laughter fades, her hold on me tightens, and her eyes study me with wonder.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Me too,” I admit.

“You would’ve been if your siblings hadn’t gotten there on time.”

“How did they?” I ask, since I’d ignored Damon’s answer a few minutes ago.

“Mark’s car led them to the right area, so when your phone caught a signal around 1 a.m., they weren’t too far away,” she explains.

“By the time they got to you, you were unconscious with a weak pulse, so Elise and James took you to the hospital. Joshua and Damon traced your footprints back to the cabin to find me—scared the heck out of me, too. Damon went to direct snowplows and an ambulance while Joshua carried me down the driveway to meet them.”

“Are you telling me I owe that bastard?”

Kasey shrugs, masking her wince with a sardonic smile. “I’m telling you he earned a first-name basis.”

I scan her over again. “Did they give you anything for the pain?”

“A few hours ago. I’m due for more soon, but it doesn’t hurt as much as I thought it would. I got lucky.”

“I don’t know if I’d call being abducted, beaten, and stranded in a blizzard lucky .”

She inspects our hands. “What about being found and saved by you?”