Page 179 of Protecting What's Mine

60

The hospital was a zoo. It felt like half the damn town, including Mack’s foster parents and their daughter, showed up just to make sure she was okay. By the time they were all reassured that Mack was alive and she was finally discharged, it was nine in the morning, and she and Linc were exhausted and starving.

To Mack, it felt like a lot of fuss for a bullet wound that hadn’t hit anything vital.

Skyler and Zane had dropped off Linc’s truck at the hospital and thoughtfully included a change of clothes for them both. They changed into their matching BFD sweats, and then Linc carted Mack out of the hospital like she was precious cargo.

She yawned mightily from the passenger seat. “This isnotthe Thanksgiving I imagined,” she sighed.

“Dreamy, any day with you is a gift,” he said, interlacing his fingers with hers. “A bullet-riddled, arson-fueled gift during which all of my coworkers caught a glimpse of my girlfriend’s perfect breasts.”

“Yay them,” she said sarcastically.

“Old time’s sake?” he asked, pointing ahead of them through the windshield.

“Hell. Yes.”

They stopped at the diner, sat at “their” table, and sat on the same side of the booth.

The server, the same woman they had their first time there, paused mid-special retelling to take them in. The bruises, some fresh and some fading, on both their faces. The layers of grime. Linc had some of Mack’s dried blood on his neck and chin. The server grunted. “Holidays sure are hard on some people.”

Mack snorted tea through her nose, and Linc put his head down on the table and laughed until he couldn’t breathe.

When they got home—to the residence that hadn’t burned to the ground—they stripped down and fell into Linc’s bed. Exhausted both physically and mentally. She woke, hours later, dizzy and disoriented but warm and safe anchored by Linc’s arm. Her side hurt like a few dozen hornets had taken a shot at her, but other than that, Mack felt remarkably chipper.

He stirred against her and buried his face in her hair. “We smell,” he sighed but made no attempt to release her.

“Shower?” she suggested.

“Shower.”

They showered carefully, gently, and then spent a very long time staring out of Linc’s gym window at the charred carcass of the cottage Mack had called home for the last three months, the mangled remains of the fence.

“Guess I’m moving in,” she mused over her green tea.

“Damn right you are,” he said.

“Poor Betsy.”

“She’d be proud to give her life this way,” he said. Though Mack thought his eyes looked a little glassy as he stared out at the wrecked truck. Someone had thoughtfully pushed it back into his yard. Betsy’s front end was crunched in, her pristine paint scraped. Her fenders dented. It would take another five years for him to restore her again, Mack bet.

“You know, I came here to start a calmer life,” she said.

“You came here for a new adventure,” he corrected her. “And you found me.”

“Maybe I’ll learn to make jelly.”

“I’ll take up competitive corn hole,” he decided.

She glanced out at the ruins again. “I just keep thinking about all those doilies that went up in flames.”

Linc snorted. “Maybe that can be your new hobby. Flame retardant doilies.”

She put her mug down and ran her hands up his chest. “Or—and I’m just throwing this out here—we could just have a lot of sex all the time.”

“Uh-uh, Dreamy. No sex until you’ve had your wound care follow-up. Doctor’s orders.”

“You asked Dr. Ling that?” Mack was horrified.