Pulling them apart.
She didn’t want to be apart from him any longer. They’d already wasted so many years. Too many.
She stepped toward the ambulance. “I was going to give it to him.” Logan should know this.
He stared at her with glittering eyes.
“I wasn’t going to sit there and let him kill you. I was going to trade the drive for your life.”
“Ma’am, you’re going to need stitches,” the EMT next to her said. “We have to get you checked out.”
She didn’t want to be checked out. “Logan...”
He was yanking at the tubes the EMTs had already attached to him. Trying to get out of the ambulance, even as the two uniformed men beside him attempted to force him back down.
Juliana rushed forward and leaped into the ambulance. “Don’t! You’ll hurt yourself!”
He caught her hand in his and immediately stilled. His fingers brushed over her knuckles.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” one of the EMTs muttered, a young man with close-cropped red hair, “before the guy tries to break loose again.”
The ambulance lurched forward.
Logan wasn’t fighting any longer. He let the men tend to his wounds. Juliana let them examine the deep cuts on her arms.
Logan kept holding her hand.
She kept staring at him.
There was so much to say, and she wasn’t sure where to start. They’d been through hell. Death. Life.
Could they go back to the beginning and just be two people again? Two people who wanted a chance at love?
He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “Don’t leave me.”
Her chest ached. “I won’t.”
The sirens screamed on, and they left the blood and death behind them.
* * *
WHEN LOGAN OPENED his eyes, the first thing he saw was Juliana. She was in the chair next to his bed, her head tilted back against the old cushion. Heavy bandages covered the tops of her arms. She was holding his hand.
He stared at her a moment and watched her sleep. She’d always been so beautiful to him. So beautiful that his chest burned just looking at her.
When Guerrero had threatened to use his knife on Juliana’s face, when she’d braced herself, drawing in that deep breath and trying to be strong, something had broken inside of Logan.
He’d killed before. Killing was part of his job, part of surviving.
But this time, it had been pure animal instinct. Savagery. The primal urge to protect what was his.
Juliana was his. That was the way he’d thought of her for years.
But there weren’t any secrets between them now, and he didn’t know... What does she think of me?
His fingers tightened around hers, and almost instantly, she stirred in her chair. Her lashes lifted and her gaze locked on him. Then she stared at him. A slow smile curved her lips and her eyes—
She still looks at me like I’m some kind of hero.
When she, more than any other, knew he wasn’t.
“Took you long enough,” she said as she leaned toward him. Her voice was a husky caress that seemed to roll right over his body. “I was starting to wonder when I’d get you awake again.”
“How long...” He paused and cleared his throat so he’d sound less like a growling bear. “How long was I out?”
Shadows darkened her eyes as her smile dimmed. “They had to operate on you, stitch you back up from the inside out.”
Yeah, he could feel the pull of the stitches. He ignored the pain.
“And you’ve been sleeping for a couple of hours since then.”
“You were...here, with me?”
She nodded. “You told me not to leave.” One shoulder lifted, stretching the bandage on her arm. “I got stitched up while you were in surgery, and they let me come back once you were stable.”
She rose from the chair and his fingers tightened around hers automatically, a reflex because he didn’t want to let her go.
She glanced down. A frown pulled her brows low, and he forced himself to release her.
“Gunner’s going to be all right, too,” she said, and her words came a little fast, as if she were nervous. “Sydney’s with him. She’s been in his room...well, almost as long as I’ve been in here.”
He knew why Sydney would stay with Gunner. Those two...there had always been something there. Something neither would talk about.
While he’d spent his years thinking about Juliana, Gunner had spent his time watching Syd—when he thought she wasn’t looking.
“So I guess everything is over now,” Juliana continued, easing away from the bed a bit. “The bad guy is dead. The EOD has the evidence and I can get my life back.”
“Yes.” The word was even more of a growl than before. Logan couldn’t help it. Fear and fury were beating at him. Don’t want to lose her.
“Thank you.” Her gaze was solemn. “You risked your life for me. I won’t ever forget that.”
She turned on her heel, began to head for the door.
No damn way. “I wouldn’t have much of a life without you.”
Juliana stilled.
“I lost you once, and if you walk away...” Like she was doing. Hell, no. “Don’t, okay? Don’t walk away. Give me a chance. Give us a chance.” And he was getting out of that bed. Yanking at the IV line attached to his arm. Swearing at the bandages and stitches that pulled his flesh.
Juliana turned back around. Her eyes widened when she saw him and she rushed back to his side. “Why do you keep doing this?” She pushed him onto bed. “I was just going to tell Jasper that you were awake. I wasn’t leaving you.”
So he’d panicked. A guy could do that when the woman he loved had almost died. And he did still love her. He’d tried to deny it, tried to move on.
Hadn’t happened.
“I meant it,” he told her, and yeah, he was holding tight to her hand again. He just felt as if she was about to disappear. Slip away.
“Logan?”
“When I said I loved you, it was true. I wanted you to know in case...” In case Guerrero had carried through on his threats. Logan shook his head. “I know you hate me—”
“No, I don’t.”
He wouldn’t let the hope come, not yet. Not hating someone was a long way from loving the person. “I should have told you the truth about your mother the first day I met you. I was scared,” he admitted as he stared her straight in the eye. “Scared you’d walk away. Scared that I’d see disgust in your gaze.”