He held the bottle to my lips and as I drank, he bent to kiss the top of my head tenderly, letting me know that he wasn’t too far gone.  My Heath was still inside there somewhere.

“Are you bleeding?” I asked him as he cut me loose, my eyes running over his bloody form.  All of it was dry or nearly so.

“No.  None of this is mine.”

“Earl’s?”

“Yes,” he bit out, tone savage.  “He’s dead.”

“Good,” I said, just as savagely.

He picked me up and took me out of there.

I couldn’t help it, when the outside sun hit my face, I started to cry.

He was holding me to his bloody chest, stroking my hair, over and over, murmuring, “That’s my girl.  You’re good now.  Everyone is okay.”

His tone was reassuring, but his arms around me were shaking badly.  He was trying to convince himself as much as me.

I wasn’t the only one that’d been damaged by this ordeal.

I got a few details out of him when we started to drive.

He’d surrendered himself to Earl days ago, but he’d managed to turn the tables.  For days, he’d been torturing Earl, trying to get him to give up our whereabouts.

It had taken some time, but he’d broken the doctor.  The second Heath laid eyes on me in the house, Mason had been informed, and Earl had been put out of his misery.

Somehow, we’d survived.  We were alive.  All of us.  And Earl, the fucking psychopath doctor, was dead.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

There were some dark times then, while I recovered and wondered if I’d ever be the same.  Ever feel the same.

And it was somehow enlightening, because it gave me an insight into what Heath was going through, when you looked around at people living their normal lives and wondered how the hell you’d ever be like them again.

Raf was going through the same.  He was changed now, some of his soft spots hardened, some of his sweet traits broken.

But we were alive, and life went on.

Heath had tried his best to let me live a normal life while he protected his sister, but the incident with Earl took that choice out of all of our hands.

My safety was compromised, my connection to Heath had made me a target, and considering that Earl had been a hired hit, there was no reason to think that it wouldn’t happen again.

And so, though I wasn’t a witness, I went into the program and into hiding with Iris.

My sons came with me.  They didn’t even complain.  We were told upfront that it would likely last years, but none of us could conceive being separated with no contact for so long.

I didn’t get to say goodbye to my friends, or even my parents, for fear of putting them in danger, so all of that was handled for me.

I coped with it by telling myself that I’d see them all again in a few years, but it was rough coming to terms with that part of it.

I got some time with Heath after that, a few weeks, while I recovered, time where he didn’t leave my side.

I’d been examined by a doctor and put on bedrest for a time to be safe.

Things were strange between Heath and me.  Both settled and unsettled.

He was happy about the baby, I could tell.  It was obvious by the way he couldn’t keep his hands off my belly for more than a few minutes at a time.

Sometimes I’d wake to find him lips pressed to my stomach, a near peaceful look on his face.

But we didn’t talk about it much at first.  We didn’t talk about a lot of things.

There was one thing, though, that Heath loved to talk about.

“We’re getting married,” he told me, bringing it up out of the blue.

“What?”

“You’re having my baby.  We’re getting married.”

I couldn’t believe what he’d just said, or how he’d said it.

A few pounding heartbeats later, I managed to get out, “I’m forty-one years old, Heath.  I don’t need to be married to have a baby.  This isn’t the fucking fifties.  We can co-parent without being husband and wife.”

“Then don’t do it for the baby.  Do it for me.  I need this.  I need to know that when I go out there, I have this to come home to.  You’re mine, and I need to make it legal.”

My heart was hammering in my chest, but I just stared at him.

And he kept going.  “This isn’t negotiable.  I let you go once.  I went against every instinct I had and walked away from you, because I thought it was the unselfish thing to do.  Now you’re stuck with me for as long as I’m alive.  You’re mine, that baby is mine, and we’re going to make it legal.”

“We don’t even have our own identities.  It wouldn’t mean anything.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed with a rough swallow as he stared at me, his expression raw, cold eyes stark.  “It would mean something to me.”

God, he knew how to get to me.

“Tell me something sweet,” I urged him with a smile.

“I need you,” he rasped, voice weighty with feeling.

“And?” I prompted.

He looked confused, so I made it easy on him.

“Do you love me, Heath?”

“Of course I do.  What do you think all this is, if not love?”

That stunned me, stopping my heart, then sending it slamming wildly back into life.

And still, I felt the need to say, “You never would have taken me with you if you weren’t forced to by circumstance.”