Page 157 of Beyond Protection
He leaned in and kissed me. Outside, the sky had gone dark. Seattle's winter pressed against the windows, but we were warm inside.
Safe.
"Two days," Mac said against my mouth. "Then we get you out of here."
"And after that?"
"After that—" He pulled back enough to gaze into my eyes. "We figure out the rest together."
When visiting hours ended, the hospital was always quieter. Monitors beeped their rhythm. Somewhere down the hall, someone coughed. A nurse's shoes squeaked on linoleum and then faded into the distance.
Mac had pulled his chair as close as it would go, hand resting on the blanket near mine. Not quite touching.
I'd been drifting—pain dulled enough that sleep came in genuine waves instead of medication-forced unconsciousness. Still, something kept pulling me back to the surface.
Want.
It had been building since I first woke up after the gunshot. Since Mac's hand first touched mine, and I knew I was alive.
We'd survived, and I wanted to feel it.
"You're thinking too loud," I said.
Mac smiled. "Sorry."
"What about?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"How different everything is," he said finally. "Three weeks ago, I was performing every interaction, treating my life like a tactical situation." He looked at our hands, almost touching on the blanket. "Now I'm sitting here planning a future I didn't think I'd get to have."
"Is that good different?"
"Yeah, really good."
The monitor beeped. His thumb moved—barely, just a fraction—and brushed against my knuckles through the thin blanket.
We'd been cautious since the shooting. His kisses were tender and restrained, as if I were something fragile. The injury had created a distance neither of us knew how to cross.
Fortunately, in the last day, the medication dosage eased. The pain had dulled to manageable. And Mac's thumb kept moving against my hand—slow and deliberate.
"They disconnected the IV earlier," I said. "For PT."
He looked where the line had been—just a needle cap now, no tubing.
"How's the pain?" he asked.
"Manageable."
"That's not the same as good."
"Good enough." I smiled at him. "For what I'm thinking about."
Color crept up his neck. "Eamon—"
"I'm cleared for light activity. The therapist said so." I shifted slightly, making space. "And I've been lying here for three days thinking about how I could've died without—"
Mac stood. Moved to the door and checked the small window to the hallway. The corridor stretched empty and dim. He flipped off the overhead light.
