Page 13 of The Lost and the Found

Gage rolled his eyes and moved out the room, probably to grab his medical kit.

I lifted the shirt off and threw it on the floor. When he came back in with the kit, Gage looked to the shirt as if it offended him.

Yeah, well, I felt the same way.

I sat forward and let him remove the gauze and proceed to clean the wound and try to stop the bleeding. “I don’t have any numbing gel. You’re going to feel this.”

I grunted. “Just get on with it.”

“Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The bastard sounded pretty gleeful about it, too. “I don’t know why you aren’t going to get this stitched up by a professional. I might do a crappy job of it. You know the only person I ever had to stitch up was myself? And that was years ago.”

I gritted my teeth when I felt that first bite of the needle through my skin. “I didn’t want the hospital to ask any questions.”

He was quiet for a moment, then, “Did you kill someone?”

“No,” I said with an eye roll. Though I wished I did. The memory of Hayden’s terrified face entered my mind, and it was taking everything in me not to go back out on the street and hunt down those two bastards again.

“Good,” he said. “Though if you do need an alibi tonight, I’ve got you covered.”

“I’m good on that,” I said. I doubt those men would press charges. “But I appreciate it.”

And I did. I could have gone to Mason, and he could have done just about as crappy a job as Gage was doing stitching me up, and though I had no doubt he would cover for me if I needed, he was a husband and almost-father first. His priority should be, and was, his family.

Gage was pretty efficient, and I was sure in another lifetime, he would have made a damn good surgeon.

But I knew his sister’s suicide affected more than he would ever admit to either Mason or me, even if we were his closest friends and he had spent the majority of his career obsessing over a business tycoon he said was responsible for her death.

I wondered if he would have even gotten into law had his sister not died by suicide.

When he finished, he wrapped me back up and stood. Pointing to the shirt, he said, “You can put that back on.”

I shook my head. “Throw it out. Give me one of yours to wear.”

“Why?”

“No reason.” And I wasn’t going to give him more than that. He muttered something under his breath and walked away. I didn’t want to explain my feelings about Hayden or why I was so fucking obsessed with her.

Perhaps Mason would understand if I told him, considering he had been obsessed with his now-wife when she was still a damned teenager, but Gage was a different story.

He might be destined to be alone for the rest of his life, and I didn’t think he minded that at all. If anything, he might prefer it.

But me…

I never really thought about the future in those terms.

I spent most of my youth trying to take care of my sister and protect her from our parents. Then I spent a good portion of my twenties and early thirties looking for Hayden.

And now that I’d found her…

I didn’t know what to do with her.

The only thing I did know was that I didn’t want to let her go. Never again.

I was fucking lost.

---