“Honey. This is bad.” There were tears in her voice.
He opened his eyes to look at her. She was beautiful. So damn beautiful. “Thanks for following, baby,” he said. He was exhausted, so tired he could barely move. “You saved my life.” He laid his head back, uncaring if blood from Mills’s body was spreading across the concrete floor. He couldn’t move. Every breath seemed forced through his lungs. Raw. Burning.
“I don’t like the way this feels, Malichai, but there’s too much negative energy swirling around this place. I need to get you out of here, even if we just make it to the parking lot.”
He wanted to try for her, but it seemed an impossible task. His leg. He wasn’t certain he could feel it anymore, and did he really care?
“Malichai.” She said his name sharply. “Look at me. I’m going to have to try to repair that tear. You’re bleeding internally and I’m not losing you. Where is Rubin? He has to be close. I can keep you safe until he gets here.”
His lashes fluttered and her face swam into his line of vision. “Sorry, baby.” He thought he said the words. He tried to lift his hand to her face, to brush away her tears, but his arm weighed a ton.
“Malichai.”
He recognized Ezekiel’s voice. It was different. Filled with concern. With emotion. Then it was all Ezekiel. Ezekiel at his worst, his big brother, I’ll-beat-you-within-an-inch-of-your-life-if-you-don’t-obey-me voice. “Don’t you fucking die on me.”
Mordichai slid his arm around him, holding him. Rubin crowded close. But it was Amaryllis he focused on. Her face swam in and out of his consciousness. She knelt over him, her face a mask of absolute concentration.
“Rubin, I think he’s bleeding internally,” she said.
“I need his leg bare. Hurry. Please, hurry.”
The urgency in Rubin’s voice must have triggered awareness in his brothers because no one asked him questions. No one voiced concerns over his intentions or suggested calling an ambulance. Trap produced a large knife, and without a word, simply sliced the denim up Malichai’s leg, leaving it exposed. He knew they’d shredded the material because his leg felt cold, but he couldn’t see it. All he could see was Amaryllis’s face and that mask of absolute concentration as she stood beside Rubin, both bent over his leg.
Rubin was quiet and unruffled, like a calm, deep pool of blue icy water moving through him, settling in one spot, staying there and working unemotionally. He worked with complete confidence and at times even directed Amaryllis to something on the bone that only the two of them could see. Even while he directed her, he never stopped what he was doing.
Amaryllis was just the opposite of Rubin. He could feel emotion, even passion, in her every touch. Her hands slid over his thigh. Back and forth. Her breath hitched. He felt heat. Intense heat, so intense it felt as if a laser was focused deep inside his leg. It went from uncomfortable to a burning pain that refused to go away. He tried to move, hoping the laser would at least move spots, but it seemed to move with him.
Amaryllis’s breath hissed out and her long lashes lifted. She seemed to glare at Ezekiel and Trap for a moment, and then once more she was wholly focused on him. He felt his brother grip his upper thigh between his large hands. Trap did the same with his calf, holding him immobile.
The laser stayed on that brutal spot for what seemed forever and then moved slightly and began the same concentrated, intense heat that had his heart pounding and his head swimming. He leaned back against Mordichai, wishing he could see him, but his vision had gone dark. Black almost. He closed his eyes and let them take over.
“Shit. Shit. Damn it, Zeke. He’s slipping away,” Mordichai said, panic in his voice.
“He lost too much blood. We have to get him blood,” Rubin said, as calm as ever. “I’ve got the artery holding, but, Zeke, you’ll need to text the SEAL you know and have them get to us like yesterday with the supplies we need.”
“I’ve already done it,” Ezekiel replied, his voice grim. “They’re on their way. We’re lucky they were here in San Diego. Their home is in Montana.”
Amaryllis could tell her energy was fading. The repairs to Malichai’s bone were much more difficult and involved than the last time. She had managed to stop the worst of the spreading of fracturing but there was far more than last time. She couldn’t imagine how Rubin must feel, with the tears that were threatening to take Malichai’s life his responsibility.
She could barely kneel upright. Rubin still had to keep Malichai alive, while she could rest, which wasn’t fair. Her job had been horrendous, but his had been so much more complex and life-threatening. He was working to keep Malichai’s heart, lungs and kidneys going, pushing the blood through his body even when there wasn’t enough pressure to do so.
“I can help with that,” she whispered to Rubin.
“I’ll need you later,” he said softly. “Just get as much rest as possible.”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to look at any of them. She couldn’t just sit there waiting. Watching. Hoping. She had to do something. She knelt up beside him and once again felt for his bone. The strange thing about his bone was the density of it. She had very dense bones. The density allowed her to swim so much faster beneath the water, and she imagined that was the reason Malichai could as well, but was it the reason for the weird fragmenting along those wounds? They should be long healed by now, yet the small hairline cracks continued to reoccur with any kind of stress. It made no sense. Just like this attack on Malichai made no sense.
She wiped at the tears running down her face, embarrassed to be crying in front of the men. She kept her eyes closed, let them only see internally, the opaque veil that allowed her to see into Malichai’s injury. She took her time, meticulously repairing the smaller cracks now, making certain each jagged fissure was closed and knitted together.
Thoughts tumbled around her head, making her feel a little crazy. Had she hesitated before exposing herself to the enemy? She didn’t know the answer to that, only that she had to save him. That Malichai had somehow become her world and she didn’t want to live without him. There was no going back to an existence of no hope of a future. Malichai was her future.
She kept repairing the bone even when the SEALs showed up, two men with grim faces, scarred and yet beautiful at the same time. They registered somewhere in her mind even though she later didn’t remember even looking at them. She was aware of them working on Malichai, setting up an IV and pushing fluids and blood into him.
Both Rubin and Amaryllis shared the exact moment when the turnaround came, when his body realized it was alive and needed to function on its own without Rubin keeping his heart and lungs working, without Rubin pushing blood through his body to his brain and vital organs. They looked at each other, sharing that triumph. She could see utter exhaustion etched into the lines of Rubin’s face. He always looked so young. Right at that moment, not so much. He looked pale and drained, but he knew, as she did, that he had saved Malichai’s life.
“Thank you,” she said softly, for only him to hear. “You’re a miracle.” The others thought they knew he was; she actually knew. What he did . . . was impossible.
He gave her a faint smile and slumped down for a brief moment. She turned back to continue her work on Malichai’s bone because she couldn’t make herself quit. She couldn’t. She blamed herself. She should have been working on his leg every single night. Not lying in her bed fantasizing about him. Dreaming of having a life with him.