They stayed there, their eyes locked, until Kyan cleared his throat and the moment was shattered.
“Congratulations, Jaz,” Kyan said, though Jaz didn’t miss the murderous look he threw at Liam before stepping up to kiss her cheek.
With the announcement over, the kids getting tired and cranky, and postexcitement fatigue starting to creep over the adults as well, there were no dissenting opinions over heading home. As they all reached the main parking area, Liam and Jaz split off from the rest of the group to head to the VIP parking lot in the back. Now that she’d gotten a glimpse of the bottlenecked main exit, she could say with certainty that the VIP’s remote easy-on-easy-off access path was a major boon.
They were almost back at the truck, the noise of the crowds a distant rumble, when Liam stopped so abruptly that Jaz nearly bounced off his outstretched arm.
“What—”
He quieted her with a finger, his whole body taut, each muscle singing with alertness. “The dirt spatter around the truck’s skirt. There’s a clean streak breaking the mud. As if someone brushed a shoulder or an arm against the bottom part of the vehicle.”
“Or a leg,” said Jaz. “Or a dog ran by.”
Liam crouched and tilted his head as if he were listening for something. Then he swore.
What’s wrong? The words came to the tip of Jaz’s tongue, but she didn’t get to utter them. Instead, an expression of fierce determination rolled over Liam’s face, and he threw his body over hers so suddenly that he knocked the wind out of her. Before Jaz could reinflate her lungs and gather a fresh inhale, Liam’s Land Rover, the vehicle he’d driven over here from Denton Valley, emitted a creaking belch.
And exploded.
26
Liam
Liam’s awareness caught up to him by degrees. He heard the low background noise of small wheels on tile and the distant beeping of machines. Despite being on his stomach—an oddity in and of itself since he always slept on his side—light filled the space where he was, hurting his eyes. Forcing himself to pry his eyelids wider anyway, he took in his surroundings. A sterile white room. The smells of disinfectant and plastic tubing. A television up on one wall. A white board with information written in black dry erase marker.
He was in a hospital. He was in a hospital because… The memories hit him all at once. A mirror on his truck moved out of place. A break in the dried mud splatter that had clung to the bottom of his truck ever since he drove across a puddle. An ever-so-slight high-pitched noise that made him crouch. Looking under his car as his heart started to hammer.
The heat and booming shock wave of the explosion flashed before Liam’s eyes. He shoved himself up, a sharp pain raking along his back as he did.
“Mr. Rowen!” a disembodied female voice chastised him as a hand clamped onto his forearm. Then, neon-green clogs and matching scrubs came into view, everything materializing into a slightly panicked young nurse. “Please lie back down. You’ve been injured and have some painkillers that can make you unsteady. I need you to—”
“Where’s Jaz Keasley?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who that is.” The nurse, whose name tag claimed she’d respond to Mary Beth of Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Denver, held her hands out in a calming gesture. “But if you could just lie down, I’m sure I can look into whatever it is you want to know.”
Instead of obeying, Liam pushed himself up into a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Mary Beth let out a squeak, and the room swam for a moment. Liam gripped the bedrail, gritting his teeth against the now-predictable onslaught of hurt. Jaz was there with him when the charge went off. He needed to find her.
“She is all right, Liam,” a familiar, unsteady voice said from behind him. The last voice he’d expected to hear just now. His mother. “A few scrapes and bruises, but you shielded her from the worst of it.”
Liam started to turn, but Patti came around to his side of the bed so he wouldn’t have to. Her eyes were red, and the hands she was wringing shook slightly.
“The hospital wanted consent for treatment from next of kin, and I was in the system.” She sounded apologetic. Defeated. “I couldn’t not come. I knew you’d want me to leave as soon as you woke up, so I stayed while you were sleeping. Please don’t be angry with me.”
Liam tried to rub his face, realized that his IV tubing didn’t extend that far, and used his other hand. “I’m not angry, Ma. I’m just surprised. You aren’t usually…” He caught tears glistening in her eyes and changed what he was about to say. “Thank you for keeping track of Jaz for me.”
“Mr. Rowen.” Coming up to Liam’s other side, Nurse Mary Beth turned her voice shrilly authoritative. “Mr. Rowen, lie back down right now. You’re being unsafe. This is unacceptable.”
Liam glared at her. “What exactly is unsafe and unacceptable, Nurse? Me being awake? Let’s not confuse inconvenient and unacceptable.”
“Mr. Rowen!—”
“Mary Beth.” Patti smiled indulgently at the nurse. “Do you think you could tell the doctor that Liam is awake?”
The nurse closed her mouth, apparently realizing that in her quest for the upper hand, she’d forgotten a rather important tidbit of her job. As Mary Beth scurried out the door, Liam had to grudgingly admit that Patti handled that better than his own muddled brain.
Patti held up her phone. “I let Jaz know you’re awake. She is on her way over with someone named Ivy. They told me you were near some kind of explosion.” She shuddered. “So they took you in for surgery to remove shrap…shrapnel and—” The tears that had been clinging to Patti’s eyes now spilled over onto her cheeks.
Liam frowned. He tried to reach toward her, but the IV stopped him again.
Wiping her cheeks, Patti fled the room.
Liam shook his head and immediately regretted it. What a fucking mess. Glaring at the offending IV line, he disconnected the main tubing tethering him to the bed, then pulled off the blood pressure cuff and EKG leads. The monitors began to wail red alert, but quieted mercifully at a press of a button. Right. Now to get out of the monkey dress.
Digging through a nearby cabinet, Liam found no trace of his clothes, but was thrilled to discover a set of clean scrubs. Good enough. Leaning against the wall more than he wished he needed to, he pulled on the bottoms, then tore off the hospital gown. The mirror above a sink showed him a torso covered in a mass of bandages, and the more he moved, the more he felt sharp needles of pain radiating up and down his spine.
“I hear you’re already terrorizing the nurses?” Walking into the room, Ivy set her fists on her hips and regarded the monitors, discarded gown, and finally Liam with exasperation. “I’ll take it as a sign you’ve returned to a baseline mental state.”
Sliding around Ivy, Jaz rushed inside and wrapped an arm around Liam. Only one arm, the other being in a sling. “Hey, you. How do you feel? And what the hell are you doing out of bed?”
Relief rushed over Liam’s skin, and he folded Jaz into him, savoring the coconut smell of her shampoo, the way her small body fit perfectly into the groove of his shoulder. His pulse quickened at the feel of her, then settled into a steady, satisfied rhythm that drowned out the pain in his back and the distant chirps of monitors.