Better When He's Brave

I didn’t say anything to Titus while he tried to tell me it would all work out once he had Conner on lockdown. He tried to tell me that I was the one risking my neck and that even the straitlaced feds had to know that came with some give and take. I just muttered a noncommittal response and thought about the Glock that was sitting heavy and loaded in the purse at my feet. Everything came with give and take, and when I was done taking it would be well past time that I gave something up. If that something had to be my freedom¸ then so be it. It was a price I was willing to pay after setting everything back to rights.

Once we got to the hospital I thought we would just go our separate ways since Bax was still in intensive care and Keelyn was on another floor in general recovery, but surprisingly Titus wanted me to walk with him to his brother’s room. I was hesitant because I knew Dovie and Race were floating around and I didn’t want any kind of ugly confrontation. I mean, before I was sleeping with Titus I was sleeping with Conner, and Conner was the reason Bax had nearly died. If the situation were reversed I would have had a lot to say on the subject myself. However, as Titus clasped my hand in his and pulled me along behind him as our shoes squeaked obnoxiously on the linoleum floor, I didn’t really have the right words to object, so I just followed him silently.

Bax’s room was easy to spot. There were two armed police officers standing on either side of the door and a rumpled redhead pacing back and forth in front of them. Dovie looked haggard and worn out. She had purple shadows set deep under each green eye and her typically creamy pallor was splotchy and red. She looked a mess and agitated as we approached her. Her gaze flew up to Titus and without a word he dropped my hand and scooped her up in a rib-cracking hug. Immediately giant sobs started to shake her lithe body. Titus made soothing noises and stroked one of his big hands up and down her back. It made my heart swell just a little. He was always there to take care of everyone else, always. He had to put the beast away and be the guy that fixed everything so often that it was no wonder that when his own monster got loose he had no idea what to do with it.

“He can’t even talk and he told me to leave. He told me he doesn’t want me here.” Dovie’s voice sounded like she was dying. Like everything she had ever loved had just been taken away from her. She was shaking so hard it was a wonder she didn’t break apart. “I kept telling him how ridiculous that is. I’m wherever he is, but he just kept telling me to go. How can words hurt so much when they aren’t even spoken?”

Titus swore and then set her away from him so he could put his hands on her shoulders. “You look like hell. He can see how much you’re hurting, and he can’t do anything about it. It’s no different from when he got arrested after Novak got shot and he refused to see you. He’s trying to keep you from suffering with him. Have one of these officers take you home. Take a shower. Get something to eat and then come back and ignore whatever idiotic thing he’s trying to tell you. He wants you here. He needs you here and you both know it.”

She blinked her watery eyes and took a deep breath. “He almost died, Titus, and the person that almost killed him is his brother!”

I saw Titus dip his head in acknowledgment. “I know. But he didn’t die and that’s what matters, okay? As for Roark, just because they share half of the same blood doesn’t make them brothers. You leave him to me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and then visibly collected herself. When she opened her eyes back up they were dry and there was no longer a tremble in her lips. “Okay.”

The big cop bent forward and placed a tender kiss on the center of her forehead and it almost had me melting into the floor. He was so good with his own. They were unbelievably lucky to have him. Titus gave her a lopsided grin and moved around her to reach for the door. “Maybe he’s just cranky since he can’t smoke with his jaw wired shut. Bax without a fix is a total nightmare.”

Dovie rallied enough to smile back at him. “Maybe it’ll force him to quit.”

Titus chuckled and told her drily as he disappeared into the darkened room, “I wouldn’t count on it.”

Once the big man was gone from the hallway, her eyes landed on me. She had every right to hate me. She had every right not to trust me. But Dovie, being Dovie, just looked at me with a contemplative expression on her face as she took a step toward me.

“You need to be good to him, Reeve. I don’t know what is going on between the two of you, but I’m telling you right now if you hurt him, betray him in any way, you won’t have to worry about the boys. You’ll have to worry about me.”

A chill raced up my spine because it wasn’t a threat. She was just laying it out there as a statement of fact. If I screwed Titus over she was going to make me hurt. I didn’t doubt her. You didn’t keep a guy like Bax or survive in this life successfully without knowing how to get down and dirty.

I gulped a little bit and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “He needs someone to care for him. All day, every day, all he does is give himself to everyone else.”

She lifted a coppery eyebrow at me. “Are you that someone? You’re going to care for him? Weren’t you screwing the guy that killed my dad and just tried to kill my man? Did you care for him too?”

I wasn’t scared of the truth, so I told her flatly, “I thought Conner was someone else, and yes, the man that I thought he was I cared for.”

She snorted at me. “Who did you think he was?”

I sighed. Admitting how wrong I had been, how easily I had been suckered in by a façade, was still hard for me. I was supposed to have more street smarts than that. “I thought he was enough like Titus that I could fall for him and make it work. I thought he was a good man, but he isn’t. He’s great at being who you need him to be, but it’s all a lie. As for being the someone to care for Titus, for now it’s me.” Because he couldn’t talk about more, and until he could, this would have to be enough.