Page 86 of My Craving

Declan’s gaze moves to his father kneeling beside me, his hand still pressed firmly against my side, before coming back to me. The look on his face tells me I don’t need to explain anything else.

The pressure against my side increases when my eyes start to close, and I force them open again. Duncan is still kneeling over me, watching my face so closely that he catches every time my focus slips. His hands haven’t shaken once, but his jaw is locked tight and he keeps rubbing his thumb across my cheek whenever my eyes start getting heavy.

The paramedics reach us a few seconds later, and getting Duncan to give them enough room to work takes more effort than it should. He shifts when they tell him to, but only far enough for one of them to take over the pressure against my side while another cuts through my shirt. Even then, he keeps hold of my hand.

Questions start coming at me while they work—my name, what happened, whether I can breathe normally, where the pain is—and I answer as best I can while they take my blood pressure and put oxygen over my face. Duncan fills in anything I miss without taking his eyes off me.

The pain has spread across my side and into my abdomen now, and concentrating gets harder as the noise of the ballroom starts fading in and out around me. Each time my eyes drift closed, Duncan’s fingers tighten around mine until I look at him again.

Behind Duncan, Taylor and another security man still have Adrian on the floor. Kieran has Alessia tucked against his side with Conor and Jaxon close to them, while Declan has both arms around Xavier a few feet away. Xavier is watching me over Declan’s shoulder, the blood from my side still smeared across the front of his shirt.

The paramedics move me onto the stretcher, and Duncan gets to his feet with them without releasing my hand. He stays beside me as they start toward the ballroom doors, close enough that I can feel him there even when the people working around me block my view of him.

I look back at Xavier once more before we leave the ballroom. I didn’t have time to weigh what could happen to me when I saw Adrian raise that knife. I saw Xavier in front of him and moved before I thought about any of it.

I’ve spent months being pulled into Sunday dinners, family arguments, and a life that came with far more Murphys than I expected when I first started falling for Duncan. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I stopped thinking of them as his family.

They became mine too.

Chapter 41 Duncan

Blood spreads through the fresh gauze the paramedic presses against Nash’s side before we even reach the elevator. He bears down harder over the wound, and Nash’s fingers tighten around mine as he sucks in a breath through his teeth.

The elevator doors close behind us, cutting off most of the noise from the ballroom. One paramedic keeps pressure against Nash’s side while the other checks his blood pressure and starts asking him questions.

“Nash, tell me your full name.”

“Nash Campbell.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“Hotel elevator.”

His answer is clear, but his eyes close as soon as the words leave his mouth. I tighten my hand around his, and it takes longer than I like before he opens them and focuses on me again.

Blood is drying between my fingers and beneath my nails, with more soaked into the front of my shirt from holding him on the ballroom floor. I don’t give a fuck about any of it as long as he keeps looking at me.

“Stay awake for me, mo sholas.”

“I’m trying, Daddy.”

The elevator opens into the lobby, where the police are coming through the front doors. Hotel security tries to control the guests spilling out of the ballroom. Someone calls my name as the paramedics push Nash toward the entrance, but I don’t turn around. Taylor is still inside, Kieran and my sons know what happened, and none of them need me more than Nash does right now.

I stay beside him all the way outside and climb into the ambulance behind the stretcher. One of the paramedics directs me into a seat while his partner checks the IV in Nash’s arm and replaces the dressing against his side. Nash flinches when he presses down again, his fingers tightening around mine until the pressure eases.

Once we’re moving, I find myself watching the monitor beside him even though most of the numbers mean nothing to me. I recognize his blood pressure because they’ve checked it several times already, and when the next reading comes up lower, the paramedic immediately reaches for the cuff again.

“His pressure is dropping,” he tells me while checking the reading. “He’s lost a significant amount of blood, but his oxygen level is holding, and he’s still responding to us. We’re giving him fluids, and the trauma team will be waiting when we get there.”

I look at the blood already coming through the fresh dressing. “How bad is it?”

“We won’t know what was damaged or where the bleeding is coming from until they get imaging. Right now, keeping him awake and getting him to the hospital is what matters.”

Nash shifts when the ambulance takes a turn, and his face tightens as he breathes through the pain. When it eases, his eyes stay closed long enough for the paramedic to touch his shoulder and get his attention.

“Nash, look at me. Do you remember what happened tonight?”

“Got stabbed.”