Page 122 of Riot’s Revenge

He didn’t back down.

I swallowed and went back to cleaning the wound. “Do you have any idea what I thought?” The words came out quieter than I’d intended.

Riot didn’t answer.

I peeled open a dressing and concentrated far too hard on removing the backing. “I thought you’d gone back to how you used to be.” I pressed the dressing over his ribs and smoothed down the edges, but my hands had started shaking. I hated that, my hands didn’t shake. Not when someone was bleeding or screaming. Not when everything around me was falling apart and people needed me to keep my head. But they were shaking then, because then things were falling down around me, but this time it was personal. “I thought there was someone else,” I almost whispered.

“Nurse.”

“I know what you said before. I know what you told me. But then you stopped coming home. You wouldn’t tell me where you’d been. Every time I asked you a question, you either changed the subject or gave me half an answer, and I⁠—”

“There was no one else.”

I looked at him.

“Never again,” he said.

There wasn’t a trace of hesitation in his voice. “I promised you the night I ended up in your clinic that there wouldn’t be another woman, and there hasn’t been. Not once.”

My throat tightened and tears spilled down my face.

Riot reached for me before stopping himself. His hand hovered between us for a second before dropping back to his thigh. “I don’t fucking want anyone else, Maria. Haven’t since I chose you. You think I give a shit who’s looking at me when you’re in the room?”

I looked away.

“Nurse.”

“Don’t call me that when I’m trying to be angry with you.”

“Can’t help it.”

A stupid, broken little laugh escaped me before I could stop it. I hated him a little for that too. I pulled off my gloves and threw them into the bin before sitting in the chair opposite him. “Then explain it to me.”

He nodded. No avoiding the question that time. No telling me it was club business or carefully selected pieces of information designed to keep me satisfied without actually telling me anything. He told me they’d started noticing cars. The same cars outside the clubhouse. Outside the clinic. Parked near our homes. Never close enough or long enough to make it obvious, but often enough that he and Spider had started keeping track.

I rubbed both hands over my face. Jesus Christ. “Kings?”

“Yeah. We’ve got a contact in the department. Had him run some names.”

He paused.

I waited.

“Tiny and Ripper got out a few months ago. The Kings got out just before.”

Cold moved through me despite the warmth of the room. I’d never forget them. I stared at Riot as pieces started sliding into place. His absences. The whispered conversations that stopped when I entered a room. The way he’d started checking the street before we left places. The constant glances over his shoulder that I’d assumed were just Riot being Riot.

“And you didn’t think that was something I should know?”

“I didn’t know they were coming after you.”

I stood so quickly the chair scraped across the floor. “Jesus Christ, Riot.”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“We’re supposed to be a partnership.”

“We are.”