From the mouths of babes. I shared a look with Booker and had to bite back a grin. Here this little girl was infatuated with a man that had done hard time, that got paid to break necks and smash faces in for her sister’s boyfriend, and she thought Titus was mean and scary.

“It’s challenging to be a good man in a bad place. He’s the odd man out and it makes him hard.”

She grinned a little. “Plus having Bax for a brother would make anyone cranky.”

It was a somber reminder why the rest of this little group wasn’t around on this Friday night. Booker pushed his plate away and leaned over to nudge Karsen with his shoulder. She immediately turned a neon pink, and it was so cute I just wanted to hug her. A pang hit me low in the gut when I thought about how innocent and sweet Rissa had been before the city had gotten to her. The unfairness of it scalded.

“Bax is a fighter. He won’t leave Dovie on her own, no way in hell. He’ll pull through because there is no way he’s going to let a piece of crap trash truck be the reason he goes out. And when Bax wakes up, this Roark asshole is going to be in for a hurting. He just got the ’Cuda running the way he wanted. Now that he has to start all over he’s going to be furious.” Booker sounded certain and it was oddly comforting.

The mood was somber among the three of us, so I set about cleaning up the kitchen and Booker told Karsen he would walk her back downstairs to her own place. While she was gathering up her stuff and over the noise of the dishwasher, those swirly blue-and-gray eyes of his settled on me and he told me under his breath, “I’ll find you a gun, but if the cop finds out about it you’re on your own.”

He held up his hands and backed away toward the door, where the blond teenager was waiting. The way she was watching him . . . I wondered if he had ever been anyone’s hero before.

I waited until they were out the front door before whispering into the empty apartment, “I’m always on my own.”

Feeling melancholy and useless, I curled up on the massive sofa and flipped through channels. I wanted to be at the hospital. I wanted to be there for Titus and I wanted to be a good friend to Dovie. She deserved that. And now that I could so easily see what doing the right thing was, I felt like I deserved a shot to be that for her and to be whatever it was that Titus needed. The cop might only need me as bait, but the man . . . the man and the things he kept so tightly controlled inside of him needed so much more. I could take care of all of him if he would just let me.

I feel asleep watching some movie about a bunch of kids thrown into a futuristic battle for survival. I enjoyed it and really loved the girl that was the main character, but something about doing anything to survive, being forced to eat or be eaten, hit too close to home and eventually my attention wandered and I crashed out before I saw how it all ended.

I woke up to the sound of the door clicking closed and the thumping of boots against the wooden floors. At first I was a little bit disoriented because the early-dawn rays of sunlight were drifting though the untinted windows I hadn’t powered down when I fell asleep last night. I had no clue what time it was or how long I had slept. There was an aura of unrest circling Titus that had me snapping wide-awake. Everything inside of me went on high alert as he tossed his keys on the counter and then more carefully unclipped his gun and his shield.

He looked jagged and mean. He had passed scruffy and was well on his way to having a full beard covering the lower part of his face. His eyes were too bright and so blistering hot that they gleamed like blue lasers. His mouth was twisted in a harsh frown and the furrow between his eyebrows was so deep it looked like it was going to be a permanent part of his face from here on out. His hair was standing up straight and that white spot that decorated his temple looked like it had doubled in size. He had an Ace bandage wrapped around one hand and some white gauze taped on the other. He looked like a heavyweight fighter that had just gone nine rounds and no winner had been declared.

“Is Shane awake? I wasn’t expecting you back anytime soon.”

Fury flavored the air as he moved toward where I was still curled up with my legs underneath me.

“He woke up yesterday afternoon. He can’t talk since his jaw is wired shut and it’s still touch and go because he lost so much blood and hit his head so hard during the impact. But he’s awake and he recognized me and Dovie, so the doctors kicked me out and told us that he needed time.”

“Oh.” My heart squeezed painfully. It would have been nice of him to let me know Bax had opened his eyes. “I tried to text you a couple of times to see if you needed anything or if I could do anything.”

He prowled closer, his eyes roving over me like a physical touch. This was not the calm and collected cop that kept the streets safe. This was the wild man that made a deal with a woman he didn’t trust and then let her put her hands and mouth all over him because he couldn’t resist the pull. This was the beast that wanted, needed, and craved being fed. He was practically vibrating with the emotions that were at war in his blazing gaze. Anger, lust, fear, sorrow, regret, guilt, remorse . . . all of them jockeying for top position as he watched me and prowled closer and closer.

“I chucked my phone at the accident scene. Roark has to be watching. I can’t figure out how he knew where Bax was going to be at that exact moment. He’s everywhere. I’ve been at the hospital nonstop since then, so I didn’t have a chance to get a new one yet. I only left to run to the garage to grab a shower or to go to the station to see if anyone had anything new on where Roark might be. I figured Race or Brysen would’ve told Karsen or Booker what was going on.”

“No. No one mentioned that he was awake. It would’ve been nice to know.” I couldn’t keep the sharpness out of my tone. Bax wasn’t my favorite, but he mattered to Titus, so that meant he mattered to me.

He got to the back of the couch and rested his hands on the cushions. He was towering over me and I knew it should make me nervous with the mood he was in, but this was Titus. He wouldn’t hurt me. He wouldn’t hurt anyone, no matter how mad or frustrated he might be. He was too good for that.

“I think everyone was so relieved that he finally opened his eyes that was all they could think about. Brysen was worried about Dovie and Race was a nervous wreck. He and Bax are like brothers, so it was hard on everyone to see him like that. So broken and so still. That’s not Bax.”