Page 32 of Deacon

I didn’t say Jackson’s name again. I didn’t test the response or push for another sign. I sat beside him while his vitals returned to their steady rhythm, Priest remaining across the room as the tattooed man resumed his place near the wall.

Nobody spoke.

A few minutes later, the door opened and the spell broke cleanly in half.

“Okay,” Evan announced, breezing into the room with coffee in one hand and a paper bag in the other, “either I have wildly misjudged hospital etiquette, or this is officially biker night.”

I closed my eyes. “Evan.”

He took one look at me, and some of the brightness softened around his expression. “You’ve been doing this every night. You need sleep before you start charting on the walls.”

“I’m fine.”

“You are running on caffeine and terrible decisions, and I came to retrieve you before you pass out in a supply closet and traumatize a resident.”

My gaze dropped to Jackson before I could stop it.

Priest spoke from the opposite side of the bed. “I’ll stay.”

I looked at him properly then, at the exhaustion sitting heavily across his features and the quiet understanding beneath it. “Thank you.”

Jackson had never been alone here. Priest knew that wasn’t what I needed to hear. He was giving me permission to leave without making the choice feel like weakness, and I understood enough to accept it.

Evan’s attention shifted toward him. He gave Priest a long, frankly impressed once-over and nodded. “Well, you are aggressively large. I respect it.”

A muffled sound came from near the wall.

Evan turned toward the tattooed biker, and the moment his eyes landed on him, he froze.

“Oh.” Delight lit his entire face. “It’s you. Hunky biker guy. I knew you’d show up again.”

The other man went still in the particular way people did when they sensed Evan approaching them like an unchecked weather system.

I sighed. “Evan.”

“We were never formally introduced,” he said, walking farther into the room as though social boundaries had never restrained him once in his life. He looked directly at the stranger. “And I feel like that’s important, spiritually.”

The tattooed man stared at him for one long second. “Ink.”

A beat passed.

Evan pressed one hand to his chest. “Oh my God. Of course it is.”

Priest huffed beneath his breath, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Ink’s jaw tightened as his gaze cut away, quick and unreadable, though Evan had clearly managed to throw him just enough for it to matter.

“That is,” Evan continued, pressing his hand more dramatically against his chest, “the sexiest possible outcome of that interaction. You cannot walk around looking like that with a name like Ink. That is reckless.”

Ink’s jaw flexed again.

I stood before Evan’s enthusiasm got him killed. “Come on.”

He backed toward the door without an ounce of shame. “We are absolutely circling back to this later.”

I apologized to Priest with my eyes, squeezed Jackson’s hand one last time, then released him and followed Evan into the hallway. The door closed behind us.

For three full seconds, Evan remained quiet.

Then he grabbed my forearm with both hands, his eyes wide. “That,” he whispered, lowering his voice only because we were inside a hospital and certainly not because he believed in restraint, “is going to be my biker.”