by Anne Malcom
He couldn’t protect me from the death in this room any more than he could protect me from the smoke from a fire.
For the first time in his life, Cade was helpless.
And heartbroken.
I reached out to squeeze his hand.
It was stone underneath my fingers.
He stared at me for a long moment.
“You should go. You don’t need to see this.”
It wasn’t a command. It wasn’t anything. Just a last-ditch attempt to save me from something.
He didn’t even wait for me to comply, just leaned in and touched his icy lips to my head, then strode toward the bed like there wasn’t something yanking at him, holding him in place. He waded through it, all the death and turmoil, until he stood at the center of it, hand on Bull’s shoulder.
“Brother,” he said.
There was something in his voice then. I got it now. Whatever strength he had left in him, he was saving for Bull, trying to use it as a life raft to stop him from drowning.
Bull didn’t move. He just continued to drown.
“Don’t fuckin’ touch me right now, Cade.”
I flinched again.
Bull was never exactly expressive, but the voice that came out of him wasn’t just empty.
It was hardly human.
It was like death itself was forming the words, with no personality, no individuality behind them.
Cade’s form was stiff. He heard it too. But he didn’t shy away from it. “This isn’t your fault,” he tried.
“The fuck it isn’t,” Bull snarled.
At least it was Bull. At least he wasn’t really gone, that disembodied and terrifying voice not replacing the low boom of the man I considered blood. But then, hearing the raw and exposed pain in his tone was even worse than hearing nothing at all.
“This shit”—he jerked his head toward the bed in a violent movement—“is all on me.”
A tear rolled down my cheek. His tone was full of certainty. Of sentencing. He had already thrown himself into the pit, taking on a blame that wasn’t his, owning up to a crime that he didn’t commit.
I nearly moved then, nearly braved the death and broken image of my best friend to comfort him, chase away the devil that licked at his soul.
“Bull,” Cade said, full of the fight that I was desperately trying to rouse in myself. The fight to save one member of our family so we didn’t have to dig two graves.
Bull’s head moved in a blur. I could see his profile, witness half of the grief etched in his face. It wasn’t even him. I barely recognized the man glaring at my brother.
“They fuckin’ raped her!” he bellowed.
I clapped my hand over my mouth to stifle the guttural moan of pain that stabbed me with his words.
Horror echoed through my skull.
“Repeatedly,” Bull continued, not finished torturing himself, or me. “She’s scared of mice,” he said on a low whisper, the words cutting with their broken edges. “Laurie’s fuckin’ terrified of tiny things.”
A single tear trailed down my cheek. He was right. She couldn’t stand bees. But she’d never kill one. Never hurt a living thing. She cried once when she accidently hit a rabbit driving home, calling herself a murderer.
That beautiful girl considered that murder.
And this was her fate?
How could the world be so cruel?
“She’s afraid of mice,” Bull repeated. “How do you think she felt when they were doing that to her?”
I choked on his words. On the images. Of the broken and bruised and burned parts of my best friend that I glimpsed lying in that hospital bed. Every glance was a knife, tearing away at my soul, carving away at my interior flesh.
“Yeah, that’s on me,” Bull said. “Girl who lived her life in sunshine, losing it in the blackest, ugliest depths of hell.”
My grief swallowed me as the hurt, the utter defeat in Bull’s voice ricocheted through the room.
The silence that followed meant that we could hear it.
Or couldn’t hear it.
The mechanical beeping stopped, signaling that even Laurie’s heart couldn’t take it anymore.
And that was it. I was no longer standing between life and death anymore.
Death was all around me.
I wanted to cry.
Scream.
Break down.
But most of all, I wanted revenge.
Flashing lights in my rearview mirror illuminated the inky blackness I’d been driving through.
“Fuck,” I cursed.
I considered putting my foot down. It felt heavy, ready to press down on the gas and speed away from the law. From everything.
Grief and anger may have warped my thoughts, but it didn’t take them away completely.
I slowed, pulling off the road and onto the shoulder. I had been so close, just outside of Amber’s limits, which meant I was going to be out of the watchful eye of anyone patrolling the place.
I had been thinking of the club, not the law.
I didn’t even attempt to hide the gun laying heavily on the passenger seat. I had a permit. I was also a Fletcher. No cop would fuck with me.
Not any day.
Not today of all days.
I stared forward, winding down my window as dirt crunched beneath the feet of the approaching officer.
I didn’t let myself think it was him.
Didn’t let myself hope.
I prayed it wasn’t.
God had been looking the other way for the past twenty-five hours, so he didn’t hear my prayer. A light illuminated my car and I squinted, accustomed to the darkness surrounding me, in both my exterior and interior worlds.
“Jesus, Rosie,” Luke snapped.
I glared up at him and saw his furious eyes were focused on the gun in my passenger seat.
“Get out of the car,” he ordered.
I clenched my hands on the steering wheel. “I haven’t broken any laws, wasn’t speeding. I’m not sure why you need me to do that, Officer.” I was horrified to notice that my voice was disembodied, mimicking that empty and emotionless tone that Bull had employed before he tore half the hospital room to the ground.
I flinched.
Before Laurie died.
My hands tightened to the point of pain. Or what I imagined might’ve been pain if I wasn’t focusing on the hot agony pulsing from my heart, pumping poison to every inch of me.
“Rosie, get out of the fucking car!” Luke bellowed.
The sound echoed over the deserted road, seeming to travel up to the heavens with its ferocity.
But the heavens were currently closed for business.
Hell, on the other hand, was open and here on earth.
I’d never, not in my entire life, heard Luke yell like that. Heard him inject so much fury into a sentence. It scared me enough to get out of the car. As soon as I did, Luke slammed the door shut so I was backed right up against the vehicle.
He boxed me in, eyes glowing like a wild animal’s under the illumination of his patrol car’s headlights.
“Tell me you’re not going to get yourself killed too,” he whispered.
I didn’t flinch at the mention of it. The shadow following me around, like a stalker, lying in wait, watching me, waiting for me to acknowledge him.
“Where I’m going is none of your concern,” I said, my voice still not my own.
The flat of his palm slammed down on the roof of my car in a fury I’d never seen.
From anyone.
Maybe because fury, even uncontrolled fury, wasn’t surprising when it came from someone like Cade.
Like Bull.
But from Luke, who normally locked down such emotions, who was all about calm and order, it seemed to shake the very foundations of the earth beneath us.
“I beg to fucking differ. You going out to your death is a great fucking concern,” he yelled.
He did it again. Mentioned the D word.
I had to ack
nowledge it now. Its ears had perked up, it had leaned forward, rancid breath at the back of my neck.
“It’s not my death I’m going out to meet,” I whispered, like if I said it low enough, maybe it wouldn’t hear me.
Luke stared at me, eyes still glowing in the light like a lion’s, but the fury retreating to its cage. “Rosie, you know I can’t let you do that.”
“You have to,” I choked. “You have to let me do it because there’s nothing else I can do! I’m bleeding. My family is bleeding. Everything is Fucked Up. I have to fix it.”
The hand that brutally slammed down on the roof of my car gently caressed my cheek. I didn’t even have it in me to feel anything at the contact. All of my feelings about Luke before that day seemed so far away, locked in another room of my mind.
“Baby, you can’t fix it,” he whispered, hurt rippling through his words.
“But I have to!” I screamed, rebelling against the still, the quiet. It could get me there. Death. I tried to escape him, tried to get back into my car. Luke’s caress became a restraint, stopping me from moving. “I have to!” I screamed again, pounding at his chest. “You need to let me go. I need to fix it. I need to….”
Despite my frantic attempts, it caught me. And I collapsed under the weight of it. Right into Luke’s chest, my hot cheek resting against the cool metal of his badge.
He stroked the top of my head, clutching me to him, rubbing my back.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured.
And he did. For who knew how long, he held me, right there on the side of the road, let me sob into his chest, weathered the first wave of my grief with me.
Stopped me from seeking out the men who had killed my friend.
Saved me from the same fate.
Because I would’ve died that night. Some intuitive part of me knew it when I’d started driving. But I was blind. Maybe I didn’t care.
Maybe I wanted to. In that horrible time between immediate and unexpected horror and lucidity at accepting that you have to continue to live despite it, I was touched with almost suicidal insanity.
Whatever it was, Luke saved me.
No one ever knew.
That night, Luke stopped the club from digging a second grave.
Ensured my broken heart was his forever.
And no one would ever know.
Present Day
This time, the doorway was different.
I didn’t have the luxury of falling back on anyone. Especially not Luke. He was done saving me.
I made sure of that.
But this time I had seen more. Death was a begrudging friend rather than a terrifying monster, snatching away everything I loved.
I was stronger now.
Or maybe there was less of me to break.
So I sucked in a breath and moved my feet forward, into the room that stank of death and pain.
It was familiar.
Keltan was leaned over the bed, murmuring quietly. Everything in me exhaled. He was murmuring not to himself, not to the world for taking something away.
But to someone else.
Lucy.
Her husky tones murmured back.
So I wasn’t getting another part of me chipped off today.
Thank fuck.
“I don’t care what kind of sweet nothings you’re murmuring,” I near-yelled, puncturing their private moment. I stomped into the room with my usual bravado, wearing my previous persona like a costume that someone else had stretched out. “This is my best friend, who almost died.” My breath hitched on that part, a mental stutter of the reality of it all. Though I managed to recover before anyone noticed. “I’m getting my own sweet nothings.”
I reached the bed, eyes flickering to Keltan, who was smirking at me. But like me, he was wearing a mask of his own. Stretching it over his face so the woman in that hospital bed didn’t see the horrible scar that the grip of death had left on him.
I focused on Lucy and congratulated myself for not visibly flinching. The bed almost swallowed her, sucking her into its fatal embrace.
Almost.
She’d always been pale, my best friend. But now her skin wasn’t that milky white tone that even Snow White couldn’t mimic. No, it was a sickly gray, almost translucent. Somehow, her hair managed to look like it was fresh out of a shampoo ad, midnight locks tumbling down her head, doing even more to emphasize the pallor of her skin.
Her eyes were too big, sunken in, filled with something that I hated having to see in them. Something like what Keltan was trying to hide, but worse.
I swallowed.
“Bitch, I go away for a hot minute and you get stabbed,” I snapped, going for jaunty blasé but failing as a tremor hit my voice.
I was horrified to see my hand was shaking as I snatched Lucy’s free palm, lying weakly atop the polyester of the hospital sheets.
Something more than the shadow of Hades flickered in her beautiful face. Something welcome. “Hot minute?” she snapped. “Try almost a year.”
I flinched inwardly again, seeing beyond the anger in her voice to the hurt that lingered beneath it.
I had been doing it for her.
No, who was I kidding? I’d been doing it for myself. I was selfish, running from my problems, deserted everyone who cared about me without a word.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy punched me.
Though she’d probably have to get Keltan to do it, since she was otherwise engaged with recovering from a stab wound.
I flinched inwardly again.
My best friend had been stabbed.
And I wasn’t there.
“I needed a hiatus,” I said truthfully. Nice euphemism for cowardice.
“From what?” she demanded.
I blinked at her in her hospital bed. Then it wasn’t her—it was Laurie. Her corpse all shriveled up, decaying, empty eyes staring at me in horrifying focus. Another blink and it was Skid, half his head gone, blood all over my white dress. Then it was me, pulling the trigger, ending a life. More blood.
Then it was him. Pulling another trigger. Ending not just one person’s life but two. His own included.
I yanked myself out of my waking nightmare, hoping my panic didn’t show on my face. “Death,” I said, unable to utter anything else.
She scoured my face, seeming to see through everything I was masking it with. Best friends, after all, knew when a dress, guy or expression didn’t fit you.
“Looks like death brought you back,” she said finally, her eyes flickering to the heart monitor. “Or almost death.”
I looked at the monitor too. And for a terrifying second, the sound stopped, the emptiness signaling the finality of death. Thankfully, it was just another hallucination—or flashback? A sign I was really going crazy? Properly One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest crazy?
I was sane enough to regard my friend, tears filling my eyes at the realization of just how much I’d missed an integral part of me, how I’d almost lost another one. “No way would you die and leave me in this world without you,” I choked. “I’d kill you if you did that.”
She gave me a wonky grin. “Renewed motivation to stay breathing.”
I glanced from Lucy to the stoic man at her side, who’d been silent during the whole exchange. He didn’t look pissed that I’d hijacked his moment, nor impatient for me to leave. He seemed content enough to sit there in silence, grasping Lucy’s hand and listening to her. Watching her. With an intensity that told me he was terrified that if he let go, if he stopped watching, she’d float away.
Something jerked in the vicinity of my heart.
Another one bites the dust.
It wasn’t jealousy. It filled me with joy, watching the people I loved grasp onto love that didn’t seem real unless you witnessed it in person. But I was becoming an outcast in an ever-growing club, I was happy to live in my desolate wasteland if it meant my family were happy. But I couldn’t help but wish for my own version of it.
I shook myself. “No, I thin
k you’ve got enough right there.” I jerked my head to Keltan with a smile.
It was a real one.
Lucy had been dancing around this hunky Kiwi for years. Even when I was drowning in my own heartbreak, I saw that twinkle in his eyes the second they met. Watched them tumble in and out of their own heartbreak. Watched my beautiful friend mask her pain, doing it almost as well as I did.
Now she didn’t have to. She’d stopped running from it. She could be still and happy.
She squeezed my hand. “I’ve got more than enough,” she whispered.
My eyes threatened to leak once more, the force of my absence hitting me. I was only just realizing how little I’d been living, breathing in this past year without the people who made me somewhat whole. A single tear trailed down my cheek and I snatched my hand from Lucy’s grasp to angrily swipe it away.
I couldn’t believe this was when I lost it and cried. After this entire year of horror, this was the moment.
I couldn’t let it linger or else I’d never stop. I’d break completely.
“God, what I am, a girl or something?” I said. “Too sappy. Plus, there’s an entire motorcycle club, your mom and dad, your sister, and other hot guys I don’t recognize but approve of in a big way all waiting for you,” I continued. I’d breezed past most of my worried family, sneaking away before I could face their wrath, or worse, their love and concern. “I better go out and do the whole ‘she’s alive’ thing,” I finished, mimicking Dr. Frankenstein and trying to lighten the heaviness surrounding me.
I fastened my mask firmly back on, made sure my costume wasn’t going to fall off again.
It couldn’t.
Lucy narrowed her eyes, like she’d seen my slip, seen the fucking colossal mess underneath it all.
“Just to be clear, you’re only going to the waiting room. No going,” she demanded.
I mentally pinched myself at the fear in her voice, the expectation of me disappearing again.
I beamed falsely. “Of course. I’ve already taken up your old room. Polly is living in some loft that I’m almost certain is a front for a cult,” I told her cheerfully.
She didn’t blink. Polly was the ultimate wild child. Different than me, and dangerous too. I was a little worried about my adopted sister. But there wasn’t much you could do with the wild ones. I knew that better than anyone.