Point of Freedom (Nordic Lords MC #3)

by Stacey Lynn

A fucking waste.

  Death was brutal. The pain of those left behind to deal with the death never fully healed.

  I knew. I knew it in my bones, and there was no way my fuckin’ brother was dying under my watch.

  Paramedics loaded him up, quickly wrapped his bleeding gut, and began shouting orders as soon as they’d checked his pulse.

  “Paddles!” they shouted.

  Quick movement came from the back of the ambulance as Daemon reached me, shouting, “Jaden! NO!”

  My arm reached out and stopped him. Daemon was smaller than me, but a tough fucker. Fear flashed in his eyes before quickly being replaced by revenge.

  “Clear!”

  Jaden’s entire body jerked on the small bed before two fingers were pressed against his throat.

  “Fuck!” Daemon’s hand flew to his hair, swiping the rain from his face before he locked his fingers at the back of his neck.

  “Go!” a paramedic shouted.

  The doors slammed shut and the ambulance took off.

  Daemon fell to his knees, taking me with him, as other men reached us.

  “What the fuck happened?” I asked, still stunned we’d been ambushed.

  “Fuckin’ Sporelli,” Daemon growled from his knees on the pavement. His hand smacked the cement before he released a cry of pain mixed with grief and fear into the air.

  “Twelve down.” I snapped my eyes to Ryker as he reached us, slightly out of breath from running up the hill from the docks where Jaden and I had been. “Not all ours, though, but Jaden’s the worst. Cops cleaning it up, we gotta go.”

  Daemon stood up and shook my hand off his shoulder. With a blink of his eyes and a roll of his shoulder, our President returned, the fear for his long-time friend pushed to the back.

  “Get to the clubhouse. Get the word out make the calls. Get every fucking charter we can find. Angelo Sporelli will burn.”

  He leaned in, intimidating as all fuck even to me, and I’d lived my whole life with shit darker than anything this club could have thrown at me. Fuck, considering how I’d been raised, the shit I’d seen, this club was still like a damn vacation most of the time—even with the drugs and violence.

  I nodded, hopped on my bike.

  Jaden.

  I closed my eyes, sent up a silent prayer to a God I already knew fucking despised me because he’d never answered me, but still—I hoped this one damn time—He would let Jaden pull through.

  A phone call at four in the morning was never a good thing.

  It buzzed in my hand, my fingers tingling from the vibration of the phone and the terror that immediately assaulted my senses.

  Across from me, my dad’s exhausted eyes settled on me, a frown twisting his thin, worried lips.

  “Hello?” I croaked.

  “It’s Jaden, Jules,” Liv said. My eyes snapped to my dad immediately. As if knowing already, he uncurled from the couch and moved to sit beside me. “You need to get to Northern Hospital immediately.”

  My body shivered, immediately going ice cold. I replayed the words in my head even as I asked the question, “What happened?”

  “I’m not sure.” Her voice came through, quicker—more panicked. “Daemon just called me and I’m on my way now, but something went wrong tonight and a lot of men are hurt.”

  A lot of men are hurt.

  I blinked, immediately seeing funerals. Burial plots and headstones of granite flashed in front of my eyes.

  I saw Scratch. His casket. His hands crossed over his chest, buried with his cut that I only got a glimpse of before the men in the club had created a barrier, not allowing me to get close to him.

  All thanks to Jaden.

  Pain gripped my heart, squeezing it as I tried to blink the vision, the memories, out of my mind.

  “Jules…”

  “I can’t,” I croaked, my throat dry.

  Next to me, my dad squeezed my hand in my lap, but I barely felt it.

  “You have to,” she whispered. “You love him.”

  As if I needed the painful reminder. But I couldn’t do this again. Not now, not when I’d stayed up all night long with my dad—waiting for news like this.

  We hadn’t spoken at all. He’d sat, reading a James Patterson book, his reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose. But I could tell by how quickly he turned the pages, how often his eyes flickered to mine, that he was only pretending.

  We had both stayed up waiting for news like this. Me with my eyes staring out into the stormy darkness, letting the storm roll by, thunder shaking the foundation of our house, and I had only remembered.

  I couldn’t go through this again.

  I couldn’t bury another Dillon.

  “I…” I swallowed, a sob breaking from my throat before I could stop it. My fingers ached from their grip on the phone. “I can’t… Liv…” I bit my lip, willed her to silently understand. “You… Faith… Jaden… Scratch—I can’t do this again. I can’t stand in another hospital waiting for someone to die.”

  “Jules -”

  “Tell him I’m sorry.”

  Before I could change my mind, jump off the couch, and rush to the hospital, I hung up, barely hearing Liv’s protesting voice coming through the line.

  My dad’s arm went around my shoulder, and he pulled me to him as I sobbed into his chest.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie.”

  My hands tightened on his shirt, gripping it until my knuckles hurt, as tears spilled from my eyes. I pulled my feet under me, curled into a ball inside my dad’s protective embrace, and released all my fears, all my pain in his arms.

  Wiping the tears that wouldn’t stop falling, I eventually tried to pull away, to regain control of myself and my emotions, but my dad’s hand on the back of me made me pause.

  “This is what you wanted,” I sobbed through a choked cry.

  His warm lips pressed against the top of my head, his hand threaded through my hair, comforting me like he did when I was a child. “Not like this, Jules. Not like this.”

  I barely heard him over my own wrecked grief.

  But I didn’t move away again. I let him hold me, finding a painful solace in the arms of my father, knowing… I could never go back.

  Not again.

  I wasn’t strong like Faith. Wasn’t born into the life like Liv. And didn’t have the confidence and assurance Marie possessed.

  All I wanted was a quiet life filled with love and laughter, and a stable home for Sophie.

  Jaden couldn’t—the club couldn’t—ever give me that.

  I reached for consciousness and failed.

  Again.

  My arms pushed, swimming through a foggy sea with no end except for the faint glow I could barely make out in the far distance.

  Every limb felt liquid, dissolving into the thick air in front of me. Every gray, foggy matter my fingers reached for, clung to in hopes of sifting my way through the clouds that surrounded me, disintegrated in front of me, but they kept coming.

  Fuck, I hurt.

  Everything did. Pain wrapped around my arms and my legs with wicked tendrils, sending shocks of searing torment through my nerves. My head pounded with the force of a jackhammer pounding my skull.

  Occasionally I could focus on murmured voices, unable to make out their owners—just whether they were male and female.

  Pissed off.

  Sad.

  Indifferent.

  The tones I could decipher, the words jumbled together until the fog became too thick, too dark, and I was pulled back under.

  The pain ebbed and flowed like I imagined the ocean’s tide—pulling back, easing off, lifting the fog before the force slammed and pressed against my chest.

  My heart.

  The pain.

  Voices came clearer. Liv and Daemon. I heard them. Shouted at them in my silence to tell me what the fuck was going on, but I was caught.

  Captured.

  Weak and helpless.

  I hated every moment.

  She isn’t
coming.

  It came from Liv. It was the only full sentence I’d been able to make out and it was on constant repeat inside my head:

  Sheisn’tcoming.sheisn’tcoming.sheisn’tcoming.

  Until I finally understood the words.

  And a harsher pain gripped my chest, squeezing and tightening until it made sense.

  Jules.

  I swore, my silent screams cut off from the fog until the pain blasted against my skull, to my limbs.

  My body jolted. The pain lacerated my body from the inside out, until shouts filled my ears.

  “Code Blue!” “Get out!” “Make room!”

  “Clear!”

  My body jolted.

  The fog won.

  The pain disappeared.

  “It’s been a week.”

  I tried to fortify myself from the bluntness of Liv’s words and the coldness in her eyes.

  I licked my lips, and my eyes darted to every corner in my apartment. Feigned indifference wouldn’t work with Liv and Faith as they sat on the couches in my living room.

  An intervention.

  A get-the-fuck-over-yourself meeting with a side of coffee and donuts.

  I knew I couldn’t hide from my friends forever. Knew they’d be pissed when I finally let them into my apartment.

  Knew I was being a coward because I couldn’t even say goodbye. Not to Jaden.

  Not to the man who consumed me, filled me with hope, with passion I never knew existed and would forever crave but could never have again.

  “I can’t go,” I said, my face and my voice blank from emotions. It was the only way I could make it through—by pushing every feeling, every short memory, to a far corner in the recesses of my mind.

  “It’s been a week, Jules.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t. Couldn’t see him in a bed filled with wires and tubes, knowing he’d already died.

  Twice they’d revived his heart.

  I couldn’t be there if it happened a third time—and perhaps the next time, they wouldn’t be able to revive him.

  My lips cracked and pulled from dryness as I stared out my window. All I saw was the courtyard, wind whipping the falling leaves into a tumultuous storm.

  Outside, it looked cold.

  Winter was coming.

  Death was coming… it was only a matter of time. And if I didn’t harden myself for it now, the pain would become unbearable when the final storm came.

  “I can’t.” I swallowed, the truth thick in my throat and in the hollowness of my eyes. “I’ve already said my goodbyes.”

  And I had—in the silence of my room every night while I wiped tears from eyes before they could stain my pillow.

  A pillow that still smelled like Jaden, that laced pain to my heart when the scent hit me as I rolled, unable to sleep at night. It clung to me.

  Yet I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of it, either.

  Liv’s eyes softened with awareness and understanding. “I know this is hard for you, Jules. But you have to be there for him. You have to go see him—do what you need to do when he’s okay—but don’t leave him like this.” She leaned over, squeezed my hand. “He’s not Scratch. He’s stubborn, and I have to believe he’s going to be okay. All the men do, Jules. But he needs a reason.”

  “And I can’t be the one to give him a false one.”

  I shook my head, a burn growing in the depth of my throat and the back of my nose. I drank my coffee, pushing it back.

  “I need to find a way to move on.” Again. How many times would I have to do that—pick up the pieces of my heart and glue them back together—before it would no longer work?

  I pushed off the couch, headed toward the kitchen. I couldn’t take their pitiful stares, their anger and disappointment with me that I knew was being held back behind a thin veil.

  “You need to be there for Jaden and show him how much you love him.”

  I whipped my head up, staring at Liv. “Don’t,” I warned.

  “But you do. And we all know it, and staying away because you’re scared is not only stupid, it’s beneath you. You’re stronger than that.” She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, eyebrow arched, daring me to argue.

  I inhaled and exhaled slowly, reminding myself Sophie was napping so I didn’t unleash all my rage and frustration directly at Liv. She wasn’t who I was mad at.

  I was mad at fate. For giving me an incredible man, only to rip him away.

  “Maybe I’m not,” I said slowly, poorly masking my patience. “Maybe I’ve already buried someone I loved, and even if Jaden makes it, you can’t guarantee that someday I won’t bury him too. And you don’t know what that’s like, Liv.” My eyes darted to Faith—who’d been relatively silent. I didn’t know if she was here because she wanted to be or because Liv had figured there would be strength in numbers. “And you don’t, either. Both of you are marrying your first loves, and mine is buried six feet under. Forever.”

  I exhaled, feeling like shit. And just… so over it all. The pain, the waiting, the worrying, the anger. My muscles ached, crying out for relief from sleepless nights.

  I wanted warm hands and dark brown eyes to promise me everything would be okay. I wanted a scowl and a smirk. I wanted hot, spicy breath on the crook of my neck.

  And Jaden couldn’t give me that. He couldn’t make those promises, and the last thing I wanted was more lies.

  “Maybe we are,” Liv said, unable to argue as the light caught the glint of her diamond. She glanced at it, almost looking embarrassed, but found resolve from somewhere. God, she was strong. She’d been through more than any of us, I imagined, so how she didn’t understand what I was going through, I had no clue. “Maybe Jaden isn’t your first, and he’s not even your second.”

  She stopped, walked around the counter, and wrapped her hands around my shoulders. I stiffened when she smiled.

  “But he could be your forever, and that’s far more lasting than a memory of a man you haven’t truly put behind you.”

  She dropped her hands, pressed a kiss to my cheek, and turned on her heels. Resentment flooded my blood—at her accusations and the loving way she dished them out. She may not have been completely wrong.

  In all the years I’d thought I’d moved passed Scratch’s death, this last week was a stark reminder of him.

  Halfway to meet Liv at the door, Faith smiled sadly when she looked at me.

  “I don’t want you more upset, Jules. I know what it’s like to lose hope in anything ever getting better. I also know what it’s like to have to fight for what you want, despite how terrifying it is. You have the strength to do that, you just have to want it bad enough.”

  She blew me a kiss and followed Liv out the door.

  It clicked shut behind them. But the quiet words of their warnings mixed with their hope and truth echoed in my ears, bouncing off the walls, long after they were gone.

  Tormenting me on the dark nights and the dreary days that followed.

  Numbness. My mind swam in it. It filled my veins and my muscles until I didn’t bother trying to fight.

  Yet the fog lifted. The darkness turned to gray and then white before I felt a small tug of pain behind my eyes and then blinding, scorching white light.

  I clamped my eyes closed. Orange light radiating behind my closed lids.

  I groaned. Or tried to. I felt it deep in my throat, but couldn’t open my mouth. I tried again, willed my lips to part, my muscles to work, and slowly felt the tear of dry flesh on flesh cracking apart.

  “Fuck.” I coughed. Cleared my throat. Through the dim of the leftover fog, I wondered if that was my voice.

  Dry like sand. But harsher, like jagged rocks.

  Damn, I felt funny. My brain sloshed in my head, woozy and disoriented. A ball of orange shone behind my closed eyes.

  I tried again.

  Slowly, I pushed my eyelids to open into small slits.

  Instantly, the glaring lights overhead sent a fiery sensation to my pupils. I
blinked, turned my head to the side, and opened them wider.

  Olivia lay on a couch across from me, hands balled under her cheeks again the armrest, and her eyes were closed.

  I frowned and continued moving my head, searching the room. Television mounted in corner, doors with windows and no blinds for privacy, rails next to the side of my bed. A dull throb began pounding at the base of my neck.

  Tubes.

  They were everywhere. My nose itched, and I felt the plastic shoved inside. It scraped across my cheek as I looked down. Plastic covered a fingertip, needles were inserted into the back of my hand and the inside of my elbow.

  My head fell back onto pillow, making a scratchy sound.

  “Fuck,” I groaned again. In my other hand was a remote.

  I pressed the red button. Red meant fire. Emergency. I took a shot.

  Within minutes, the door to my room opened and a nurse poked her head in.

  “Mr. Dillon.” She smiled, her eyes wide with surprise. “You’re awake.”

  I frowned. Cleared my throat, and winced from the jagged shards shredding my insides. “Yeah. Fuck it hurts.”

  She nodded, moved into the room and handed me a glass of water. “Two small sips. You’re stomach’s empty and too much will make you vomit, but it should help.”

  I wrapped my lips around the plastic straw, fought against the sudden urge to guzzle the whole cup. Vomiting wouldn’t be good, but I figured it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I had ended up in the fucking hospital.

  She tugged on my cup and the straw popped out of my mouth against protest. My throat screamed for it.

  “Jaden?” Olivia asked, her voice thick from sleep. Her eyes flew open and her feet hit the floor. “You’re up!”

  She immediately rushed to my side; her hand fell on my shoulder and her lips hit my cheek. “God, I’m so glad you’re awake.” Her hand went to my hair, scrubbing it. The pain moved from the back of my head to the front.

  “Enough.” I flinched from the pain and the fuss.

  “I’ll go let the doctor know you’re awake, but for now, small sips of water and try to rest.” Her lips twisted into something bitchy before she shut the door.