by C. M. Marin
Sighing heavily, I push my laptop aside. Liam will come get me soon anyway, and since I haven’t been able to write a single sentence in the past week―at least not a good one―it’s unlikely I’ll write one within the next half hour.
Air. I need air to clear my head.
Abandoning my couch, I stroll to my room and put on my long gray cardigan over my white shirt. And once I’ve made my way to the closet in the entryway, slid into my tennis shoes and grabbed my purse, I walk out the door and the building.
The sunny early December weather is agreeable, the temperatures not too cold, so I take my time wandering on the sidewalk to enjoy the fresh air. Still, it takes me no more than five minutes to reach the town center and catch sight of my goal. My pace practically comes to a standstill while I send a quick text to Liam, letting him know where I am. As soon as it’s done, I’m pushing through the glazed door that I’ve pushed through so many other times in the past ten years.
The door hasn’t even clicked back shut when I’m greeted joyfully. “Look who is back here already! Don’t tell me you’re already done with the four books you bought just a few days back?”
Mr. Kinley puts a book down on the large table showing off the latest literary releases and walks around it.
“Guilty,” I grin, meeting him near the table. “I don’t start my new job for another two weeks, which leaves me with a lot of free time to kill.”
I’ve come to Mr. Kinley’s bookstore for a weekly trip for as long as I can remember. I’ve just always loved books. Even before I could read, actually. I don’t remember my mom because she died from a pulmonary embolism when I wasn’t even two years old, but she loved books, too. My dad made sure that I got every book of the impressive collection she started when she was just a child herself. So, through the years, until he passed, the large bookcase in my childhood bedroom kept filling with my mom’s books and my own. And once my dad died, Liam just gave me all the books―after he made sure to hold on to the ones I wasn’t old enough to read just yet. Even after I left for college, I would come here every weekend to get new books. But like everything else, that habit changed over a year ago.
Anyway, Liam always joked saying how happy he was that Dad left us good money when he passed, because he would have had to fix at least twenty cars a day to fulfill my luxurious lifestyle. Most of them are still back at Liam’s house, but I also have two large bookcases at my apartment.
“What are you in the mood for today?” Mr. Kinley asks me. “Thriller, sci-fi, or romance?”
“Let’s go with one of each,” I decide just as my phone buzzes in my hand with a text from Liam. After I read it, I add, “And I have ten minutes to make my decision. I doubt my brother will want to hang out here while I read dozens of blurbs.”
“No time to wander around the shelves then,” he states, and I follow him over to the sci-fi shelf at the back of the store. “I have a new release that you should love. It’s from a new author, but he is very talented in my opinion,” he explains all the while running a finger on the numerous spines until he pauses on a grayish one.
He slides the book out, hands it to me, and while I get busy taking in the back cover, he stalks back to the front of the store, straight to the shelf where romance novels are stashed. Once I’m done and have joined him, he’s already holding a book and moving to the new releases table. A couple of seconds later, he grabs the third book.
“I think you’ll love these,” he says then waits quietly until I’m finished reading both blurbs.
“Sounds great,” I agree with his choices.
“Perfect. Now tell me when I am going to have the pleasure of placing your first bestseller on my shelves?”
Besides my literary tastes, Mr. Kinley also knows that I’ve always loved to write, too, and that I’ve been contemplating publishing a series of five romance books I’ve been working on for years. Literally years.
“Hopefully before I turn forty,” I answer. “But considering how challenging it’s been to write more than one awful sentence these days, I wouldn’t put too much faith in me.”
Again, I almost groan my irritation at how unproductive I’ve been lately. Especially since I don’t have to study anymore, and I basically have nothing to do all day until I start working again. I could use all that free time to progress, but instead, I’m stalling miserably. It’s even more frustrating because words used to flow through my brain easily.
Before Mr. Kinley can do more than smile at me apologetically, both our attentions are taken away from each other as the rumble of bikes, dull at first, rises gradually outside.
That is a sound I also missed a lot.
“Looks like you get a full escort today,” he smiles when we can distinguish several engines through the store front coming to a stop on the opposite side of the street.
“Apparently. They all drove back from Phoenix early this morning. I’m sure they stopped here with Liam to get some coffee. Liam is going to need it since I’ve planned to drag him to a couple of furniture stores.
He chuckles. “Let’s not make them wait too long then.”
I walk behind him to the checkout, and once I’ve paid for my umpteenth book and exchanged goodbyes with him, I leave the store.
Once I’m outside, my hand has barely left the doorknob when too many things register in my brain at once. A car barreling down the small street with its tires screaming; the loud popping sounds quieting every other sound around me; all the Chasers present pulling out their guns as they seek shelter behind parked cars… Everything happens in such a blur that my body can’t even make the slightest movement to allow me to go back inside the store to find my own shelter. And what happens around me registers no more than a couple of seconds before the sharp pain that lances through my stomach steals my breath away suddenly and, surprisingly slowly, steals away the strength the muscles in my legs need to keep me upright. Roaring voices I know so well call out my name, but my eyes can only lower to the red liquid dampening my shirt as the street grows quiet now that the gunfire has stopped.
Chapter 4
Jayce
“Alexia!” I roar. “No, Alex!”
My brothers keep shooting at the car that is driving away like a bat out of hell, but my own gun crashes on the asphalt as I’m running toward the bookstore. All I can see is Alex.
Her back is sliding down against the door, the motion as slow as it is fast. Sickness unfurls in my gut while my terrified gaze settles on the large red stain that keeps growing on her white shirt, right in the middle of her stomach. It feels like an eternity passes before I can throw myself on the ground beside her and pull her to me.
The gunfire has stopped, so I can hear the whimpers that leave her as her head comes to rest against my chest. I can also make out Ben calling 911, shouting at them to move their asses, but my focus stays solely on the only woman I’ve ever loved. The only one I’ll ever love.
“You stay with me, baby. Okay? You stay with me. It’s all going to be alright.”
“Jayce…” she whimpers my name.
“I’m here, Alex. I’m right here. You hold on for me, okay?”
Her hand is cold when she reaches for mine, and the squeeze she gives me is terrifyingly light. And when her breathing turns laborious and her eyes seem to grow heavy, every one of my heartbeats comes with an unbearable ache.
I can’t lose her. God, please no. Please, don’t take her away from me. Jesus, I can’t lose her.
“Alex? Fuck, no, Alexia…”
Liam kneels very slowly beside his sister, his eyes assessing her like he can’t believe what’s happening right in front of him.
“Liam…” she pronounces his name on a wheeze then shivers in my arms.
“You hang in there, baby sis. The ambulance is on its way,” he promises and places a kiss on her forehead.
“I love you,” she tells him, and an eerie feeling stabs at my gut when she doesn’t promise him to fight.
Those three words… I kno
w she didn’t say them to me, but like a selfish bastard, I wish she did.
“I love you too, Alex. So, you don’t go anywhere. Don’t you dare leave me. Please, fuck, hang in there, alright? They’re on their way. They’ll be here any minute.”
Any minute. But even that is too damn long. Time seems to stand still as a tear runs down Liam’s cheek. And once again, she doesn’t make any promises. She just smiles at him. That beautiful smile of hers. Though it breaks my heart to see her eyes clouded with a veil of sadness.
As sirens thankfully make themselves heard in the distance, she tilts her head to look at me.
“And you…” She pauses as she takes a shallow breath. “…are the love of my life.”
For the shortest moment, I freeze. I must have dreamed those words. I must have, because I would have expected anything coming from her, but not that. She should hate me. I did everything in my power for her to hate me. She should hate me as much as I hate myself.
I can’t keep my voice from wavering as I finally speak. “You are mine, too. God, you are mine, too, Alexia,” I go on, realizing I’ve started crying. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry, I love you. You know that, right? I love you.”
She needs to know that. She has to know that I’ve always loved her.
The sirens grow louder as her own tears wet her angelic face.
She gives another weak squeeze to my hand and shakes her head barely noticeably, like none of what I did to her matters. “Just…” She fights hard to keep her eyes open. “Kiss me?” she asks in a murmur.
Again, her words take me aback. It’s impossible to say how many times I’ve dreamed of tasting her lips again since the moment I shoved her out of my life. Her soft, rosy lips that aren’t rosy right now. They’re frighteningly pale, just like her skin. But I taste them anyway. My lips brush them in the softest kiss I recall ever giving her. She barely moves hers against me, and I wonder if she can taste my tears.
My fucking tears.
She seems to get weaker in my arms, and something inside of me bleeds with a slicing pain. One that burns every inch of my skin and every cell in my body even more painfully when I pull away from her lips and see her eyes closing.
“No, no, no, don’t close your eyes. No, Alexia, don’t close your eyes. Stay with me. Please baby, look at me,” I call out to her over and over again, but it doesn’t change anything.
“Alex, no, please…”
But his pleading is as useless as mine. Her beautiful blue eyes don’t open back.
“Sir, I need you to lay her carefully on the ground and step back.”
Even though my gaze doesn’t leave Alex’s deathly pale face and I don’t recognize the voice addressing me, I know who’s talking. But for a long couple of seconds, I can’t seem to be able to find it in me to move. What in the fucking hell could he even do to help her? She’s…
“Sir, every second counts,” the paramedic goes on with a harsh tone I’d normally let no one speak to me with.
But something I can’t name has me coming back to my senses, and I obey him anyway. I lay my girl down on the asphalt with every ounce of delicateness I can gather. There’s no telling how I can even do the movements, my hands shaking like a crack addict on withdrawal. I’m so out of it, it’s like I’ve been knocked out by someone that’s not even here. Everything inside of me stopped functioning the moment she closed her eyes.
“I have a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there. We need to move her. Now.”
The paramedic’s words, said hurriedly, are slow to make sense in my head. At first, I even thought I heard him wrong. I only understand I didn’t when Liam puffs a heavy, tortured breath as his body sags back to slam into the bookstore’s glazed door.
“Please, save her,” he begs them. “Please, save her.”
They don’t answer him, and what they’re doing to Alex before lifting her up and laying her back down on the gurney barely registers. My eyes can’t leave her face, that’s now partially hidden by an oxygen mask. Around it, her smooth skin keeps paling, and a glimpse at the blood forming a pool on the ground where she was lying seconds ago tells me why.
“You both can climb in with us, but only if you can stay calm,” the same paramedic warns as he and his colleague lift the gurney and start walking toward the ambulance.
“Yeah,” I manage to croak out once I’m back on my feet.
I have no idea if my voice was even loud enough for him to hear me, and I don’t care. I’m climbing in with her anyway. It’s a miracle I can get my legs to function, but I’m glad they do. I follow them, sensing Liam’s presence right beside me.
“We’ll be right behind you.” Glancing to my left, I see Nate a few feet away from the opened doors of the ambulance, his attention focused on Alex.
“Yeah,” I croak out again and haul myself into the vehicle.
I sit down where the paramedic tells me to, and Liam sits right beside me. Neither of us says a word, and I don’t look at him. Seeing the fear on his face without losing my shit would be near impossible. I’m barely able to control myself as it is.
The drive to the hospital flies in a blur while the paramedic stays right beside Alex to make sure she keeps breathing. I take every passing second of inaction from him as a victory. She’s still breathing. Her heart is still beating in her chest. She’s still here with me.
A handful of doctors and nurses are standing at some large automatic doors when the paramedic who drove us here opens the ambulance. Liam and I hop out and move swiftly to clear the way and allow both men to take Alex out.
“Gunshot to the abdomen…”
That’s all I hear the paramedic say to whoever is going to take over. Most likely a surgeon who will bring her to surgery. All I can focus on is Alex lying unconscious on that gurney as they rush her into the building. They wheel her into a long hallway, and I follow them close until they’ve passed a double door. Then my steps are halted by an older woman I didn’t see coming.
After missing her and bumping into her small body, I realize she’s a nurse as she speaks to me. “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t go any further.”
Her injunction escapes her mouth firmly, but when I meet her eyes, there’s compassion in them. That’s probably what makes me fight the instincts that are shouting at me to elbow my way through that door until I find whatever place they took Alex. Well, her compassionate look and the fact that the last thing I need is to be thrown out of here.
“The waiting room is right over there,” Nate says warily from behind me, apparently not at all certain I won’t lose it.
My body goes stiff when he clamps a hand on my shoulder, but he doesn’t take it off. He knows just as well as I do that I have to keep my shit together because it’d be stupid to get myself kicked out and even more stupid to assault some security guard for making me leave.
Inhaling heavily through my nose, I do my best to usher away every bit of fear and rage that swirls in my gut. But before I can feel the ghost of a result, a snarling, cocky voice washes away the silence that’s become fucking loud around me despite the presence of more than a dozen of my brothers.
“Mr. Bowers, we need to have a word.”
When I turn around, I have to fight hard against the growl that’s right at the back of my throat. If I could punch a cop without getting myself not only kicked out but in a shitload of trouble, it would be him.
This stupid blue has been around town since last year, and he stands here with a younger cop at his side, his arms crossed over his chest as if he were some kind of important king. Someone needs to tell him that he’s no more than a poor shit in need of some recognition that he’ll probably never get―since he’s still a blue even though he looks close to fifty.
“Not now,” Nate retorts dryly. “You’ve already talked to three of my men back at the bookstore. Right now, I’m waiting to be sure my friend is going to be okay.”
“I suppose it’s the least you can do considering your way of life has brought her h
ere.”
Deep growls erupt around the room. The wildest ones come from Liam and me as we launch toward the son of a bitch. Well, as we try to launch toward him.
Hands hold me back with strained force, and I know another one of my brothers must be restraining Liam just the same. Because instead of just taking an irrepressible step back, unable to conceal the fearful glee on his face, the bird-brained cop would be on his way to becoming a bloody pulp writhing on the fucking floor by now if Liam had been as free to move as I crave to be.
“And you seem thrilled with it.”
Every pair of eyes in the room darts to Camryn’s soft yet acerbic voice. I hadn’t noticed her. She must have come with one of the guys who didn’t tag along to Phoenix yesterday.
“There’s a woman fighting for her life behind those doors, and you come in here with a triumphant smile on your face just because it proves your point. What kind of cop are you?”
She can’t keep her voice from wavering as she’s noticeably on the verge of crying, but she nearly spits the words. She looks pissed at the fucker and doesn’t try to hide it.
“You should find yourself another room to wait in,” Nate suggests him, tightening his hold on my sister as the cop has the nerve to glare at her. “Like I said, my men have already talked to you, and no one here is going to answer any more of your questions because we all know you don’t intend to do shit anyway.”
Not that we’d want the cops to do anything anyway. Nate is just proving his own point. Cops are useless. We solve our own shit, and we do it the way we see fit. For what happened this morning, death is what the Spiders will get. Every last one of them. Because it was them, my gut knows it. And they will die for it. All of them.
“I’ll be coming back if I need to,” the cop promises, squaring his shoulders in a laughable attempt at showing off how big his balls are.
When the motherfucker’s face is out of sight, and he’s finally left the damn room, I force myself out of my brother’s hold. I don’t glance behind me to see who it is, focusing on keeping the fury that’s eating at me at bay. The dread, too.