Without Forever: Babylon MC Book 5

by James, Victoria L.

  The other half were staring at their leader, wondering if he was dead, too.

  I glanced around the men, tearing my eyes away from the desperate way Ayda was clawing at the love of her life: angry, desperate, and so lost it made my chest ache, wishing my Autumn was here to help her.

  Kenny’s face was pale.

  Slater’s eyes were filled with unshed tears.

  Moose had his head bowed, in respect as well as fear of the unknown.

  And Jedd… he had his eyes closed, his hands behind his head, and his chin tilted up to the ceiling.

  This was real fear.

  All the battles we’d fought. All the times we’d gotten lucky. The men we’d lost. There was no amount of fist-swinging that could save us now. A change was coming. I could feel its return like a long, lost ghost, feeding its way through the cloying air around us.

  The memories and dread were crashing into every Hound around me, leaving each man breathless and weary, too scared to accept what they were seeing.

  When I turned back to Drew, he still hadn’t moved, and Ayda’s body hung over his, her head pressed to his temple as her tears fell in rivers of distress. Her cries of agony made even the strongest of ATF men lower their guns as they stood over her, unable to help, yet unable to stop themselves from the onslaught of sympathy they clearly felt.

  They were lovers torn apart, and Ayda was the one left wailing at the skies as her heart cracked wide open for everyone to see.

  Howard Sutton was screaming something into his receiver, his arms flailing everywhere, and his mouth moving quickly, but all the words he was shouting were being drowned out by the constant ringing in my ears.

  The sense of dread that made me old heart freeze.

  And the way my eyes had focused in on Drew’s unusually pale skin—paler than I’d ever seen it.

  Blood.

  Sweet Jesus, there was so much blood.

  “Please, Lord,” I whispered to myself. “Take me instead. Take me. Let him live. Let Drew live for Ayda. For all of them.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  JEDD THOMAS

  VICE PRESIDENT OF THE HOUNDS OF BABYLON

  Loyal to my brothers.

  Undercover for the ATF without any of my men knowing.

  Currently wearing a wire.

  I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.

  Just breathe, I repeated over and over again.

  Those two words were silenced by a more dominant thought:

  They should have been here sooner. Winnie promised they’d be here fucking sooner.

  I couldn’t look at Drew, and I couldn’t look at Winnie.

  I’d let them down.

  She’d let me down.

  All her guarantees of our safety—her promises to keep every man free from harm and safe from death now sounded like fucking shallow lies to get me to where I currently was—in a warehouse, surrounded by blood, unable to look at my president who was truly unresponsive for the first time in his life.

  Winnie’s voice called out to Sutton, her words sharp like a knife in my chest. “Medics on route. Everyone else stay the fuck down.”

  She should have been here sooner.

  “Is he breathing?” Winnie asked someone I couldn’t see.

  “He’d better be fucking breathing,” Deeks muttered to himself.

  “Drew, for fuck’s sake, man!” Slater’s voice was cracked and desperate, his pitch breaking on every word.

  Dropping my chin to my chest, I slowly peeled my eyes open and stared straight ahead, the scene in front of me shattering my heart into pieces.

  Time froze to imprint that scene to the forefront of my mind for the rest of my life, and when I caught sight of someone moving closer to me, I glanced up through narrowed eyes and watched as Winnie came to a stop and stared down at me with her lips pinched together.

  Her regret shone like a dark star.

  Her unspoken apology hung in the air.

  Her need to hear me say it was okay was obvious.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I whispered roughly, making sure she heard every ounce of venom I had within me for the traitorous bitch. She held my gaze, unblinking, before I turned away and focused on my president.

  I waited for him to move because that’s what Drew did.

  He always moved in the end.

  He always got the fuck up again.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  ERIC TUCKER

  FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE HOUNDS OF BABYLON

  Patched.

  Unpatched.

  Fucked everything.

  Drew was on the floor, chest down, the blood we shared now spilling out around him from an open wound in his side.

  Everything I’d tried to control had come to a head, bringing us to this very moment.

  A moment when I suddenly became useless as I stared at the one person I loved more than anything else in this life.

  My son.

  While Ayda cried and the air became thick with tension, I closed my eyes and pictured a face I hadn’t seen in so very long. A face I missed. A face I needed to come to our rescue.

  My sweet Shelby. I’m so sorry for all the mistakes I’ve made since you left us. I thought I could do this alone. I thought I could be the father he deserved. I’ve failed you both. I can’t do this anymore. I need your help. He needs your help. Save our boy, darling. Please. He needs his momma now.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  AYDA

  It felt like hours I’d spent trying to warm Drew’s cold body, waiting for anyone that looked like a paramedic to show up. I wouldn’t let anyone touch him as I pressed my hands against the gaping wound in his side, trying to staunch the bleeding. I was so afraid that one wrong touch and the shallow rise and fall of his chest would cease, forcing me to lose the only thing that was reminding me to breathe myself.

  Drew was still alive, but glancing at him, I wasn’t sure for how long.

  Everything seemed to move around us both. The thunderous beat of panic hammered through my chest and deafened me as my heart pumped blood through my body. I couldn’t have told you whose hands touched me or who spoke because none of that mattered.

  Nothing but Drew mattered.

  He had saved me so many times. He’d put his life on the line too much for me, and I wasn’t going to let him down now. I couldn’t. I kneeled by his side, tears blinding me.

  I was so lost in my pleas and cries for him to wake up that I barely noticed when the paramedics finally rushed to our sides. In the blindness of my panic, I tried to fight them off, protectively covering Drew’s body with my own to shelter him from the onslaught of new people rushing closer. I didn’t see their uniforms until I blinked away a fresh round of tears, and only then did I relinquish control. This forced me to watch impotently as they did their best to save Drew’s life, while I batted away any arms of comfort that tried to close in around me.

  I would not be moved from his side. Not now. Not ever again.

  I tried to keep my composure as they worked on him, throwing around words like internal bleeding, collapsed lung, concussion, but the shivering that worked its way through my limbs made me feel like I was a walking vibration. My teeth clattered together too loud in my own head, and my hands, covered in Drew’s blood, trembled wildly. I was a mess, and I knew it, but my wide eyes always stayed on Drew’s chest.

  The two men working on Drew asked me question after question after question about how he’d got in this state. They asked what he’d been stabbed with, so I pointed to the knife at Trigger’s feet.

  They asked me how many fights Drew had had. The answer of too many stayed in my mind, but I heard another voice from around me—one I recognized as Slater’s—offer a number when I couldn’t.

  “Were there blows to Drew’s head?” they asked me. Only when the other bastards cheated, I thought. Again, Jedd answered with the number I didn’t have as I mumbled under my breath for Drew to wake up.

  “Was he hit with anything heavy? Where
did he take the worst of the abuse?”

  I answered as best I could; reliving every painful memory as we’d all watched Drew fight for his life.

  Slater and Jedd were standing behind me now, and the rest of The Hounds were no longer being detained by ATF agents, each one of them looking stunned as they watched the guys wearing the Nav patches being cuffed and lined up on their knees along the wall farthest away from us. I wasn’t entirely sure what had gone down, or why only The Navs were being arrested and taken away. In that moment, I didn’t really care what was going on outside of Drew.

  I was unwillingly eased away from my place next to Drew enough for them to get him on a gurney, but they couldn’t keep me away for long. I stepped right back by his side, my hand on his wrist, running alongside them as they wheeled him out of that fucking hellhole where the midnight blue sky held a spattering of stars. I breathed in my first breath of untainted air only seconds before Drew was loaded into the back of the waiting ambulance.

  No one could keep me from climbing into the back of the rig next to Drew. Not the cops, the ATF, nor the paramedics, but they tried. I elbowed one of the agents in the ribs when he tried to hold me back forcefully, an action that was followed by a whole MC growling in defiance. No one else seemed inclined to come close to me after that, so the paramedics made room for me, and I took my seat next to Drew, watching as the paramedic affixed more wires and tubes to various parts of his body.

  Terrified, I hadn’t said much since they’d asked their questions, but my tears fell uselessly, and my heart pounded painfully as I watched them moving around him.

  There was eventually a beep from a machine that had wires connected to pads over his heart. It sounded too slow to be his heartbeat, even in that weird juxtaposition with the sirens screaming all around us as the rig began to move. I didn’t know what any of it meant, so I continued to watch that rise and fall of his chest, my breaths moving with his to assure myself he was still alive. Still breathing.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  Then... nothing.

  Drew had stopped breathing.

  So I did, too because breathing without him felt too hard.

  I froze in place next to Drew, my breath a heavy weight stuck in my chest as pain pierced my soul, the words: no, no, no, no, no, stuck on repeat bouncing around my brain while my lips parted in a silent scream.

  I watched as the paramedic sitting on the other side of Drew pulled out a defibrillator while screaming the words, “He’s coded,” over and over again at the driver who grabbed for a radio and gunned the ambulance. The urgency forced a roar of sound to rise from the engine and tangle with the already long drone of the flat line of the heart monitor and scream of the siren.

  My hands were thrown from Drew, leaving me to only blink wildly as the technician pressed the paddles to Drew’s bare chest. I flinched when he shouted at me to stay back, and I watched helplessly as he shocked Drew with so much power, his body bounced and arched from the gurney.

  I was dying inside, filled with layers of pain and darkness, thoughts and emotions aflame and burning me alive from the inside. I was now a silent ball of torture. I wanted to scream along with that deafening siren that was unrelenting overhead, but I had nothing left in me to give to the outside world. I had no breath in my lungs to release. All I had were tears, rivers of them falling in a constant line that burned my skin as they trailed down my cheeks and dropped from my chin.

  I couldn’t do any of this without Drew.

  I couldn’t live without Drew.

  I couldn’t love without Drew.

  I couldn’t breathe without Drew.

  How was I supposed to survive this without Drew?

  I watched silently as the paramedic continued to work over him, placing a mask over Drew’s face, the heel of his hand rubbing over Drew’s chest doing God knew what. My muscles were now frozen as the paramedic rocked back, placed the paddles against Drew’s chest and shocked him again, pausing to watch for a reaction.

  Any reaction.

  The machine’s screen maintained that straight line.

  The whining of the machine played that consistent torturous sound, taunting me with its lack of life.

  Unwilling to give up, the tech replaced the paddles and dropped one hand to Drew’s wrist, watching his screen. I stared at Drew’s chest, at the patches of ink… at my name tattooed on his heart, and I waited for those breaths to come back as words of silent prayer fell from me.

  “Breathe. Please, Drew, breathe.”

  I leaned in, my forearms on the edge of the gurney as my lips moved closer to his ear.

  “We need you, Drew. We all need you. Breathe. Please. Just. Breathe. I love you. Please.”

  “Just. Breathe.”

  “Just. Breathe.”

  “You promised me, you son-of-a-bitch.” My voice cracked. “Breathe, goddammit.”

  The last words tore out of me in rage, but the sound in my throat died with another wail of the siren. I stared at the man I loved with all I had, and I silently pleaded one last time.

  Please.

  At once, emotion caught in my throat, and I saw Drew pull in a breath only a second before the monitor beeped in that slow stuttered rhythm again.

  Alive?

  He was alive.

  For now.

  But it was a start, and my Drew never quit on me. Not after he’d made me a promise.

  I watched vigilantly, breathing with him.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  Silently begging him to stay with me while my hand held his and my tears fell.

  When the ambulance finally came to a violent stop, the doors were yanked open from the back of the ambulance, and a whole team of people greeted us in a cacophony of sound and motion.

  Voices, loud and controlled, shouted over one another, making me gasp with surprise and blink against the shock of my reality.

  Medical terms were thrown about, and hands tried to grab at me, pulling me away from Drew.

  I pushed and shoved them away again, fighting to get close to him, utterly undeterred by the call for security as we ran with the gurney into the bright white lights of the hospital.

  I winced against the sudden light into submission, until I clearly saw the rise and fall under the too pale skin of Drew’s chest. He struggled to stay with us. His fight was weak. He looked too ghostly under these bright lights, his lips a blue tint under the mask they’d placed there, and his face whiter than the pure driven snow. The sight of it was terrifying, but I swallowed my endless sobs and ran alongside him, ignoring their continued encouragement for me to step aside.

  They slowed at a set of doors.

  “You can’t go any further.”

  “He’s in the best place.”

  “We just want to help.”

  “You have to let us do our jobs.”

  “Let us save him.”

  And that was the one that finally stuck.

  “Let us save him.”

  I shuddered violently to a stop as they continued, and I watched as Drew disappeared through a set of swinging doors with a team of doctors. Arms barred me, pushing me back as the doors swung closed and locked me out, away from my only lifeline.

  “Let us save him.”

  “Let us save him.”

  “Let us save him.”

  “Save him,” I quietly demanded of no one in particular while standing feebly on weakened legs, my arms wrapped around my stomach, trying to hold everything together as my world crumbled and shattered into painful shards around me.

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure how long I was standing alone there—waiting.

  People and staff came and went through those doors over and over again, walking around me as I stared at the seam of the doors waiting for someone who would tell me what was going on.

  Eventually, a kindly woman in scrubs stepped out from them, and with a small sympathetic sigh wrapped an arm aro
und my shoulders and led me into a small area with chairs and vending machines.

  I sat, and she took the seat next to mine, her voice a murmur as she asked questions and offered reassurances that went unanswered. I trembled so violently, my teeth made an awful clicking sound, and the tears continued to fall. I knew it was helping nothing, achieving nothing, but the fear of losing Drew, the very thought of not seeing him scowling at me when I did something stupid or seeing that smile he gave me when no one else was looking, or the touch of his strong hands when I needed him the most… it all crushed me.

  I had shared so many firsts with Drew in our short time together. I’d discovered so much about who I was when I was loved by the right person. But I hadn’t learned every one of his emotions yet. I hadn’t taught myself what every line on his handsome face meant. I hadn’t explored every scar and muscle on his body. I hadn’t had enough time to worship him the way he deserved to be worshipped.

  I wasn’t ready for everything that we’d shared to be the last of anything.

  Our last kiss.

  Our last I love you.

  Our last smile.

  I hadn’t had him long enough.

  He was my forever, and the thought of saying goodbye crushed me under the weight of it.

  I was barely aware that the nurse stayed with me until some familiar faces began crowding the room around me. I wasn’t even sure who the faces belonged to.

  I was numb and cold, unable to see anything but the door that Drew had disappeared through, my heart barely held together by the last string of hope that I would see him again as people moved around me.

  I think The Hounds came in first. The faces I saw were bruised and covered in blood, each one heartbroken and cautious as they studied me like I was a bomb that was about to go off.

  The Babylon Police Department showed up in force looking pained, unsure how to approach me or what to do as they set themselves up as a barrier between The Hounds and the ATF.