Without Forever: Babylon MC Book 5

by James, Victoria L.

  He had to be there to share these memories with me. There was no alternative.

  “I can’t lose him, Eric,” I whispered feeling weak and hating myself for saying the words aloud. “I’m not sure I can survive it.”

  “When has Drew ever quit on us all?”

  “Never,” I barely said the word aloud as I stared first at Eric, and then the hand covering mine. Drew had never once quit on me since he’d figured out I was what he’d wanted. “Not once.”

  “Then we have to believe he isn’t about to start quitting now. He’s just being a little dramatic.”

  A stray tear loosened itself and slid down over my cheek as I shook my head with humor. “I’m sure he’d have something to say about that if he was awake. Like it’s a trait he gets from you.” I sniffed, wiping the back of my hand under my eyes and swiping at the tears. “But I’m kinda hoping he’ll be over the drama soon.”

  “Drew?” Eric smirked. “Never.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  AYDA

  I shifted on the examination table and cringed at the crinkle of the paper that was there for sanitation reasons. I’d been away from Drew for less than an hour, but that was an hour too long. The nurses and doctors who’d talked me into this had promised me it wouldn’t take longer than thirty minutes, and yet here I was wearing a hospital gown on the forty-fifth minute as they examined me.

  It was the last time I was going to be doing a ‘favor’ for anyone.

  Damn Eric to hell for suggesting to the nurse that I could be spared.

  It was the first time I’d left Drew for more than a toilet break since they’d taken me to him. All I could think was that if anything were to happen while I was gone…

  “Okay, as far as we can tell you and your baby are in good health, but with some of the trauma you’ve faced, just take it easy and get on those vitamins,” the hospital gynecologist said with a pat to my leg before she removed the glove from her hand with a snap. “We can give you a scan to make absolutely—”

  “No. Not without Drew there,” I said over her as I pushed myself to a sitting position. “I can’t see the baby without the father being there.”

  The doctor, whose name escaped me, gave me another sad smile and glanced down at the chart she was holding. It felt very much like she was avoiding meeting my glance, but I turned away before she looked up again, my eyes lingering on an image of a weird cross-section starring a child in mom’s uterus.

  “You can get dressed now, Ayda. I’m going to ask you to make an appointment with your gynecologist when you can, or come back and see me so we can do a scan. All precautionary.”

  I slipped behind a room divider and pulled on my own jeans and a hoodie that had been brought to me by Autumn via one of the guys. I was glad of the comfort of it, and I shivered once I was buried in the hoodie again. It was always so damn cold in this place.

  “I will,” I said, stepping out from the divider so I could push my feet into my boots. “Is there anything I should be eating? Drinking? Other than the vitamins?”

  “Stay away from too much caffeine. There are some leaflets available at the front desk, which give you some good guidelines on foods to avoid, etc.”

  I nodded and headed for the door, with another quick thanks as I rushed through the halls to get back to Drew in his room.

  Hospitals weren’t always a good place for hope to blossom.

  From what I could estimate, it had been five days since Drew had been admitted here, and with every hour that passed, my mind seemed to fall into a deeper pit of despair. He hadn’t deteriorated any, but he hadn’t improved much, either. Drew was in a stasis that left every single one of us who loved him in a holding pattern, waiting for some kind of hope we could cling to with both hands.

  I was so lost in the world of wires and tubes and schedules that I had no idea what was going on outside the room. None of the agents had been to talk to me. Not even Howard had tried to bring up what had happened in the warehouse when he’d looked in on Drew late one night. Up until my talk with Eric, I hadn’t been in any shape to talk to any of the guys as they’d drifted through.

  My only concern had been Drew. Even now, his name was in every step I took on my way to his room, thinking constantly about what needed to be done before the nurses came in and took more blood. One of the physical therapists had shown me how to help with some movements to keep his muscles active while he was in the bed, and this little side trip had postponed that.

  I was so lost in my thoughts that I found myself skipping to a halt the moment I was in Drew’s room, surprised by the reaper and hounds staring at me from the backs of Jedd and Slater as they stood shoulder to shoulder looking down on Drew.

  “Hey, guys,” I squeaked, then coughed and tried again. “Hey.”

  They turned to take me in; their faces unchanging as they studied me until Slater let out a low whistle and shook his head.

  “Shit, Ayda. When was the last time you slept?”

  I pushed my loose hair back from my face and walked casually to the other side of the bed to check on Drew. He was still there, still unmoving, still with wires pouring from his body like strings.

  “I sleep in the chair,” I said, tipping my head in its direction. “You two doing okay?”

  Slater glanced down at Drew. “Never been worse.”

  Jedd shifted, moving around to drop down into the chair Eric had taken while there. His leather creaked as he rested his elbows on his knees and planted his chin on his joined hands. Jedd’s face was filled with responsibility and regret, the weight of all this clearly heavy on his shoulders.

  Slater reached out to grab Drew’s hand, his rough fingers touching Drew’s skin only for him to quickly pull back as he shook his head. “I thought him going to prison was bad. Seeing him like this is so much fucking worse.”

  I’d never had to live through him being in prison, but I understood. At least behind those bars, Drew was up and breathing on his own, that mind of his always working on something. Like this, he was an echo of the warrior we knew and adored. Here, but not here, which was heartbreaking to see.

  I reached out to lay my hand on Slater’s big forearm in comfort. I didn’t know what to say to him, or Jedd, who was watching the scene from under his dark lashes.

  “We can’t give up on him now. It’s bad, but…” I trailed off and looked down at Drew’s face, losing the words I’d been saying. “Gotta think positive.”

  “Yeah,” Slater said, his word holding no conviction.

  Jedd shuffled his feet, dropping his head into his hands to cover his face. It was a move so un-Jedd-like, it had Slater and me looking at each briefly before turning back to Jedd.

  “Slate. Can you give me a minute alone with Ayda?” Jedd asked, dragging his hands down his face, resting his fingers on the edge of his mouth. His eyes were on Drew as he spoke. “Please.”

  “Now?” Slater asked, surprised.

  “Now.” Jedd nodded.

  Glancing between the two of them with uncertainty, I met Slater’s gaze, accepting the wink of encouragement he shot me before turning and leaving the room after one last look down at Drew.

  Jedd was watching me, and I saw the bob of his Adam’s apple under his beard as I slowly lowered myself to perch on the edge of the chair I now considered mine.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked, my voice trembling.

  “There are some things I need to tell you. I need to tell Drew, too, but he ain’t waking up any time soon like I hoped he would, and the weight of all this is killing me.” Jedd closed his eyes, taking a moment for himself before he opened them again and directed his attention to me. “When everything was going down in that warehouse, I was wearing a wire for the ATF.”

  I blinked at him. Unsure that I’d heard him right.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I spent those nights in the cell at Sutton’s station, I made a deal with Winnie, the ATF chick, that, I hoped, would get The Hounds off the ho
ok. They had a lot of shit on us Ayda. Nothing solid, but enough to ask a lot of questions. I had to do something, and Eric and I had…” He paused to sigh and run a hand over his forehead. “We’d talked about things. About how we weren’t willing to let Drew take the fall again. How we could stop the club from burning to ash and half of us spending a lifetime behind bars. We’d talked about strategies and different roads we could take if we needed to. Drew has a reason to be more than just the president now. He has you, and Eric and I wanted to protect that for him. When you and Drew drove off with Owen that day, I decided that it was my turn as VP to step up and become the buffer between the law and Drew. So, I volunteered my time, and I drip fed Winnie selective information to get her on side. I needed her to see we were the good guys, constantly thrown in shit situations. It started out with her being… well… she was a real bitch. Cutting me off every time I answered a question, applying the pressure when she thought she could press on a weakness. I hated her, Ayda. But something happened during my time in that cell, and I slowly began to break her down. I talked about my brothers, the life, and how we always seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I planted seeds about Walsh, Taylor, The Navs, the whole lot, and I let her add things up in her own head. The minute she saw the chance to take down someone as prolific as Mayor Walsh, she got promotion stars in her eyes and became a hell of a lot nicer. She agreed to back off the club if I…” He raised his brows, waiting for me to fill in the gap he’d left open.

  “If you wore a wire,” I finished, pushing to my feet and wrapping my arms around myself.

  I stepped to the blinds over the windows and stared out between them at the landscape. The sun was shining too brightly for what I was feeling inside. It was so dark and twisted right now. The one thing I loved about these men was their inherent need to protect Drew and the club. I knew it was always born from a good place. Brotherhood. Camaraderie. Loyalty. I couldn’t fault Jedd for that, and if it worked…

  “Did she get what she needed?” I asked, holding back the inevitable question that was sitting on the tip of my tongue; one I knew Jedd was waiting for also.

  “Eventually,” he muttered roughly. “When Slater told us we had to get to you guys after your SOS, I made the call. I told Winnie we were heading out to get her the proof she would need. Kenny hooked me up with the kit she’d given me—the fool believing me when I told him it was our own kit that I was using to try and entrap the Navs with. Kenny’s loyal and obeys rules. They all do. So when I told each and every one of them before we left that they were only to move when I moved, they listened. That’s why they watched him fight… because of me.” Jedd rubbed his lips together in thought, his brows creasing together. “I had to stand by and watch Drew take punch after punch, unable to go to him and fuck with The Navs because I knew who was listening in. Winnie promised she’d be there sooner. I kept waiting for them to charge through those doors and put an end to the fucking carnage, but one fight turned to two, two to three. I honestly didn’t think it would go as far as it went. And now Drew is like this, and we’re on the brink of losing someone else who held us all together.” His voice cracked on the last word—a big man reduced to sounding like a small, broken boy as his emotion and guilt took over. “And all of it’s because of me.”

  “This isn’t your fault, Jedd. She had everything she needed when Trigger put Walsh in that ring with Drew,” I snapped harsher than I intended. It wasn’t aimed at him. At that moment, I almost wished it were that bitch standing in front of me. Days of anger and fear were coming together inside of me like a ball of rage I couldn’t control. “Why the fuck did she wait as long as she did?”

  “I’ve not been calm enough to stand in front of her and ask that question yet.” His jaw ticked as he turned his attention back to Drew, his eyes glazing over. “Sutton told me the minute he got there that he was the one to press the button and force them to make the move inside the warehouse. Apparently, he’s doing everything he can to make sure Winnie gets her ass out of Babylon and leaves us alone for good, but… I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s for the best since we had her on our side. I don’t know if we can trust her or not. I don’t know anything other than I should have fought instead of waiting. I should have put myself in front of every man who challenged Drew, and I didn’t. I didn’t do for him what he would have done for any of us.”

  “He wouldn’t have let you,” I said, releasing all the breath from my lungs. “He put himself in that position. He wasn’t going to let anyone else go down for him.” Another slow and painful truth started to rise with the statement. “He wouldn’t have put my survival on anyone else's shoulders.”

  “I shouldn’t have given him a choice.”

  “You honestly think Trigger would have given a shit about that? He was more than happy to give Drew what he wanted. There were no rules, but it was still his game to play. We were the mice—he was the cat. He wanted every one of us dead.”

  Jedd covered his eyes with a rough hand. “I keep going over and over in my head when it all got so fucked up, and why it constantly happens to us. We can’t lose any more men, Ayda. Especially not him. The club may as well fold if he… fuck,” he hissed, unable to say it out loud.

  “Drew’s not going anywhere,” I replied stubbornly. “He can’t. He has too much to live for.” I studied his face for a moment and glanced back at Drew, stepping toward the bed so I could run my hand down his arm. “He promised he was going to marry my stubborn ass, and Drew never breaks a promise.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  AYDA

  I was rambling as I worked Drew’s legs in a slow stretch to warm his muscles up. It had been a week since we’d arrived in the hospital, and we were finally in a room rather than intensive care, which meant we were dealing with more and more visitors. I had a nifty chair that now unfolded into a bed, so I could lay out and wasn’t waking up stiff. That didn’t mean the nurses weren’t tripping over me during their night checks. Every night, Deeks helped me drag that heavy thing next to Drew’s bed before he left to sit in the waiting room all night. My hand would be in Drew’s while I slept, just in case he decided that was the moment he wanted to wake up.

  The longer we were confined within these walls, the longer Drew stayed motionless in that bed. With that, more hope began to bleed from me. I managed to keep those emotions contained inside. I covered that wound inside my soul with duct tape again and again as they widened into a canyon that began to consume my soul. Those moments we had alone together, I would talk about the future I saw for us. I warned him of my grand plans for building a home for us because we couldn’t raise a baby in The Hut. Not really.

  Day after day.

  Hour after hour.

  Minute after minute.

  Drew stayed still, stuck in his repose.

  Stretching out his leg to its full length, once again, I released an exaggerated put-upon sigh that would have had him rolling his eyes at any other time.

  “You realize that I miss admiring your butt, right? Most mornings, when we’re at home together, I fake being asleep just so I can watch you walking naked to the bathroom.” I rubbed my palms up and down his leg with a quiet chuckle. “My favorite mornings were the ones when you caught me out. It was probably one of those mornings that you knocked me up.”

  I bent his leg again, pushing his limb gently toward his chest before pulling it straight and easing it to the bed, where I trailed the sheet over it. I headed back to the top of the bed where it was angled up, the wires still hanging from him. Glancing down at his face, I sucked in another long breath and released it slowly, leaning in so my lips were only inches from his. The whistle from the air tube under his nostrils was louder when this close to him, but it didn’t deter me. I moved slowly around him, my hand sliding to its normal place under his palm as I studied his face.

  “I miss you.”

  Something moved over my hand, and I shot back, thinking there was someone else in the room. After glancing aro
und, I realized we were still alone. The door remained closed, the usual hospital murmur relegated to the other side of it. My eyes drifted down to his hand and studied every inch of his flesh, but it was as it had been every day for the past week; sitting steadily, palm down at his side.

  “Drew?”

  Looking back up at him, I stared at his face for so damn long I thought I imagined the twitch in his jaw, but after a second of holding my breath, I saw it again, an elated cry falling from my lips, making his foot twitch in reaction.

  I wasn’t imagining it.

  Was I?

  Raising my trembling hands, I placed one against his cheek and leaned in again, my lips brushing over his and watching as his eyes moved under the thin membrane of skin too quickly to be just a twitch.

  My heart pounded in my chest so loudly I was surprised it hadn’t alerted those walking past.

  Drew was moving.

  He was moving, and it was becoming more and more apparent with every twitch he made.

  “Hold on, baby. Just hold on.”

  I raced to the door, throwing it out of my way and barely flinching when it slammed against the wall. I checked on Drew, and then I stuck my head out into the hall. There was no way in hell I was going to leave him now, and I didn’t care who the fuck I woke up in the process.

  “Nurse!” I screamed, my eyes flashing back to Drew and noticing his fingers twitching. “Nurse!”

  I saw the bustle at the station, all of them heading in my direction, so I let the door swing shut and rushed back to the bed, my breathing erratic and heaving as my hand found his. I’d barely squeezed it when his eyes flashed open and those beautiful colors I’d missed so damn much searched the room frantically before finally settling on my face.

  “There you are,” I whispered.