Honor

by Jay Crownover

  I was really uncomfortable, but when I finally managed to pull my eyes open, I was looking up at the prettiest cloudy day I had ever seen. The sky was stormy and there was rain falling from the clouds and landing on my face, but it was still the most welcome thing I had ever locked my eyes on.

  She was blurry. In fact, I was seeing triplets that looked just like my Key with different hair, but there was no missing that my feisty fighter of a woman was hovering over me, pulling me from the threshold. Love wanted me more than death did. I tried to blink so that I could bring her into focus but that didn’t work, and every time my eyes closed it felt like it took a monumental effort to get them back open.

  I opened my mouth to ask her what happened, to ask her where I was and why her hair was now a deep, rich chocolate brown instead of Crayola red, but nothing came out. I wheezed like I was a thousand-year-old man, and suddenly Key’s pretty, concerned face was replaced by a much sterner one. The guy had a stethoscope around his neck and was barking orders across me, and I vaguely felt my arm being picked up and the sheet that was covering me get shifted off my body.

  I’m sure they had all kinds of important medical mumbo jumbo to take care of, but all I wanted was Key. I tried to shake the doctor off as he leaned over me, only to find that I was down to one working appendage. It seemed like my right arm was strapped pretty effectively to my chest, meaning I couldn’t reach for my girl. That made me agitated, but I was pinned down and so very weak. I tried to call her name and realized the reason I couldn’t was because I had something hard and plastic shoved between my teeth. I went to move my head to dislodge it only to have the doctor put his hand heavily on my forehead. I growled and went to jerk my head away, but that made black spots dance in front of my eyes and pain slice across my brain.

  “You’re upsetting him. Move out of my way.” Key sounded annoyed and assertive. Yeah, everyone get out of her way so I can see my girl . . . my love.

  The doctor’s face was replaced with the one that had saved me, the one that meant everything.

  “Nassir, you got hurt really, really bad. You need to let them check you out, okay? I promise I’m not going anywhere.” Her hand reached out and brushed over my forehead. It felt really nice, so I closed my eyes and relaxed against her touch. It soothed me. It settled me, and before I knew it, pain and sleepiness sucked me back under.

  It went on like that for days. I would wake up and Key would be there, touching me, talking to me, holding me, and then the doctors and nurses would get their hands in the mix and aggravate me until they had to pump sedatives into my system to get me to calm down. Eventually the ventilator was pulled out and she could touch her lips to mine. When she did she told me how close I had come to dying before her very eyes. One of the bullets had broken my clavicle and the one fired into the center of my chest had shattered when it hit my sternum and a few tiny pieces had gotten dangerously close to my heart. I’d needed immediate surgery and had barely pulled through. To make matters worse, I’d apparently had an allergic reaction to one of the heavy painkillers they were pumping into me and had almost kicked it again. It hadn’t been an easy few weeks for her but she rarely left my side and she did more to calm me down and get me to cooperate with the hospital staff than the sedatives did.

  When I could finally speak without coughing or feeling like my throat was a river of fiery pain and that my words were made of razor blades, I asked her about her hair.

  She raised her hands to her head and started crying. Before I could hold a hand out to her, she climbed onto the side of the bed that didn’t have my broken wing on it and put her head on my shoulder. She was delicate about it but it still hurt, not that I would ever complain. She put her hand over the obnoxiously thick dressing that was covering the center of my chest.

  “I never want to see the color of blood again. Every time I looked in the mirror . . . all that red. All I could see was all of that blood flowing out of you. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Now her hair was the color of mink. It looked sophisticated, still sexy and flirty in that uneven cut that hung longer on one side than the other, but it made her seem more refined than she had been before. Maybe a tad more grown up and mature, and after everything she had witnessed, how could she not be?

  I told her about dying. I explained how I was there, ready to cross the threshold, but this time no one was there to answer the door. I told her about how there was nothing. How I was stuck and empty. I told her that the only thing that made any sense in all of it was her. I told her that in the nothing there was still the memory of how I felt about her. I told her that when I burned on the pyre of pain and agony, I remembered that her love was worth it and then I told her that she was what I needed to live for. She was what I had always lived for.

  She was crying silent tears. I could feel them hitting my skin where the hospital gown was twisted between us. I found her hand with mine and squeezed.

  “I probably have never done it right, but I have always loved you, Keelyn Foster.”

  “Neither one of us got it right from the start, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try harder from here on out. I love you too, Nassir Gates. We’re bound to figure it out eventually.”

  Maybe that was the point. There wasn’t a right or wrong way to love, there was just understanding that it was there and trying your best to treat it like the fragile, valuable, precious thing that it was.

  I rubbed my thumb along the inside of her wrist and told her I wanted to talk to Dovie when I was released from the hospital.

  Of course, she didn’t want me anywhere near the redhead. She told me that Bax would freak out if I so much as looked sideways at his shy and sweet girlfriend. She was right, so I asked her to do me a favor. I told her that she needed to let Dovie know about the situation with Tyler French’s little sisters. Those poor girls were really the biggest victims in all this tragedy. I told her that I wanted to make sure the girls got in with a good family, and I wasn’t above dropping some cash around if that’s what it took. Dovie worked with Social Services and the foster families in the Point, so I knew she could get me the information I needed to make sure those kids didn’t have to suffer any more consequences of actions that weren’t their own.

  She nodded and told me she would take care of it. She was already a few steps ahead of me in fact, and it wasn’t just those girls she was interested in making sure had a better shot at a good life. She was so fucking impressive. I wanted her because she was my equal in so many ways, but I loved her fully and completely because she was always going to be better than me in so many other ways.

  Key also told me that the cops had gone to the older French’s house to check on the dad when she explained why the kid wanted to shoot me in the first place. They found him where I left him, trapped and angry as hell, and still ranting about how I needed to be arrested and thrown in jail for breaking and entering. But the cops were on their game and the reasons why his kids had been taken away were no secret to them, so once they pulled him free it was the deranged and crippled man who found himself in cuffs and hauled away.

  When she was done talking about justice and fairness, we stayed there on the hospital bed until we both fell asleep.

  I was stuck in the hospital for another week and I think the staff was onto the fact that I was running a criminal enterprise while under their care. It wasn’t like I bothered to hide it. Chuck came by once a day to fill me in on what was going on at the club and with the other businesses, and Race kept popping in and out to check on me. Seemed like once I was out of commission he had done what any good partner would and stepped up to the plate to juggle all my ventures, even the ones he didn’t want anything to do with. Maybe that whole partners-not-friends line was starting to get a little fuzzy. I’d never really had a friend before, but if Race wanted to be the first, I knew I could do a whole lot worse. Also, according to Chuck, my lady had switched from sexpot to cutthroat businesswoman in my absence. I told him there was no switching. She had al
ways been savvy and smart; it was just that these qualities were often overlooked because of the length of her skirt. I picked her as my partner, in business and in life, for a reason.

  She was the one Race went to with questions about the club and the girls. She was the one writing checks and pushing money around while I was laid up. She was taking care of my empire while I was unable to, and according to Chuck, she was damn good at it. With my future so precarious and unknowable, Key had become the person to fear in my place, and he laughingly told me she was much better at it than I was. People were too dumbfounded by her bombshell looks and megawatt smile to be threatened by her. She robbed them blind and manipulated them and they didn’t even know what was happening. He told me that in the kind of negotiations in which I usually left people peeing themselves or swearing to take me down, she was instead leaving them thanking her. That made me love her even more. If she lost me she would have something I built, something I brought to life to hold on to. My legacy would take care of her, and she would take care of it, long after I was gone.

  The day I got sprung from the doctor’s care I don’t know who was more excited, me or them. Chuck rolled me down the long hallway as the nurses and several of the other hospital staff we passed looked visibly relieved to be rid of me. Key was also really ready to have me back at home and eager to be my one and only nurse. I still wasn’t very mobile and I was doped up on some pretty serious pain meds for the broken collarbone and the cracked sternum. I was the walking wounded, but I couldn’t complain because I was alive, and even though the kid who shot me hadn’t made it, I knew I had done as right by him as I could. Taking responsibility stung but the pain was worth the salve it offered to my tattered soul.

  Chuck actually had to drive us up to the house in the mountains because I couldn’t bend down to get into Key’s little Honda and the Range Rover was still missing all the glass and riddled with bullet holes. He also had to help maneuver me up the stairs and onto the couch in the living room because there was no way I was making it up the stairs into my bedroom. I uncomfortably shifted against the pillows and closed my eyes on a sigh as Key appeared with a bottle of water and a handful of pills for me to swallow down.

  “You look really pale.” She leaned over and pushed her fingers through my hair. I turned my face into her touch and kissed her palm. “If I can see how white you are under all that golden skin, there’s a problem.”

  “I’m fine. You need to go back into town with Chuck and grab your car. We can’t be trapped up here without a vehicle.”

  She scowled down at me. “No way. You just got home. I’m not leaving you here alone. I need to be close by if you need anything.”

  Chuck nodded. “Yeah, boss. You’re a mess. Let your lady take care of you. I’ll have a couple of my guys grab her ride and get it up here.”

  I didn’t have the strength to argue, so I just held out my good arm and she sat down next to me and curled herself into my side. We sat in silence like that for a long time. Appreciating the time and the fact that we both had more of it, and that we could spend it together.

  “You had to know he was going to pull the trigger. He felt like he had nothing to lose.” Her voice was soft and her heart was in it.

  “I’ve been him. I had to offer him the choice. A choice was something I never got, and now, after you, I’d like to think I would make the right one if I was in that place again.”

  “I would’ve never forgiven you if you died on me, Gates.” I turned my head so I could kiss her on her temple.

  “Yes, you would. You love me, so you forgive me everything as long as I’m properly apologetic.” Something I’d never been before her. Being able to actually be sorry was the same as finding salvation.

  She sighed. “Maybe, but you need to know if you go anywhere you’re going to have to take me right along with you, Nassir.”

  I nodded just a little. “Same.”

  I couldn’t hold back a yawn that was big enough to have my jaw cracking uncomfortably. I curled my arm around her tighter and asked, “Wanna take a nap with me on the couch?”

  She put her hand over the bandage on my chest and traced a finger over the sling that held my injured side trapped down. “No. You rest, you need it.”

  I groaned in frustration but didn’t argue with her when she bent down to pull my shoes off and then lifted my legs up so I was sprawled on my back as comfortably as I was going to get on the sofa. She leaned over me and gave me a quick kiss. It wasn’t nearly enough but I obviously wasn’t up for any more when just shifting my legs had pain shooting all along my spine. Plus, the pain meds were starting to kick in and everything was starting to feel heavy and hazy around me.

  She pushed some of my hair back off my forehead and kissed me again. “I’m gonna go upstairs and work on a few things Race asked me to look over. Something is off with the girls at the massage parlor. He told me they’ve seen a slight drop in business lately and he wanted me to poke around and find out why. Just yell if you need me, okay?”

  I didn’t even have enough juice left to answer her before drugged sleep pulled me under.

  I had no idea how much time had passed when I felt soft lips pressing on mine. It made me smile, especially when I felt light fingers drifting under the collar of my shirt to skim along all the gauze and tape covering me up. It was a nice way to wake up—at least I thought it was until I realized the lips were wrong, the touch was off, and there was also something cold and sharp pressed up against the side of my neck.

  My eyes snapped open and locked with a midnight pair that had equal parts insanity and love floating around in their dark depths. Bayla was a small woman but the knife she had in her hand was anything but, and in my current condition, tossing her off of me without getting my throat sliced open might prove easier said than done.

  “Bayla. What are you doing?” I tried to keep my voice low and level. Key was still somewhere in the house and I didn’t want her to appear suddenly and have Bayla get agitated and crazy with that blade or, even worse, turn her homicidal attention on my lady.

  “I’ve been waiting forever for you to come so I could see you. I missed you so much. I knew she was going to ruin you. Look at this mess. This never happened before her. You were the one making men bleed not the man bleeding.” She climbed up on top of me and I tried not to scream in pain as her knee dug into the side with the shattered clavicle. That hurt like a son of a bitch. “She broke you.” She sounded furious and sad at the same time.

  The knife skipped right over my jugular and I swallowed at the scrape of it across my skin.

  “This was my fault. I did this. The choices I made, the things I did, all led me to right here, Bayla. Key has nothing to do with it. I was always damaged. I was born that way.”

  She bent forward and I forced myself to stay absolutely still as she licked the side of my face. The edge of the knife dug into the skin below my jaw and I felt the warm trickle of blood start to run down my neck and into the fabric of my shirt.

  “We aren’t born broken, Nassir. Bad people get their hands on us and do things to us and that’s what breaks us.”

  I gulped as my mind raced to figure out a way to disarm her and get her off of me with minimal damage to either of us.

  “You’re right; we were born into the hands of bad people, but I made the choice to be like them, Bayla. I made the choice to make my home and build my life in a place with just as much discord and suffering as where we come from.”

  That had her jerking upright so she was sitting on my waist with her hand right over the still raw and healing center of my chest. Between the painkillers and the pain of her weight on me, I was about to black out. I groaned before I could stop myself and I heard noise from upstairs as Key called my name.

  “Are you up? Do you need anything?”

  I saw Bayla’s eyes widen in shock at the sound of Key’s voice and she immediately scrambled off of me.

  “Her car wasn’t here. I thought we were alone.”
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br />   “Wait!” I bellowed the word out as the dark-haired woman scrambled off me and headed in the direction of the stairs. The knife looked huge in her hand and she looked deranged as she looked over her shoulder and smiled at me while I struggled with everything I had in me to get to my feet and go after her to keep Key safe.

  “You should love me. I was made for you, Nassir. We’re the same.”

  I rolled off the couch with a thud and heard Key call my name again. This time her voice was closer and filled with concern.

  I swore and fought to get to my feet. It wasn’t easy with the room spinning and only having one working side, not to mention that I felt like I was going to throw up from the pain.

  “Bayla!” I barked her name as I finally got my feet under me. I had to reach out and grab on to the couch for balance, but she stopped her movement toward the stairs when I said her name.

  “I’ve never loved myself and I hate everything about where I’m from, so how on earth do you think I could love anyone even remotely like me?”

  That made her waver but she obviously thought the obstacle to our eternal happiness together was the woman I had moved in right under her nose and proceeded to hand over everything I had to. She was going to go after Key and there was nothing I could do to stop her.

  I bellowed Key’s name and started the slow shuffle toward the stairs after the armed woman. “Bayla has a knife! You need to get out of here!” I wasn’t sure any of it was making sense. I sounded and felt crazy. My body was my own enemy and it was making me more frustrated than I had ever been in my life.

  Bayla was silent as a shadow as she hit the stairs. All I could see was that lethal blade in her hand and it made everything inside of me panic. I couldn’t let anything happen to Key. She couldn’t be one of those consequences I had just started to give a shit about.

  “Didn’t I fire you?” Key’s voice was hard but didn’t sound at all surprised. I shuffled across the floor but only got close enough that I could see the bottom part of her legs before I had to take a second to catch my breath. The firing was news to me, but then again, I had been preoccupied trying not to die.