by Emma Slate
Paralysis.
Feeding tube.
Colostomy bag.
The doctor had regurgitated a statistic that a small percentage of people made it back from injuries like this, but his eyes had betrayed him.
I could read between the lies.
Mark’s cell phone buzzed.
“It’s my lawyer,” he stated. “You—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he stalked from the room, the door shutting with a soft thud.
I leaned forward and gripped Shelly’s hand in mine. “Hey, girl. Can you hear me?” I paused, like I expected her to sit up and answer me. To tell me to stop being dramatic.
But nothing happened.
The sound of her respirator filled the room. Tears finally flooded my eyes.
“I hope you’re on the other side already and not scared or in pain. I hope it’s gorgeous there. Peaceful. I hope you’re happy.”
Part of me thought she might give my fingers a squeeze. Part of me thought this was all a sick joke, and that the universe had a wicked, dark sense of humor.
But when Shelly didn’t move and the beeping machines continued to control her functions, I knew this for what it was.
Something cold settled in my chest where my heart beat.
Mark would fight me even though his lawyer would tell him it was pointless. Shelly may have been marrying Mark, but I was her next of kin. We had been close for years. So close that I was in charge of her medical directive. They hadn’t been together long enough for her to change the paperwork giving him the power of attorney. After Grammie died, Shelly and I had made sure that our affairs were in order.
We were family, through and through.
We’d prepared for the worst because the world hadn’t gone easy on either of us—hadn’t ever given us a break. Even though we’d both found love, we still hadn’t trusted it. Not really.
I brought our clasped hands to my mouth and gently kissed the back of her hand, a single tear falling onto her skin. I set her palm down by her side and then I forced myself to stand, taking one last look at her before I turned to leave.
Mark was pacing the hallway, barking something at his lawyer. When he saw me slip out from Shelly’s room, he hung up and came at me.
“You bitch.”
He was suddenly in my face, close enough that I felt his saliva hit my cheek as he spewed his venomous hate.
But I stood there and took it because I was guilty and deserving of his anger.
I was the reason she was in that bed, and I would stand there and let Mark hurl his vitriol at me if he chose.
Boxer had other plans.
I hadn’t seen him coming down the hallway, but he was suddenly there and forcing himself between me and Mark.
“You fucking touch her and I’ll kill you.”
Mark had once been uneasy around the bikers who I now called family. None of that unease was there now. Mark straightened his spine.
“Try it, fucker. You’re scum. You both are.”
Mark stomped away, his phone out of his pocket and to his ear in the span of a few seconds. His steps echoed across the floor and then disappeared as he turned the corner.
“Hey,” Boxer said, wrapping his arm around me and pulling me to his chest.
I stood there without saying a word.
“I know it’s a shitty time…but Colt is awake. He’s asking for you.”
I nodded and then swiveled my head away from Boxer’s gaze so I could wipe away another tear that had escaped the corner of my eye.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Boxer asked.
“You don’t know?”
“I tried to harass the doc into telling me what’s going on, but he said I wasn’t family so he wouldn’t tell me shit.”
I inhaled a shaky breath. “She’s on a ventilator. A machine is breathing for her,” I said softly. “She doesn’t—there’s no brain activity. She wouldn’t want this. Stuck in a bed until medicine finally quits on her. Mark wants to leave her on the machines. I don’t. I’m in charge of her medical directive. Not Mark.”
“Fuck.”
I nodded.
“I’m not sure I should be the one to give you more shitty news, but I don’t know if Colt knows yet or if Zip is filling him in…”
“What?”
“Cheese died in surgery.”
His words didn’t even penetrate.
Not the way they were supposed to.
“Mia?” Boxer pressed. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I heard you. I just don’t know what you want me to do about it.”
He looked at me with a frown, but said nothing more.
We arrived at Colt’s hospital room and both went in. Joni and Zip were sitting next to each other in plastic chairs. Colt’s glassy eyes found me immediately.
“Babe,” he whispered.
I arched an eyebrow, shooting him a cool expression. “Always the hero, huh?”
“If I remember it right, I wasn’t the only one in the line of fire.” He licked his lips. “What does a man have to do to get his woman to kiss him? Almost die?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joni’s spine snap straight. Zip looked at his lap. I couldn’t see Boxer since he was behind me, but even he wasn’t cracking a joke.
“Some of us have died,” I said quietly.
Colt’s eyes turned somber and he nodded. “I heard about Cheese. Joni just told me Shelly’s here? How is she?”
“She’s on life support.”
“Fuck. Come here and let me hold you—”
“No,” I stated coolly. “I don’t want to be held right now.”
His brow furrowed in confusion and then his gaze shot over my shoulder. I turned to glance at Boxer who was shaking his head and shrugging.
“Maybe I need holding,” Colt stated. “You ever think of that?”
“That’s the morphine talking,” I said.
Colt looked to Zip. “You guys mind giving us a few?”
“Take all the time you need, brother.” Zip got up and came toward me. He stared at me and then before I knew it, he was enveloping me in a tight embrace.
I didn’t hug him back.
He released me and then followed Boxer out of the room. Joni was slower to leave, first going to her brother and leaning down to whisper something in his ear. Colt nodded at whatever she said. She stood back up and squeezed his shoulder.
When Joni’s gaze darted to mine, I couldn’t detect the emotion in them when she looked at me. She sailed past me without a word or a touch. I wondered about her for a moment, before dismissing her from my mind.
“You’re still standing over there,” Colt said after the door shut. “When you should be over here.”
I walked to him and took a seat on his bed, close enough that I could feel the heat of him.
“What’s going on inside your head right now, Mia?”
“What’s going on inside your head right now, Colt?” I parroted back.
“Right now, I’m on a lot of drugs. I can’t even feel where they dug the bullet out of me, and I’m wondering why you’re acting the way you’re acting.”
“I tried to shoot Dev for you, Colt. And I missed. Do you know how fucking angry I am that I missed?” I swallowed. “Do you know what it was like for me? Thinking you were dying?” I didn’t pause to give him a chance to reply. “Do you know the fucking terror I felt about losing you? I watched you take a bullet, Colt. I had your blood on my hands.”
His face darkened with his own anger and impotence. “You don’t think I know that? Shit, Mia. My last thoughts before I passed out were of you. And the guilt I felt about bringing you deeper into this and not being able to protect you.”
“Your guilt is no match for mine,” I stated. “I got pulled into all of this because of Richie. I chose you because I wanted to. But Shelly?” I shook my head. “She’s not getting married, Colt. She’s not going to wake up, ever, and it’s because she chose me as her fa
mily. Cheese died today. Shelly may as well have. Her body is still here but only for now. You got shot. How many more people will get hurt because of me?”
“What are you saying, darlin’? Because it sounds to me like you’re trying to walk away. But it’s too late for that now.”
My gaze slid from his to stare at the wall. A white, sterile hospital wall that gave no comfort to its patients or the people that came to visit loved ones.
“I’m not walking away,” I replied, my tone faint. “You’re right, it’s too late for that. I’m in too deep.” I reached out and grasped his hand—the one with the IV needle—and linked my fingers through his.
“I’m sorry about Shelly,” Colt said, his tone mournful. “I don’t know what else I can say.”
I nodded, tracing his knuckles. “This is the life, isn’t it?”
“Mia—”
“Just…can we sit here? And not say anything for a few minutes?”
He pulled his hand away from me and raised his arm to create a space next to him. I gently crawled in beside him, nestling myself at his non-injured side. Colt draped his arm around me and I pressed my head to his chest, listening to the sound of his breathing, grateful that at least one person I loved was still alive.
I awoke to the sound of Colt’s hospital door opening. Dying sunlight filtered through the blinds. I had somehow fallen asleep despite everything that had occurred.
Though Colt was warm next to me, I felt numb.
“How’s he doing?” Zip asked, his voice low.
“Okay, I guess. I don’t know. We fell asleep.” I gently sat up, careful not to jostle him. “I don’t want to leave him, but I have to…Shelly…”
“Right.” Zip nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “Look, shit is bad right now. Reap’ll be here with Colt. He’ll be taken care of.”
I blinked. “You think the Iron Horsemen would come to the hospital?”
“I wouldn’t put anything past them. They went after women and children. They broke the code. They are out of their fuckin’ minds.”
I looked at my hands and then back at Zip. “What happens now? Reap shadows Colt while he’s recovering. What do we do about all the other stuff? The mess we have to clean up from the park. The sheriff showed up…”
“Flynn is handling it.”
“Of course he is,” I muttered. “What about Darcy and the kids? What about Cheese’s funeral—”
What about Shelly and what I’m going to have to do?
I pushed that thought down as far as it would go so I could focus on the here and now.
“Zip will act as president,” came Colt’s raspy voice. “Lockdown is back on. You’ll go back to the clubhouse and—”
“Like hell I will,” I replied.
Colt didn’t take his eyes off me when he said to Zip, “Give us a minute, will you?”
Zip wasn’t one to make a snarky reply; that was Boxer’s territory. The Blue Angels VP nodded and quietly exited the room, leaving Colt and I to duke it out in private.
“I can’t sit and wait, Colt,” I said. Though my tone was soft, it was threaded with steel. “I sit and I wait, and I worry. Do you know what it’s like to feel useless? To go from complete independence to not being able to make a single move without your boyfriend’s approval?”
“Dev is on a rampage,” he said, his tone laced with pain and anger. “He’ll stop at nothing now. Don’t you get it? He went after the innocent. He doesn’t give a shit now what happens. He started a war.”
“Yeah, and he made that war personal for me.” I pointed to the door. “Shelly is lying in a hospital bed and I have to—I have to sign the forms to let her go.”
Colt’s dark eyes brightened with intensity. “I get it, Mia. If anyone gets it, I do. I lost a brother today. We’re burying a twenty-five-year-old man who was as loyal as they come. You know what Zip told me? You know why Cheese died? Because he dove in front of his brother.”
My heart stuttered and then thawed a bit when I thought of Silas, Cheese’s younger sibling. Then my heart re-froze because I had to be cold. I had to stay clear headed.
“Have you cried?” Colt asked, pitching his voice low. “For your friend?”
“Cried? What good will that do?” I demanded.
He leaned back against the pillows and stared at me. “It’ll hurt worse, you know. Shoving it aside and dealing with it later.”
“I’ll deal with it when Dev is dead.”
He suddenly looked tired. In the span of a few minutes, Colt went from robust, iron fisted president to a man lying injured in a hospital bed.
“I’m not going to like what you’re about to tell me, am I?” Colt sighed, like he knew what was coming.
“I have to help get rid of him, Colt. I have to.”
“The truth, Mia. I want the entire truth.”
“That is the truth.”
“Is it? You just feel obligated to help get rid of him, or is there more to it than that?” he murmured.
I paused and then said, “He’s trying to take everything from me, Colt. My family, my freedom, my life. I have to… I want to…”
“Say it,” he growled. “Say it to me now. Tell me what it is you know you have to do or you’ll never be able to look at yourself in the mirror.”
“I have to see him die.”
The words slithered out of me like a snake hiding in the brush.
Foul, angry words.
Truthful words.
“It won’t bring Shelly back,” he said.
“No,” I agreed.
“I’m not sure it will make you feel any better, either.” He leaned his head back against the pillow and his eyes were glazed with pain. “But I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”
I slid into an empty pew and breathed in the silence of the chapel.
Boxer stood by the doors, guarding me without interfering with my private time. I’d waited until Colt had fallen asleep before leaving his room. I’d gone and sat with Shelly, despite Mark’s hostile glare pinging me from across her hospital bed.
Lost in my own thoughts, I didn’t hear the chapel doors open.
A large body sat down next to me and stretched out long legs in worn jeans. The smell of cigar tobacco permeated Knight’s clothes, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“I didn’t take you for the religious type,” Knight said.
“I’m not. But it’s quiet here.” I looked at him. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Saving my life.”
He nodded slowly, but said nothing.
“How’s your shoulder?” I asked him.
“I’ll live.”
We fell silent for a moment and then he said, “I heard about your friend. I’m sorry, kid.”
The word kid slipped out of his mouth. Like it was normal, natural.
With a sigh, I leaned my head against his uninjured shoulder. I felt his muscles tighten for a moment and then relax.
“What happens now?” I asked. “It feels like we’re scrambling.”
“Gotta ask Colt. He’s the one leading all of this.”
“Colt is passed out in a hospital bed. Zip is president for the time being.”
“You should go back to the clubhouse and get some sleep.”
“Will you sleep tonight?” I asked, lifting my head so I could stare at him.
“Point taken,” he said darkly.
“Besides, I won’t leave while Colt is here. While Shelly is here.”
“I saw what you did. Firing a shot at Dev, wanting to avenge your man. You’re true Old Lady material, Mia. And I’m proud of you.”
His words washed over me, but they weren’t a balm to my battered soul.
I looked up at the ceiling. The chapel was serviceable, a place one could sit and ponder, pray, curse, but it wasn’t a spot of beauty. The room was built for function, not frivolity. It didn’t have the elegance and craftsmanship like those gothic cathedrals with huge stained glass windows. In a hospital that was
n’t what was needed.
“I didn’t think I’d be doing this again,” I whispered.
“Doing what?”
“Saying goodbye to someone else I loved. I feel powerless. Useless.” I threaded my fingers through my hair, wanting to reach out and strangle something just to combat my feelings of impotence. To kill my inability to change the circumstances.
Knight didn’t offer any platitudes, not that I expected him to. He was a rough man, made rougher by the life he’d chosen to live. But his presence was a comfort anyway, and maybe, words were stupid and useless.
Maybe all we had were the people we chose to be our family. Maybe they’d be our strength when we were ready to fall.
Chapter 27
We buried Shelly and Cheese three days later.
I’d asked Mark where he wanted her laid to rest. He told me I should make the choice because she was my sister. Sister in all but name and blood.
I’d squeezed his hand in gratitude.
Though Shelly wasn’t a Blue Angel, Colt had made it possible for my best friend to be buried next to Cheese.
“She’s got family looking out for her,” Colt whispered, his arm around my shoulder while we stood at the graves laden with freshly turned dirt.
Mark’s eyes were wet, but it was the slump of his shoulders that told me of his defeat, of his brokenness.
Flynn, Ramsey, and a few of their Scottish brethren, stood by our sides and mourned with us.
Silas, Cheese’s brother, stared at his brother’s grave, tears streaking down his face. I wanted to go to him, but what was I supposed to say? How could I offer a child any sort of comfort when it felt like I was choking on broken glass?
It was an intimate affair; Shelly hadn’t been close to many people. A few friends from Dive Bar showed up to pay their respects, but they left quickly, clearly uncomfortable with the men in leather and tattoos.
Everyone was piling into cars to head to the clubhouse where we’d have a wake of sorts. We all wanted to get drunk and forget about what had happened for a night, but no one wanted to let their guard down. Not while the Iron Horsemen were at large.
The Garcia cartel hadn’t yet struck out in violence, and when I asked Colt about it while he’d still been in the hospital, he’d explained. The Garcia cartel was not yet wise to the missing shipment and Dev had enough cash to make it look like he was still selling product. It was a stopgap, and it was why he’d escalated the war. He was desperate.