Craving Lily

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  “I’m here,” I said, my voice barely audible. “I’m here, guys.”

  “What’s happening?” Curtis asked, his little hands finding mine in the dark.

  “The house is on fire,” I said quickly. “Come here.”

  I felt four little hands grasping at my arms and almost fell to my knees in relief.

  “Where’s Gray?” I asked, gripping their hands.

  “He was right here,” Curtis said. “Gray?”

  “Gray?”

  A large boom shook the house and my breath stalled in my throat.

  “Go to the window,” I barked, pushing them out of the panic room. “Don’t go to the door, just go to the window behind your dad’s desk. Go. Push out the screen and jump out.”

  “But where’s Gray?” Draco said tearfully. “Gray?”

  “I’ll get Gray,” I said, still shoving at them. “Go now.”

  “We can’t just leave you,” Curtis snapped. “Gray? Come here, buddy!”

  “Curtis,” I yelled, shoving him hard. “I said to fucking go!”

  I heard the sound of pain he made, but I ignored it as I dropped to my knees.

  “I can’t see,” Draco said. “Aunt Lily, I can’t see the window.”

  “That’s because the curtains are closed,” I yelled, trying to sound reassuring and failing over the sounds of crashing coming from other parts of the house. “Four steps forward, guys, okay? Then you’ll feel the desk. Go around it and you’ll find the window.”

  “Aunt Lily,” Curtis cried, his voice warbling.

  “I’m right behind you. I swear. Go.”

  It took a few seconds, but as soon as I saw moonlight coming in the window, I knew they’d found it. A rush of air whooshed in as they slid it open, but I was no longer paying attention. I was crawling inside the panic room on my hands and knees, searching for a tiny boy that was probably curled up somewhere, scared out of his mind.

  I heard the screen screeching as they shoved it out the window just as I found Gray sitting under the small table in the corner of the room.

  “Gray, come here, baby,” I said, sliding my hands up his legs and torso until I could feel his little armpits. I pulled him out from under the table and held him tight to my chest as I got to my feet, staggering under the slight weight of him.

  “Lily’s got you,” I said, keeping my face next to his as I bent at the waist. Smoke had filled the room in the short time since I’d closed the door, and I kept my eyes shut tight as I pressed Gray’s face against my neck. “Almost there,” I rasped, opening my eyes just long enough to watch Draco’s shape disappear out the window.

  “I’ve got you.”

  The house shifted and I tripped, almost falling to my knees as I took those short steps to the desk. Every inch forward seemed like it took an eternity.

  “Lily,” I heard just in front of me as I finally felt a very faint brushing of cool air against my face. “Come on, baby girl.”

  Two more steps and my stomach hit the window ledge.

  “Gray,” I rasped, pushing him toward the person I couldn’t see.

  I opened my eyes as my cousin Will took Gray from my arms. “I’ve got him. I’ve got him,” he reassured me as he pulled Gray away. The baby’s little hands had been holding my t-shirt so tight that Will had to forcefully yank him back.

  “Lily,” he called, scratching at my arms as he tried to keep his hold on me.

  As soon as he’d handed Gray off to the person behind him, he reached inside the window and dragged my tired body out.

  I don’t remember the next few minutes.

  I know that the fire department got there. They quickly took over and placed masks on each of our faces, and within a few minutes, had us loaded into ambulances.

  I saw my mom running toward me.

  I saw my brother falling to his knees between the boys, who were sitting in the grass, holding hands.

  I saw Leo, holding Gray, but staring at me, terrified.

  Then, from above me, a familiar face smiled reassuringly as they got me onto a stretcher.

  “Hey, stranger,” he said. “How you doing?”

  “Brent,” I rasped, reaching for his arm. “The baby?”

  “You’re pregnant?” he asked, glancing at his partner.

  I shook my head and waved my hand toward Gray. “The baby.”

  “Oh,” he said, nodding his understanding. “He’s going to be just fine.”

  “Him before me,” I ordered, shaking my head in protest as they started to load me into the back of the ambulance. “No. Him before me.”

  I sat up and started tearing at my mask, frustrated that he obviously couldn’t understand me. I met Leo’s eyes across the grass, pulling at the shit they’d used to strap me down.

  “Dandelion, don’t,” Leo shouted, taking a few steps forward.

  I grunted when Brent’s long fingers gripped my wrist and pulled it gently away from my restraints. He slid the oxygen mask back on my face before speaking.

  “He’s okay,” Brent said sternly as my mom climbed into the ambulance with us. “You have to go first, okay? He’s getting checked out, but you’re my responsibility and we have to go now.”

  “You’re okay, baby,” my mom said, her hand coming to rest comfortingly on my shoulder as the ambulance doors closed. “Everyone’s okay.”

  I closed my eyes and passed out.

  Chapter 24

  Leo

  In a daze, I rode with my boy to the hospital to get checked out.

  It took them a few hours, but the doctors finally decided that beyond a little smoke inhalation, he was perfectly fine. The paramedics hadn’t seemed particularly concerned when they’d driven us to the hospital, which had calmed me a bit, but when they’d advised me to have him checked, I’d jumped on it. He was so little that I had a hard time believing that he was fine.

  When I’d seen that smoke coming out of the house, and then the windows upstairs shattering from the heat, I’d nearly vomited. Tommy had been the one to tackle me into the grass, and if he hadn’t, I don’t know what I would have done. It had taken him and Rocky to hold me down. Will and Grease had held Cam.

  I gritted my teeth at the memory as I wrapped Gray’s sleeping form in a blanket and readjusted him on my shoulder. I could have killed them for what they’d done, and if there hadn’t been two of them, I probably would have.

  Watching a house burn when you knew your world was inside was something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. There wasn’t a word that adequately described the terror I’d felt. It was all-consuming, suffocating, so intense that I’d thought at any moment, it was going to literally kill me.

  When someone had yelled across the yard that Lily was inside, my entire body had gone limp with defeat. A part of me had felt relieved for just a sliver of a second. I knew without a shadow of a doubt, that if Lily could get him out, she would. She’d never stop trying to get those boys out of danger. I knew that. But staring at the house, I hadn’t understood how they could still be alive.

  I wouldn’t have survived it if they were gone.

  Will and Grease climbed off of Cam as Trix reached him. She could hold him back better than any two men, without question.

  Then, like a fucking miracle, we’d seen the screen on a window downstairs bowing before it popped out of a window. Curtis fell out first, landing on his ass. Seconds later, Draco came tumbling out behind him.

  The guys climbed off me as I stared. I was paralyzed as I watched Will and Cam running toward the window. They lifted the boys off the ground and listened to them for just a second before sending them running from the house.

  Sirens wailed behind us as I scrambled to my feet. Will and Grease were still staring at the window.

  And then, there they were. From my vantage point, all I could see were Lily’s arms, but I could see Gray’s entire body. He looked fine. He looked scared, but fine. Will pulled Gray from Lily and I’d wanted to scream. Get them both, goddamnit, what are you doing? B
ut nothing came out.

  I made it to Grease and my baby boy just as Will pulled Lily out the window. She was limp.

  I swallowed down the lump in my throat as I walked down the halls of the hospital. My mom texted me Lily’s room number an hour ago, and as soon as they’d given the all clear, I’d headed in that direction. I needed to see her. To feel her. To kiss her face and make sure she was okay.

  “And then, the door popped open,” Curtis said from the foot of Lily’s bed as I reached the open door to her room. “And we were kind of worried that it was the Russian dudes.”

  “But it wasn’t,” Draco interrupted. “It was Aunt Lily, and she was all, ‘Go out the window’.”

  “Well, first she asked where Gray was.”

  “Yeah, and then when we couldn’t find him, she said to go out the window, but it was so dark that I couldn’t see anything.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t want to leave her behind, so she pushed me really hard.”

  “And she was all, take this many steps forward and then use the desk to guide you,” Draco said. “Did you know she could do that? She found us in the dark.”

  “So we counted our steps to the desk and she went to go get Gray.”

  “And then we jumped out the window.”

  “We didn’t want to leave them,” Curtis said, looking guiltily at his dad. “She made us.”

  “You did the right thing,” Cam said gruffly, nodding his approval. “We knew just where to get your aunt and cousin because you guys came out that window. If she hadn’t made it out, we knew just where to look.”

  “She was really brave,” Draco said, his chin wobbling.

  “You were pretty brave, too,” I said, walking fully into the room. “You guys stayed with Gray in the safe room?”

  “Yeah,” Curtis said, giving his brother time to bring his emotions under control. “We played games and stuff.”

  “Good job,” I said, kissing his head and then Draco’s. “Thank you.”

  I smiled, and finally lifted my eyes to Lily’s.

  Her lips were trembling as she tried to smile, and her cheek was swollen and purple.

  “Hey, Dandelion,” I said, moving to the head of her bed. “How you doin’, pretty girl?”

  “Like I just inhaled a fuck-ton of smoke,” she replied, her voice broken and raspy.

  “You’re not supposed to be talking,” Cecilia reminded her from her place near the window. “You’re supposed to let your throat heal.”

  “I love you,” Lily said, ignoring her sister. “Is he okay?”

  Her eyes moved to Gray, and my eyes watered as I laid his sleeping form in between her side and her arm.

  “He’s okay,” I said, leaning down to press my lips against hers. “Thank you.”

  I kissed her again. “Oh, God, thank you.”

  “Time to go boys,” Cam said from behind me, lifting his sons off the bed.

  “Where are we gonna sleep?”

  “Gramps’ and Nana’s,” Trix said, helping to usher them out of the room. “You can sleep in Uncle Leo’s old room.”

  “But there’s only one bed,” Curtis complained.

  “Oh, good. You guys can cuddle,” Cecilia said as she shut the door behind them.

  “God, Lily,” I whispered as the room around us grew quiet. “I thought you were gone. I thought both of you were gone.”

  I buried my face in her neck, hardly able to smell her beyond the scent of smoke.

  “I wouldn’t let that happen,” she rasped, her IV covered hand rising up to smooth my hair back. “I’d never leave you like that.”

  “If anyone else had been watching the boys,” I ground out, shuddering.

  We both knew the answer to that. If anyone else had been watching the boys, there was no way they could have found them in the smoke. After Lily had been taken away in the ambulance, I’d heard a couple of the firefighters talking about it. They had no idea how she’d managed to make her way from the kitchen to the office. Most people would have been too disoriented in the smoke to get themselves out the front door. It would have been impossible for them to find the boys inside a locked room.

  “You’re sure he’s okay?” she asked again, shifting a little so that Gray was pressed more firmly against her.

  “He got an all-clear from the doctors,” I said, kissing her forehead. “He’s just tired and freaked out.”

  She nodded and then laid her head back on the pillow, her face filled with exhaustion. “Don’t leave, okay?”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere.” Sitting down at Gray’s feet, I rested my hand on her hip as she rolled to the side and curled around us, her knees resting against my back.

  I stayed that way for a long time after she’d fallen asleep.

  * * *

  “What’s the word?” my dad asked after slamming his gavel angrily on the table.

  It was a few days after the fire and we were in church, trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Once Lily had been able to describe what had gone down in the house, every man with connections had been on the phone and taking meetings. We’d been searching non-stop for the last two days and I was losing patience with how little we knew. It just took one connection to get to the truth, but we had to sift through hundreds to find that one.

  “Sokolov,” Gramps said, pushing his way into the room with a small scrap of paper in his hand.

  “You got news?” Casper asked, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. I didn’t know how the guy was doing it, but he’d been at the club every day since the fire, pouring over shit we knew and shit we didn’t, trying to figure out what had happened. He must have been swallowing massive amounts of painkillers.

  “Two boys, Sokolov, flew into Eugene from Russia, one week ago. Talked to a friend at a bar near the airport four days ago.”

  “The fuck?” Will asked in confusion. “We didn’t even kill that fat fuck! What the hell do they want?”

  “Don’t know, but they were askin’ about the club,” Gramps replied. “Contact at the bar said they were askin’ him questions and didn’t give him the option of keepin’ his mouth shut.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Our guy says he gave them Cam’s name, because he was sure that was one place they couldn’t get to.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Tommy muttered, tossing the pack of cigarettes in his hand across the room.

  “He tried to warn us,” Gramps said quietly. “But the number he had was one of Casper’s burners. I’m thinkin’ probably the one that was lost in the accident.”

  “The perfect goddamn storm,” Grease muttered, shaking his head. “You got a place we can find these fucks?”

  Cam and I were on our feet before Gramps could finish rattling off the address of the cheap motel.

  “Take Will,” my dad said, not bothering to argue with us. “He’ll make sure you don’t act like fuck-nuts.”

  It didn’t take long to get to the motel, which was a pretty standard throwback from the sixties. All the doorways faced one direction and it was only two stories.

  From the minute we stepped off our bikes, each one of us was on high alert. No way that the Sokolov boys hadn’t heard us coming, but there was no way to know if they would run, or try and make a stand OK-Corral style. It could go either way if they were feeling froggy, and since they’d already burned down my sister’s house and punched my woman in the face, I was betting they were feeling pretty damn froggy.

  “Boris and Hank,” Will called, his lips twitching at the nickname we’d come up with, since none of us knew how the fuck to say the guy’s name. “You in there, boys?”

  Oddly, the door opened wide, and there stood a big guy with a scowl on his face.

  “What you want?” he asked in heavily accented English.

  Cam grinned and punched the big guy, knocking him flat on his ass. We stepped around him and into the room before the littler guy could pull his weapon.

  “I’d keep your hands visible,” Will said, pointing his gun at the little one.
“I don’t take chances and my woman would be pissed if I got shot.”

  “Who are you?” little guy demanded as he stood from the bed.

  “Pretty sure you’re the one who’s been lookin’ for us,” Cam grunted. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Little guy’s expression filled with understanding before rage took over his features.

  “You killed my father,” he spat, his words almost impossible to understand. “Like a dog in his bed.”

  “I’ve never killed a dog in its bed,” I said under my breath.

  “Who the fuck would do that?” Cam replied.

  “My father was Karl Sokolov,” the guy said proudly, lifting his chin.

  “Not sure you should go around boastin’ that shit,” Will said as he turned his head toward the man waking up from his stupor. “Just stay down, idiot,” he warned.

  “You burned down my motherfuckin’ house,” Cam said, done with the conversation. “With my fucking sister and kids inside it.”

  “You poison my father, yes? Like a woman,” the guy barked.

  “Nobody fuckin’ poisoned your dad,” I replied. “I mean, I woulda killed his ass, but I fuckin’ didn’t. He was dead when I got there.”

  “You lie,” the little guy said, but his face didn’t look so sure anymore. “We have autopsy done in Russia. Say, poison.”

  “Why the fuck would I lie?” I asked.

  Just as the final word left my mouth, I saw the big one reach for something on the floor next to him, and less than a second later, I was raising my arm and pulling the trigger. The hand holding the gun he’d been trying to pull fell to his side and he slumped backward, the hole in his forehead not even bleeding.

  “Son of a—” Two more gunshots split the room and I looked over to see the small guy hit the wall with a thud and slide all the way to the floor.

  “Idiot went for his piece the minute you shot his brother,” Will said in annoyance.

  “We’re gonna need a cleaner,” Cam mumbled, shoving his gun back in the holster he wore in the back of his jeans. “ ’Cause I’m not doin’ it.”

  “Me, either,” I mumbled, stepping over the dead big guy as I left the room. “You think anyone heard anything?”