by Addison Jane
I couldn’t let this happen.
I couldn’t let him win again.
He was dead.
And I needed to fight.
My body was shaking, my brain struggling to complete thoughts as the cold began to sink in through my skin. Or maybe it was the blood loss from the hole in my side. Or it could be the concussion that I knew I had.
Gritting my teeth, I shuffled on my knees over to my father’s body. Every movement drew a soft sob from my mouth as I fought the pain in my side. I knew it was bad, but I refused to look, I refused to admit defeat. Inch by inch I dragged myself across the floor. I could feel the frozen floor tearing at the skin on my knees, but after a few seconds, they were completely numb. My chattering teeth were the only thing I could hear rattling my brain and making my jaw ache, but I just couldn’t stop it.
It was impossible.
If I didn’t get warm soon, I was going to freeze.
If I didn’t get to a hospital soon, I was going to bleed out.
I wasn’t sure which was going to kill me first, I just knew I was going to fight both.
I kneeled next to my father’s body, knowing I needed to take his jacket, maybe even his shirt and pants, and use them to keep myself warm, maybe press them against the gunshot wound in my side and hope for the damn best. But first, I needed to pull the knives from his back, and just the thought was making my skin crawl.
Fight back.
Come on, fight back.
Myth’s voice was in my head, resonating so fucking loudly, I could have sworn he was right here. “I’m going cr… azy. I’m lo… osing it.” The slur in my words was impossible to fight. I had no control, I needed warmth now.
Inhaling deeply, I reached out, wrapping my shaking fingers around the first knife and ripping it with all my strength—the little bit I had left. It lifted the body with it as I pulled, making it look like he was trying to get up off the floor. I screamed, tossing the knife across the tiny freezer and scooting back against the wall.
Haunting me, even in fucking death.
Even with my heart beating like crazy, it still felt like I was fighting an uphill battle. Like I was waiting for that adrenaline to kick in, to give me super strength, or maybe just even the balls to reach for the next knife, but there was nothing.
My breathing was slowing down.
My heart too.
Maybe that was a good thing. If my heart weren’t pumping as fast, I wouldn’t lose as much blood. But if it stopped, it meant there was no blood left to lose.
I giggled. I couldn’t stop it—it just came out.
“Laken!”
I held my breath, my body jumping with fright when the door to the freezer jiggled.
“Laken!”
It was him.
He was there.
His voice all I needed to focus on.
Abandoning the fight for my dead monster’s jacket, I sighed, letting the heavy eyelids take over. I’d rest them for just a second.
Just one second.
Fight!
Don’t sleep!
Fight!
But I was so tired.
“Myth?”
MYTH
“Laken!” I screamed, rushing into the kitchen behind the boys with Tyler keeping me on my feet. “Laken!”
Wrench and Repo were tugging at the door, yanking the leaver, but it just wouldn’t budge.
“Myth?”
It was quiet, and her voice sounded weak, but she was alive, and it was all that mattered at that moment. “Rocky, we’re trying to get in,” I called through the door. “Is it locked?”
There was a long pause.
A few moments where I wondered if I needed to call out to her again.
“He broke the emergency lever inside.”
Wrench cursed, giving it another hard tug. “He’s fucked the door, broken it somehow so neither sides can open it.” He crouched down, his eyes scanning quickly over the moving parts he could see, my heartbeat elevating every fucking second she was inside.
“Can we unplug it?” Tyler asked, walking the length of the freezer and sticking his head right in behind the unit. “There’s a plug here, do I pull it?”
“Yeah, pull it,” Wrench answered, getting to his feet and tapping his chin. “This thing will hold the cold for a damn long time, though. Probably days after it’s been unplugged, but who knows, it might buy us a little time.”
“How the fuck do we get in?” I panicked, tapping my foot, my body burning me alive from the inside out as I had to sit there and wait. I wasn’t a good waiter. I was a doer. I needed to keep going, even with all the pain I was in, my body still found it hard to keep still in stressful situations.
Wrench grabbed a knife off the counter and shoved it in the edge of the door. “There’s a little gap where the seal meets. If we can get something strong enough in there and wedge it open.”
“On it,” Tyler announced, the boy sprinting back out the door we came through while Rip, on the other hand, started emptying cupboards, yanking them open and using his arm to sweep all the contents out onto the floor.
“What’s that?” Lake called, her voice soft and unsure.
This wasn’t the girl I knew. There was something wrong. Something serious.
I cleared my throat, trying to exterminate any fucking doubt she might hear in my voice before I spoke, “We’re gonna get you out.”
Another long pause, and I noticed the way Shotgun looked at Wrench with pure worry in his eyes. I wasn’t stupid, I knew why. Cold makes your brain slow, it makes you confused, sleepy, and weak. It’s why she was struggling to respond because it was taking her brain twice as long to compute what was happening or what I was telling her.
That coupled with a possible concussion.
I was scared to do the math.
“He shot me.”
Rip’s banging and crashing stilled, his hands paused in mid-air as he turned and looked back at us over his shoulder.
My whole world sunk.
Like I’d been thrown fucking overboard with bricks tied to my feet. “Where?”
I held my breath.
“From t… he d… oor.” Her words were slurring, her letters molding together and making it hard to understand. “Oh, I m… ean… in st… omach.”
“Fucking shit,” Rip cursed before pulling his shoulders back and moving faster, one thing after another being thrown from the cupboard, clattering across the room.
“We’re coming, Lake,” I called, trying to keep my breathing from getting too heavy, but right at that moment, I was fighting my own battle, one with my mind and the thought she might not survive and what the fuck I was going to do then.
There was no one left to kill.
“May.. be you sh… ould run,” Laken called back, pulling an instant jolt of laughter from right inside my chest. Just the fact she was telling me to go for a run while she was in a fucking freezing cold coffin had me fighting hysterics. “Y… ou sound st… ressed.”
Either she was on some other fucking planet, or this woman was more than I could ever fucking know. And there was no way in hell I could lose something so fucking perfect. Because I was better on the latter.
“I got all the time in the world to run later…” I paused. Waiting for a reply, even just a word, a sound, something. But there was nothing. “Lake? Laken?” I was up out of my seat, using my good arm to pound on the door. “Laken!”
Come on, Rocky.
Fight.
You got this.
“The hinges,” Wrench crowed, leaping up from where he’d been crouching. “We need to break the hinges.”
“I got you,” Rip announced, snatching up a couple of items off the floor and storming around the counter. He held out one to Repo, my brother looking at it for a second before taking it and letting out a snort.
“Cast iron frying pans?”
“It worked for Rapunzel,” he argued, drawing it back and slamming the edge with force against one of the two silve
r hinges. He stopped, leaning in and nodding. “It’s working. It’s gonna work. This shit has to work.”
Convincing.
I felt helpless.
I could barely move. I couldn’t do fucking shit. I had to rely on these men to do whatever they fucking could to get her out of there. But I had to remember that’s what a brotherhood was. That’s what this fucked-up crazy family was. They’re people who would move heaven and hell, not just for me, but for my woman and for the people I loved.
I knew how hard I would fight right now to get that shit open for any one of them.
And I knew they were going to work just as fucking hard to do the same.
“Lake!” I called over the loud banging as Repo and Ripley took turns slamming those heavy- ass pans into the little mechanism holding the door on this fucking cage.
“Got it!” Repo stated, breaking through the outside layer and managing to hammer the pin up and out of its slot. “Come on, we got this.”
“Laken, hold on. Dammit!”
I had no idea if she could hear me.
But if she could, maybe it would help her fight. Maybe it would give her that last little bit she needed to hold on.
The sounds of destruction echoed loudly, the boys grunting hard with each blow.
“Fuck!” The pan part of Rip’s weapon dropped to the floor, barely missing his foot, leaving him with just the handle. “Shit!” he cursed, spinning and heaving it against the nearest wall.
“That’s it,” Repo announced a few seconds later as another pin clattered to the floor, leaving the freezer damaged and weak, the door falling open just enough for us to see inside.
“She’s not moving,” I muttered, my fingers trying to grab the door, trying to fucking rip it open with my bare hands. “We still need something to stick in the door, we need something to jimmy it open.”
“This…” Tyler announced, carrying in an industrial-sized fucking crowbar, and a group of brothers right behind him. Tyler stormed forward, taking the crowbar and jamming the pointed end into the space that had opened. “Ready?”
Any man in that room who could find a space on the end of the crowbar grabbed hold.
“One, two, three,” Ty called, and the room roared to life, one hard shove, and the door flew off almost collecting a couple of guys as it tumbled to the floor.
Shotgun ducked inside, stepping over the dead body at the entrance who we all instantly knew was Trenton Clarke but that none of us were about to give even a second’s worth of time to. He scooped her up off the floor, her body limp, her arms and legs hanging. He placed her on the counter, and I stepped up beside her, pressing my hand to her cheek, stroking it lightly. It was frozen, so fucking cold, that I couldn’t imagine there was any goddamn life left inside her or any warm blood left pumping through.
“Wake up, Lake,” I growled, tapping her cheek but getting no response. “Lake, come on, fight back. Fucking fight! Dammit!” I grabbed her chin, shaking her, not giving a shit that I could feel the room begin to spin. I quickly shrugged my jacket off, laying it over her body, tucking it in around her.
The next thing I knew, jacket after jacket after jacket was layered over her, covering her head to toe as the men around me waited.
For what?
Some fucking sign.
Something they could hold onto.
I leaned in, brushing the hair back from her face. “Come on, R-Rocky,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “You’ve got this. Fucking fight.”
Her skin was pale.
Cold.
Lifeless.
I couldn’t stop shaking my head.
“Come on, man, let them work on her,” Repo ordered, his arms coming around me from behind and pulling me back, but I kept surging forward.
I watched an EMT climb onto the counter and begin compressions while three brothers struggled to keep me back, forcing me out into the hall, the sound of them counting something I knew would haunt me for a lifetime.
One, two, three, four…
Breathe.
One, two, three, four…
Breathe.
MYTH
A breath in.
A breath out.
I watched her chest rise in time with the mechanical sucking noise of the machine beside her bed. It was connected to the tube that was forced down her throat, feeding her the air she desperately needed to stay alive. Or at least as alive as you could be when you aren’t breathing on your own.
I’d been there for hours, maybe more than that. She’d been in surgery for half of it as they tried to fix up another damn bullet hole in her body. Another scar to add to her collection. And now they had her dosed up on some potent drugs, trying to keep her asleep so her body could rest and recuperate. Her brain function was looking okay, but honestly, you just never knew what kind of damage had been done.
She had been gone for a long time before they managed to get her heart pumping again.
No oxygen to the brain.
I couldn’t pull my eyes away, scared if I turned away for a second, I might lose her.
I couldn’t fucking lose her.
Every part of my body ached, my throat almost scratched raw from growling and snapping at people who tried to pull me away, and from yelling at my brothers when they kept me from getting in the ambulance with her, telling me to just let the EMTs do their job. I knew they were trying to keep her alive, attempting to fight for her when she couldn’t fight for herself, but there was this fire inside me that sparked every time I saw her body jolt as they tried to shock her back to life.
It made me want to kill someone.
It didn’t make any sense.
But neither did the fucking world.
A world where a soul like hers could be forced to suffer so much pain—it just didn’t make any goddamn fucking sense.
“Hey.” I didn’t even turn to look at Shotgun as he stepped into the tiny hospital room, letting the door fall closed softly behind him. “The doctor is coming in to look at your shoulder and shit.”
“I don’t wan—”
“I honestly don’t give a shit what you want right now,” Shotgun cut in sternly, sliding his body into the chair on the other side of Laken’s bed. I swallowed the hard, angry lump in my throat that wanted to tell him to get fucked as I clenched my jaw when I finally drew my gaze from Laken’s chest to meet my president’s death glare. “I’ve let you have almost twelve hours. Now, you’re gonna see the fucking doctor. You’re gonna get your shit looked at right here. You don’t gotta leave the room. This is not negotiable. It’s a fucking order.”
The irrational part of me wanted to argue, but I was also very much aware of the way my body was beginning to fail, and the pain was taking over. The most intense, deep pain I’d ever felt. It was impacting my ability to process shit, to keep my head straight, and between Laken and I, one of us needed to be fucking conscious.
This was why I was a part of the Brothers by Blood.
My brothers had my best interest at heart.
They knew when to let me be.
But they also knew when it was time to step in and pull rank.
And if there was one thing Shotgun wasn’t afraid to do, it was pull rank and snap us stubborn bastards back into line when we needed it.
Reaching out with my one good arm, I curled my fingers around Laken’s hand, stroking the back of it with my thumb to try and warm it up a little. It was so cold. I fucking hated it when she felt cold.
“Okay,” I finally caved, this sick feeling swirled inside my stomach. “But I need you to do something for me.”
Shotgun didn’t falter for a second. “You know I got you, man,” he answered, no question.
“I need a property patch. And I need it yesterday.” I’d known since before she was taken, this was where things were going, and the way I was feeling right now was simply confirmation. Our time had been short, but when you knew, I believed that you just fucking knew. Laken was something else, something I never imagined ever
having or even wanting until she walked through the fucking door.
There was something about her chaos that complemented mine. Like our bodies were meeting for the first time, but our souls were a part of the same fucking storm.
The universe knew we were meant to be.
And there was no use fucking fighting the universe.
“I got a couple of numbers I can call,” Shotgun answered, his head bobbing and his hand reaching into his pocket for his phone. “I think I might be able to get one today.”
“You’re gonna give her your patch?”
Both our heads jerked up, neither of us hearing Kennedy step into the room.
I tightened my grip on Laken’s hand, my head pounding, my heart beating a little faster, a wave of nausea rushed over me for a second before I managed to speak, “She’s it. No matter what happens, I’m gonna make sure the world fucking knows.” I choked for a second, tears burning at my eyes while I swallowed furiously to try and keep them at bay. “She’s got my colors on, at least I know she’s forever gonna get the fucking love and respect she always deserved. Whether that’s in this life or the next.”
In the club’s eyes, a patch followed you into the afterlife protecting you, keeping you safe, and reminding you that you were never alone.
I didn’t want her ever to feel like she was alone.
Laken had been left out in the cold her entire life. I wasn’t about to let her feel that fucking chill ever again. Not now, not fucking ever, and I was going to make sure of that, one way or the other. I’d light myself on fire one hundred times over if it meant keeping her warm.
“Don’t talk like that,” Kennedy whispered, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Like what?” I challenged, knowing it was the pain speaking but not being able to control the sharp retort. “Like she might die?”
“She’s not going to die!” Kennedy snapped, her voice catching.
“Fucking look at her! This is not a fairy tale. This is life. It’s not perfect. People die, and I’ll be fucking damned if I’m gonna be just another person who didn’t have her back when she needs me!” I roared, pain shooting through every inch of my body. I cringed, gritting my teeth and fighting through the wave as it careened through my entire body. “Goddammit!” I cursed loudly, my hand slipping from Laken’s, leaving it hanging limp from the side of the bed while I fought to breathe.