Another step closer and I froze, right away taking in the dark hair. The short legs…
“No, no, no.” My heart leaped into my throat, my eyes burning. I tripped but didn’t fall, ignoring the eyes of the rogue wannabe soldiers, and focused only on the unmoving woman.
Emily.
Fuuuuuck. It couldn’t be her, damn it. It just fucking couldn’t be.
“Move!” I yelled at my ma, who was hovering over her body, and I fell down beside her… then froze when I realized it wasn’t Emily lying on the ground.
It was Lisa.
My heart stopped. I looked to my ma, breathless when I realized Lisa was dead.
The only thing I felt in my chest right then was pain for Emily; she may not be dead but the pain of losing her ma might just kill her.
“Where is Emily?”
Ma shook her head, tears falling down her cheeks when our eyes met. The woman never cried. In all the years I’d known her and loved her, I’d never seen her shed a tear.
For some reason, the sight of it pissed me off.
“Stop crying and tell me where the fuck Emily—”
Gunfire popped in the air again, and I fell on my stomach, bringing my ma down on top of Lisa’s lifeless body. Son of a bitch!
Ma was shaking, speaking in Gaelic, and if I’d stayed up on my studies, stayed in Ireland even, then I might’ve known what she was saying. At the same time, it didn’t take a genius to know she was praying, the words running on repeat, over and over… When the fuck did my badass-biker ma become so religious?
I turned my head away, trying to see through the trees—Emily, Pops… anyone. But instead, I saw more bodies. A shit ton of them. One more familiar than the others.
Chop. Dead, just ten feet away. Holy shit.
I blinked, no time for questions, only to notice more bodies… these ones alive. Tall, black jeans, cuts with red dragons… Thirty or forty of them rushing through the trees like warriors, guns drawn.
I smiled. Despite the body beneath me, the destruction surrounding me, and not knowing where Emily was, I fucking smiled.
The cavalry was here. The RDs… minus the Texas crew. Flick hadn’t let them come after all.
Thirty
Emily
It happened so fast that I didn’t see it coming. First I was on Pops’s shoulder, being rushed through the woods surrounding the building, and then I was falling, landing with a thud that stole the breath from my lungs. Flick stood over me, a hand on his gun, while Niyol held Pops against a tree, forearm to his neck, a gun to his temple.
“You’re a pussy,” Pops growled. “Ain’t got the guts to end my life.”
“The hell I don’t.” Niyol shoved the gun to Pops’s temple even harder, hissing. For the first time in my life, I feared my brother. Not in the sense that he would ever hurt me, more in the sense that he had murder in his eyes—even if his intended victim deserved to die a horrible, vicious death.
This was the Red Dragon life I didn’t ever want to be part of.
But there I was, at the center of it all. Only Archer wasn’t with me.
Archer, who might still be inside that building.
I choked on a sob, eyes squeezing shut. I pulled my knees to my chest and didn’t get up off the ground as I stared at the smoke rising in the distance. Even as the gunfire slowed, then stopped, a sense of desperation hit me in the stomach as if I was bound for death, though I had no real wounds.
If Archer didn’t make it, how could I? I’d pushed him away. I hadn’t wanted any part of him or his club. But now I’d do anything to have him in my life, in any way he’d let me.
A gun went off then. I jumped, turning to see Flick standing over Pops’s body as it fell to the ground. Flick mumbled words I couldn’t understand, and I could have sworn I heard him laugh. It wasn’t time for laughter now, didn’t he understand? Didn’t he know that Archer probably hadn’t made it?
I cried out at the thought, sitting up, determined to go back and see for sure.
“Hey, hey,” Niyol said, crouching beside me, his dark brows pulled together as he searched my face. “You alright? Don’t move, you’re bleeding.”
“I… I…”
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re good.” Niyol pulled me against his chest, hugging me to him. I didn’t understand. I didn’t get it. He should hate me. Everyone should. I should be the one dead, not Archer. Dizziness washed over me before I could say so, and the next thing I knew, I was passing out in my brother’s arms.
Thirty-One
Archer
I crawled forward, passing my ma, and Lisa’s dead body, and grabbed a fallen gun, just as more shots were fired from my left. One by one, bodies began falling, and I knew then that my brothers had zero mercy for the army Pops had created. Anyone affiliated with that man was dead. It didn’t matter if they were young or old, pawns or not. They’d teamed up with the wrong man and messed with the wrong MC.
The first person I recognized was Crazy, who jumped in front of me with wide arms and wild eyes. “Ho-lee-shit,” he said with a long whistle, taking me in, then my ma, then finally, Lisa’s dead body.
“Don’t just stand there, you fucker,” I hissed, wrapping an arm around my waist. “Make yourself useful.” Somehow, I got to my knees again, then my feet, the gun in my hand shaking right along with my fingers.
Slade was there next, sweat dripping down his temples, his dark eyes even wilder than Crazy’s. At the sight of me, his face paled. “How are you not dead?” Then he pointed to the ground with his gun. “Sit down before I make you.”
“Nuh uh. Emily’s—”
Another shot was fired, this one from somewhere ahead in the woods. I looked up, eyes narrowing as if I could see where it was coming from, knowing deep down that wherever it was, Emily might be there too.
The thought had me panicking, shoving both Slade and Crazy aside as I raced up the hill to the edge of the woods, over branches, mud, past a tree, then another… until I spotted her, unmoving, with her head on Hawk’s lap.
My stomach twisted at the view. I took off even faster, stumbling some more. And then I was there, falling to my knees at Emily’s side, swearing I’d never get up again if she didn’t get up too. Is that what love does to a person? Make them feel fucking helpless and lost at the thought of ever being without their partner? I couldn’t lose her. I knew right then and there that if I did, it would end me.
“Move.” I shoved Hawk away, pulling Emily’s limp body against my chest. “Baby, please. Wake up. Please. JP, Emily, Em, come on. Open those eyes.” I searched her face, her body, lifting her shirt, only for Flick to slap my hand away.
“Get your kicks somewhere other than her.” He curled his upper lip.
Ignoring him, I kissed her head, her nose, each of her eyes. Come on, Sleeping Beauty. Don’t you fucking leave me now.
And just like that, Emily began to stir in my arms.
“A-Archer?” she whispered, lips pulling to one side as she studied my face. Reaching up, she touched my wrist, weak fingers struggling to hang on to me.
“Christ, Em. You scared the shit outta me.” I touched my forehead to hers and took my first real breath in days.
She was okay. She was alive. She was also the only thing I could see and breathe and smell and… love.
Goddamn, I think I loved this woman.
No. I did love her. Fuck being cursed. I was one lucky son of a bitch, that’s what I was.
I hiked her up higher onto my lap, needing her as close to me as I could get her. She must’ve felt the same because she straddled my lap, arms around my waist like she’d never let me go. The feeling was mutual. She buried her face into my neck and I knew, right then, that this was where I was always meant to be.
Death and destruction sat ahead. No doubt a crew would be by soon to help clean up the scene, but I wasn’t ready to go back to the carnage. Not when I had everything I’d ever need again right there on my lap.
As if she knew what I was thinking,
Emily leaned back just enough to look at my face. As much as I wanted to forget everything, I needed this moment to talk, see what she’d been through most of all, only so I could figure out how to fix it for her. For us.
“What happened? Tell me.” I cupped her face and ran both thumbs over the bruises on her cheek, the one next to her eye, too.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle.” She reached down between us to take my hand in hers. It was likely a natural movement for two people, a couple even. But for me? Holding Em’s hand felt like kissing. Real and about as intimate as I’d ever been with another person before. Hell, sex had never made me feel the way holding Emily’s hand in mine did. The same went for her hugs.
“My mom…” she whispered a minute later, her eyes watering, her breath a shudder.
I squeezed her fingers as tight as I could, letting her know I was there. That she could talk all she wanted, and I’d do my best to listen. Letting her know, too, that if she just wanted to cry and forget it all, I’d be the best damn hugger she’d ever have again.
“She didn’t make it, Archer. I-I couldn’t save her.”
“I know.” I brushed my nose against hers, felt her pain so fucking deep in my chest I could’ve called it my own. I’d lost my ma once. Knew what that felt like, even though she’d come back from the dead. The ache Emily was feeling? It’d never go away.
Emily sniffed, stroking the back of my hand with her free one. “Your mom though…”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah.”
“Did you know?”
“No.” I winced as pain shot through my ribs.
Her fingers moved from the back of my hand to stroke my newly buzzed hair.
“Who did this by the way?”
“Angel,” I said. “But Chop made him. Guess he… didn’t like my pretty…” I coughed, wincing again, “golden locks.”
Instead of laughing, she frowned, shaking her head at me.
She started stroking my head again, finishing with, “If the guy wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him for this alone.”
I hummed and shut my eyes, taking a quick breath.
“Hey, don’t you close your eyes,” she said, rubbing at my cheek. “A little help up here!” she hollered through the trees, then looked at me again. “You’re really hurt, aren’t you?”
“Nah. Just banged up is all.”
She frowned, obviously not believing me.
“I’m sorry.” I winced.
“For what?”
“Not being there for you like I should’ve been. For what happened with the flood and my bike and—”
“Don’t.” She lowered her forehead to mine.
“Don’t what?”
“Talk like you’re getting ready to say goodbye to me, Archer. It’s my fault you’re hurt, so if anyone should apologize, it should be me.”
I wanted to argue with her, tell her that she hadn’t forced me to go anywhere and that I’d made every decision up until now on my own. That other than the pain, her getting hurt, the flood, and all the bad shit that had happened, I wouldn’t trade a second of my time with her. But the words were stuck and the pain inside of me got to be too much to take.
Emily hollered for someone again, even louder this time. “We’re gonna get you to a hospital and heal you right up, because I’m not losing you, do you understand me?”
I winced, her voice blurring in and out of my ears. That wasn’t good.
“Kiss me.” I did manage that one. If I was gonna go, then I wanted to feel her lips. To take them to the grave with me.
“Always,” she whispered, lowering her soft, tear-soaked mouth to mine.
Thirty-Two
Emily
Archer was in the hospital. I was admitted for a night too, suffering from severe dehydration. There was no denying I felt like crap, but I didn’t have time to be sick or to think about myself. Not when I had Archer to worry about.
There hadn’t been much of an opportunity for me to think about my mom. I knew her death would hit once I left this town and went back to Rockford—if I was even welcomed back at all. Niyol seemed fine with me returning, but I still got the cold shoulder from everyone else. I wondered if they blamed me for Archer’s injuries, for everything that had happened. I know I would if I were them.
He’d gone through two surgeries in twenty-four hours. One for a broken collarbone and another for the internal bleeding in his stomach. They’d sealed up the leaking vessels with a heat probe, and when Archer had woken from that one, he’d joked for an hour about probing me again. How the guy could be so dirty after suffering through so much, and feeling so much pain too, was beyond me. Regardless, the fact that he’d wanted me there with him, holding his hand when he puked ten minutes later from the medicine, did more for my soul than any declarations between us ever would.
Now, a day later, he was back in the operating room for his eye. It’d been shattered, and they weren’t completely sure if his vision would ever be fully restored. Out of everything, that was the surgery I’d cried about… I wasn’t sure why. It could’ve been my lack of sleep. Or it could’ve been the fact that seeing Archer in pain was undoing me.
Anne had told me I needed a break. To go out and be with the brothers in the waiting room for a while. Despite the fact that I wanted to be there when Archer came back, I knew she was right. I was hungry and thirsty, and I needed to call Summer.
“Hey,” I said, leaning back in the hospital waiting-room chair. Summer had answered my FaceTime call within seconds. I was using Flick’s phone; he’d unsurprisingly been the one and only guy from the club to offer it up when I’d asked to borrow one.
“Don’t you ever do that again, you hear me? You leave, I go with you. End of story.” Summer wiped her wet face, her angry words biting.
I reached out to touch the screen, tracing Summer’s long, blonde hair. Her eyes were brighter than I remembered them being before I left. But that also could’ve been her tears.
“I’m sorry. You know I had to.”
She sighed, reaching out to touch the screen too. “I know. But it was so stupid, Emily.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah. And look what good it did me too.”
My throat burned as memories of Mom’s eyes, full of fear, peered up at me. She hadn’t died heroically. She hadn’t even died for a cause. She’d died for a man who’d never been in love with her.
“Honey, I’m so, so sorry,” Summer whispered. I was glad she didn’t ask if I was okay, because I wouldn’t have been able to stop an inevitable breakdown. There’d be time for that later. For now, I needed to be strong for Archer.
“Thanks.” I wiped my face with a nearby tissue, catching sight of Flick, who sat across from me. He’d been giving me creepy looks since we’d gotten to the hospital, and I wasn’t sure if he was plotting my demise or what.
“How is Archer? Is he out of surgery yet?”
I blinked and looked at the phone again. “No. They said this one might be the hardest out of all the surgeries because they did so much damage.”
“Damn it. I hate this. So much.”
“Me too.” I frowned. “But we’ve got to believe things are going to get better, right?”
“Yeah. Especially since my baby needs godparents,” she told me. “So don’t you ever leave me again, deal?”
I wanted to promise her that I would always be there, but facts were facts. The RDs would never forgive me for what I’d done, even though I loved a man who was at the heart of their club.
Summer blew out a slow breath, changing the subject. “Bad news on the work front by the way.”
“Oh, God, what now?”
“Rumor has it, cuts are going to be made. All non-tenured teachers are pretty much screwed as far as jobs go next year.”
I shrugged, not really surprised. “It’s fine. I’ll just look for something else. Maybe take some online classes, get my masters. Or take time off to deal with…” I was going to say Mom’s wedding-planning business, the one she�
��d left behind when she’d left with Pops. But that was too raw of a subject to think about right now, or ever, really.
“Hey.” Summer tapped the screen, drawing me back in. “Come four and a half months from now, I’m gonna be hiring a nanny.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I love you. And I’ll love my future niece or nephew to bits, but I’ll pass.”
The doctor pushed through the doors a second later. The serious look on his dark face had me shivering, standing, and saying goodbye to my best friend without even looking at the screen.
Slowly, I made my way over to Flick, Anne, and Angel, who were listening intently to everything the doctor said.
“… stable condition and should be waking up soon.”
My entire body seemed to sag at that news. I covered my mouth to hide my incoming sob of relief. Anne looked at me with hope-filled eyes, giving me even more confidence that he’d get through this. We all would, actually. I didn’t even know this woman. But I felt like I did.
“Can we… go back…?” Angel tried to speak then bowed his head, shaking it.
Flick stiffened, and when I looked his way, I saw the confusion on his face. Likely, he was trying to figure out what was wrong with Archer’s brother’s voice.
“As long as you’re family,” the doctor said, giving him a firm nod.
Once he was gone, we decided that I would go back to see Archer with Angel. Until Flick changed the plans.
“Need to talk to you first, girl,” he told me, pulling me out of the group.
Angel moved closer to me, protectiveness in his gaze that I didn’t deserve. I touched his wrist and smiled, knowing this was it. My fate was sealed. Flick was going to give me my one-way ticket out of here, no matter what was going on with Archer.
I just wished I had more time.
“It’s okay,” I told Angel. “You and your mom go back first.”
Her Hot Ride: A gripping and sexy biker mc romantic suspense novel Page 23