He was willing to face the bullets. He’d walk through a shower of them if that’s what it took to save her. He’d gladly take her place without a moment’s hesitation, if that was possible. The fucking problem was, this worm was pointing that gun at her head. And the crazy in his eyes was something Killian recognized, something that chilled him to the bone. Because it was functioning crazy, a lucid type of crazy. It was love, but not the kind he saw twinkling in Lexie’s beautiful eyes as soon as he locked gazes with her.
No, this was love warped and disfigured by an evil and unhinged mind. Love that promised disaster and death.
But it wasn’t going to be Lexie’s, not while Killian still had breath in his chest, not while his heart was still beating. And it was. For her.
Then it stopped. It stopped the second Lexie started singing, the moment her husky and throaty voice sang to him. The words hit him like a knife, like a thousand knives. It wasn’t because it wasn’t beautiful. It was. Even pale from blood loss and terror, Lexie’s beauty lit from within.
It wasn’t that.
It was because she was saying good-bye. That song was meant to comfort him in the face of her leaving this world. The words were meant to soften the blow that would come the moment she took her last breath. When she sang her last word.
The length of that song was the last she had left, Killian knew. He was frozen in the spot listening to her, watching her. Then when she opened her eyes, everything in him paused, everything froze. Time stopped and he tumbled into the world beyond this, one she created with her words.
With her good-bye.
That’s why he took longer to notice. Because Noah and Sam advancing behind the fuck holding the guns to Lexie’s head were in the world of reality. Of death and loss and pain. Since the moment Lexie began that song, Killian wasn’t in that world. He was in the one Lexie created with her melody. With her soul.
But then it flickered out, like the flick of a switch. Killian watched it with paralyzing horror as the light drained from her eyes as she sang her good-bye to him. That’s what jerked him back into reality. That’s what made him see Sam silently climb the steps to the stage, his face blank and his gun pointed at the man who deserved to die a thousand deaths.
When Killian’s eyes flickered back to Lexie, his breathing seized. It had only been a split second away from her gaze, but it was enough for her to fade away. For her eyes to close and her body to slump against the chair and the pallor of her skin to turn to gray.
The creaking of the floorboard was enough for Killian. The fuck, the one he would kill a thousand different ways, had been slack-jawed and in his own sick world of crazy throughout Lexie’s song. Not enough embraced by insanity to drop the gun from her temple, but enough for his entire form to move, creaking the floorboard.
The second the gun lowered slightly, Killian surged forward, adrenaline and pure rage pumping through his body. It was laughable how easy he could take him down, laughable and fucking heartbreaking. Because this wily fuck, even struggling like a banshee, was no match for Killian. It was like subduing a child. The gun was ripped from his hands in an instant, and Killian plowed his fist through his face, knocking him out cleanly.
A couple of seconds, Killian guessed was what it took to neutralize him.
A couple of seconds, but he’d spent five excruciating minutes trapped by the man no stronger than a child because of how he’d held Lexie’s life in his hands.
Killian itched to continue his assault on the man’s prone body, to not stop until his skull was crashed in.
But even in his rage, he found sanity.
There was a dull roar in his ears as he scrambled over to the chair and lifted Lexie gently, as if he hadn’t just unleashed pure violence on a man moments before, as if she was made of glass.
Her body was limp and lifeless in his arms.
“Freckles,” he choked out.
He belatedly heard a scuffle and muted voices as someone kneeled beside him. He didn’t move his eyes from Lexie’s face, because the last time he did that, the light in her eyes disappeared. Lexie disappeared.
He pressed his hand to the wound at her stomach, ignoring the blood that drenched her entire torso. Having to ignore it because he was afraid he might lose his tenuous grip on sanity if he thought about that blood and what the amount of it outside her body meant.
“Come on, baby,” he murmured. He pleaded.
“An ambulance is five minutes away,” Noah half whispered in his ear. His voice was choked, almost silenced with fear.
Killian clenched his jaw. She didn’t have five minutes. He didn’t know if she had five fucking seconds.
“Is she breathing?” Sam asked, his voice flat, devoid of anything. Resigned.
Killian didn’t answer him. Keeping the pressure on Lexie’s wound, he bent down to put his ear to her chest. It was too fuckin’ still.
“Hold on, baby. I’m here. You just have to hold onto my voice,” he said, refusing to let his tone go empty like Sam’s. She could hear him. He knew that. His voice was full, full of everything he felt for her, so she could hear that and have something to hold onto.
“Is she fucking breathing?” Noah hissed, repeating Sam’s question, an urgent kind of desperation in his tone.
Killian didn’t answer him. Instead, his entire body tightened. Lexie said that silence was the gift he gave her, that their love was the beauty of silence. It was ironic then, that his disaster was the silence in her chest.
He clutched her to him. “Stay with me, freckles,” he pleaded. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me.” His voice broke at the end and he pressed his lips to her cold forehead, rocking her lifeless body back and forward. “You can’t leave, not when we’ve got forever.”
That was the problem. The problem with forever was it lasted a lifetime. And life was so fucking fickle that forever was never a guarantee. It was a sentence. A death sentence.
*****
Killian struggled against various hands on his arms. His eyes were focused on the doors that Lexie had been rushed through. The ones he wasn’t allowed to pass. The ones where he’d caught a last glimpse of a crowd of doctors administering CPR to her still and pale body.
“Lock it down, Killian,” a voice growled in his ear.
He didn’t hear it, not really. Not when his mind was full up with the silence at Lexie’s chest. His mind was on a replay reel of him pumping life into her as Sam and Noah looked on with tear-streaked faces. Of Bull, Brock, and Cade entering the fray and Bull sinking to his knees next to Lexie’s body. Then paramedics pushing him away while working on her, somehow bringing her back.
“Weak pulse.”
That’s what he clung to. What he used to try and chase away the silence.
It wasn’t working.
“I’ve got to fuckin’ get in there,” he roared, struggling against the hands of his brothers.
He would win, he knew that. Cade, Brock, and Noah were all strong motherfuckers, but Killian was stronger. It wasn’t physical strength, it was a carnal, brutal instinct that pushed him on, that would let him battle against a fucking tank to get to Lexie.
Reason didn’t exist. He only knew that he wasn’t with her. And if he couldn’t see her, then it meant the demons of emptiness would tempt him with darkness, would bring about his apocalypse.
A big body stepped in front of him, obscuring his view of the last place he saw her. Lexie. He prepared himself to kill the intruder to this vision.
He froze when his wild eyes settled on Bull. Bull grasped either side of Killian’s neck and stilled him immediately.
It wasn’t the hands on his neck that made him stop fighting. It was the look in Bull’s eyes. That hardness, that emptiness that was tempting him had taken over Bull. Killian flinched, seeing a reflection of his own nightmare in his brother’s eyes.
“Lock it down,” Bull growled. “For Lexie. Get your fuckin’ shit together.”
Killian i
mmediately slackened against the arms, locking eyes with his brother.
“She can’t fuckin’ die,” Killian choked out.
Bull’s eyes turned almost black and glistened with tears. “She won’t,” he promised.
The blood left Killian, not at the certainty of Bull’s words, but the doubt behind his eyes.
*****
A doctor emerged from the double doors Killian had been staring at for the past three hours, and he surged up. Bull met him at the man, whose eyes widened slightly at being swarmed by two huge fuckers in motorcycle cuts.
Killian didn’t give a fuck about that. “How is she?” he barked.
Bull was silent as Mia clung to his side. Rocko and Axel were at the Malibu house with Gwen, Cade’s wife, who’d come down the moment the call was made. Hell, half the club was in the private waiting room. The press swarmed outside. Or so Killian heard. That was outside his reality. Inconsequential really. A meteor could hit the earth right now and Killian wouldn’t give a shit. The man in front of him held his life in his hands, even if he didn’t know it.
Killian couldn’t read anything from his blank face.
The doctor cleared his throat, darting his eyes between the two men and Mia. “Miss Williams suffered not only substantial blood loss but internal bleeding,” he began. There was a pause, a long one that yawned across centuries. Across forever. Because that pause was the end of forever. The doctor’s eyes flickered with sympathy, and the darkness completely took Killian over.
“I’m sorry. We did everything we could. She’s out of surgery. I’d advise you to say your good-byes. There is little to no chance she’ll wake up again.”
The silence that settled after his words was so bitter, so poisonous, it almost made Killian throw up.
He thought the silence was the worst sound he’d ever heard. He was wrong. The sound that erupted from the back of Mia’s throat, the utter anguish emanating from it, was the worst.
She collapsed into Bull’s arms, her legs giving away with the weight of her sorrow. Bull clutched her to him, his face carved into a mask of grief. Killian watched all of this with an empty gaze. An empty soul. Because there was nothing left of him.
The first thing I heard was beeping. But it was weird. Fuzzy. Like hearing it under water. Then it was voices. Some soft and muffled, others rough enough to penetrate the deep fog that had settled over my mind.
“She’s going to fucking live,” the rough voice boomed.
It was familiar. I’m sure it was. Because it made the fog flicker, not enough to clear it, but it was a response. It made the softer voice audible.
“Killian, you heard the nurses. They said to say our good-byes.” That voice was familiar too, and it sent ripples of discomfort through the body I guessed I was supposed to have, but I couldn’t feel. That voice was full of pain. Anguish.
I struggled to swim up through the fog. I had the distinct idea that it was important.
There was a crash and it jarred me.
“I don’t give a shit what they say!” a guttural voice roared. “She’s strong. She’s going to pull through.”
A heavy silence filtered through the fog after these tortured words had taken it up, one that seemed wrong, unnatural, full of bitter emotions.
There was a dull, muffled sound of footsteps and a door closed.
I felt a twinge where I guessed my hand might be. It was hard to tell with the fog, with the numbness. But for a moment, I had feeling and warmth exploded from where my hand was. Warmth at it being engulfed in a larger hand, at the gentle pressure that came from the hand.
A bigger twinge erupted closer to the source of the fog. My forehead. It worked like a strong wind to push some stubborn fog from my mind.
A kiss, I thought. A kiss on my forehead. One so heartbreakingly familiar I wanted to scream. That kiss was from someone I cared about, someone I loved more than anything, if my rapid heart was anything to go by.
“You’re going to pull through,” a voice murmured in my ear. A rough and soft voice. “Come back to me, freckles. I can’t face this world without you.”
Freckles.
The word worked like a spark to ignite fire throughout my entire body, and memories rushed through me like wildfire.
Killian. Killian was here, holding my hand, speaking in a voice so full of despair it broke my heart.
Mom.
That’s the other soft voice, the one that was drenched in the same despair, but it had been different. I was the source of that despair. The gunshots. Eddie. Me slipping away when Killian’s eyes left mine.
The pain.
The darkness.
It still lurked at the corners of my mind, beckoning me into a world that promised a vacation from the pain I’d lived with. An escape. I fought it. Hard. Because I didn’t want the escape. I wanted the pain. I would live a lifetime of pain if it meant I had Killian by my side.
I tried to open my eyes, to speak, to squeeze my hand, to do anything to chase the demons from Killian’s voice. I couldn’t do any of it. Instead, I lost my battle against the darkness.
“Brother.”
Killian heard the voice, but he didn’t move. He kept his grip tightly on Lexie’s small hand, his eyes glued to her closed lids.
He was waiting. Waiting for those lids to flicker and show him that light still existed in the world, that this stale darkness, the ash on his tongue wasn’t permanent.
There was pressure at his shoulder.
Again, he didn’t react.
“Killian, you’ve been here three days straight. You haven’t slept. Barely fuckin’ eaten. You need a break,” Bull said.
Killian didn’t move his gaze. “I’m not goin’ anywhere.”
Bull sighed. Killian felt the emotion rolling off him. He guessed if he looked up, he’d see the emptiness, the darkness on Bull’s face that mirrored his own. Though it wouldn’t be the same as his own. Bull was ruined, of that he was sure, but he had Mia, he had his boys. His world was darker now, but it wasn’t black like Killian’s.
“Killian, I got her. Get some shut-eye,” Bull’s voice was firm, but empty.
Killian gritted his teeth. “The last time my eyes left hers, I lost her. You get that? She’s not leavin’ my fuckin’ sight until I make sure I’ve got her back.”
Bull met his words with silence.
Killian was so fucking sick of silence. The emptiness of the air grinded against his skin. He longed for noise. For the music that he felt in his soul, in his cock, Lexie’s throaty voice serenading him.
The only break from the silence was when his mind slipped and he heard that song that was seared into his memory. Lexie’s voice singing him good-bye.
“This is my fault,” Killian gritted out, his hand flexing against Lexie’s.
The hand at his shoulder tightened. “Yeah, this is your fault.”
Killian flinched at the certainty in Bull’s voice. It was one thing to know he was the reason Lexie was here. One thing to see the blame on Bull’s face when he’d rushed into that stadium, collapsing at Lexie’s bloodstained body. But it was quite another to hear it.
“The reason she’s here, in this bed, in a hospital, safe, still breathing. That’s on you,” Bull continued. “She’s alive because of you.”
Shock would have probably made Killian look up if the darkness didn’t have such a tight grip over him. “She died because of me. In my fuckin’ arms. I put my hand to her chest and there was nothing.” Killian paused, swallowing the lump in his throat. “Silence. That was because of me. It was my job to protect her. I failed. You can kill me for that. After she wakes up. After I end the person who took her from me.”
Bull stood behind him silently. “Not gonna say anythin’ right now to try and convince you on how wrong you are.” He paused, his voice was thick. He was going through his own hell seeing Lexie like this. “’Cause I know when that demon gets a hold of you, when you look at your world lying in
a hospital bed because of things out of your control, the only person you can find to blame is yourself. The world gave you a treasure, to cherish, to protect with your last breath, and you’ll convince yourself that it’s on you that gift gets damaged. It’s not. I’ll tell you that now. And Lexie will tell you when she wakes up.”
Then Bull left Killian with his own thoughts. With the demons that chased away his words the moment the door closed behind him.
He set his elbows on the bed, clasping Lexie’s hand in both of his. He pressed a kiss on it.
“I’m not leavin’ you, freckles,” he promised against her hand.
The problem was, it looked like she was leaving him.
And there was not a fucking thing he could do about it but hope. Laughable really. His entire future, everything, was hinged on a hope.
It was the beeping that brought me out again. That incessant beeping that echoed through my mind and jerked me out of the darkness. It was like an alarm clock that you couldn’t snooze.
I was angry at it at first. That darkness had been so comforting and alluring. But then I managed to wade through the fog that had held my mind hostage for who knew how long.
It was his voice that wrenched me out of it.
“You remember when you told me that you wanted roots? Wanted them curling around your feet, giving you somewhere to belong?” There was a pause and pressure at my hand. Blessedly, I could feel my body once more. I didn’t feel incorporeal, like I could float out of it at any minute. I could feel the bed underneath me and the weight on blankets atop of me.
“Well, I’ve got construction workers on the site day and night, building our house, freckles. Our roots. Where we’ll grow old. Where our children will grow up. Where I’ll love you every minute of forever. Every second.” Another pause, long enough for me to wade up through the fog. “All you need to do for me, baby, is wake up. Jesus, I’ll do anything. Just wake up for me, Lexie, so we can start our forever.”
It was the desperation in his voice, the love, that wrenched away the last of the film separating me from reality, from Killian.