My old man is standing at the reception desk, bent over, talking to a woman. His kutte showing the skull, wings, and bikes of the Royal Bastards.
When he turns at the sound of the doors sliding shut behind me, we stare at each other for a long time. His eyes showing emotions I can barely register.
He calls me over to the receptionist desk, his normal straight and rigid back almost bent. “Coy.”
I’ve never seen the old man look as tired as he does right now.
“What’s going on?” I ask when I finally cross the short distance.
It may have only been a few feet, but it feels like miles.
“Son…” he begins, but his voice trails off.
He hasn’t called me that in years, it’s always Coy or prospect now.
Repeating the same three words, I feel like I’ve been asking them all night, “What’s going on?”
He straightens to his full height.
Looking me in the eyes, he says, “Coy, ain’t no easy way to say this.”
“Then fucking spit it out,” I growl at him, and he doesn’t even flinch at my insolent tone.
“Allison and Horse were in a bad wreck,” he says, watching my face.
His eyes hold nothing but sympathy for me, and I’ve never seen the look he’s giving me right now.
Accident.
Accident with any other vehicle wouldn’t carry the same gravity as this type does. Bike accidents are never a happily ever after type of story.
Never.
My voice comes out in a croak as it tries to get past the massive lump that’s forming in my throat. “How bad?”
“Real bad, Coy. Horse didn’t make it.” He puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me over to a small alcove that’s out of the way of all the people coming in and out of the ER.
“Allie?” I ask.
“She’s in a bad way. Thank any god you can thank, she was wearing your old leathers and a brain bucket,” he says, but with the way he’s talking, even more bad news is coming my way.
“Where is she?” I ask, wanting to pull away from his touch, wanting his words to disappear like this whole night.
“Coy, she’s back in surgery right now. She broke both her ankles, her rotator cuff is…” he trails off.
“Can I see her?” I ask.
At least, I think I ask. My lungs feel like they’re never going to breathe again.
“Coy, she’s in surgery… She… She…” He stumbles over his words for a few seconds. “She wasn’t responsive when the paramedics got to the scene.”
“Where is she?”
My heart and everything I’ve ever felt good in this world is tied to her existence, and right now I can feel it dying.
Slowly, with each breath I take, I can feel it crumbling to ashy pieces.
“Let’s go see what we can find out,” he says then lets out a huge sigh. “One thing you need to know… Coy, it happened near her parent’s house. They were there when they put her in the ambulance.”
Time around me seems to move differently than anything I’ve ever known. It’s like each moment I breathe, I can feel the world moving past my pain. People and faces move and say words to me. Some in anger, some in sorrow, some in rage. Most in emotions I don’t really understand.
When I was in high school, I remember a physics teacher I had describing time as a fixed point. That it neither moves nor stays still. He was trying to explain something to us, but I can’t really remember much beyond him saying we could feel stuck in a moment of time for what seems like an eternity, or we could be flung through the hours and days as if it happens in the blink of an eye.
The last however many days have been a blur of words I don’t understand or want to hear. Especially when they say the word coma. That’s bad. I’ve looked it up and what I found wasn’t fuckin’ good, not good at all. They spoke about numbers and shit like that, but I don’t really understand it much.
All I understand is dying and vegetative state. Those ain’t good either. I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies, and if she goes into one of them long comas where she eventually dies anyway, what will I do?
I’ve tried to stay at the hospital as much as I can, but they’ve got some security team there now that’s been runnin’ interference between me and her.
She’s a minor and I’m not. She’s still under her parent’s legal guardianship. Not like I could do anything even if she wasn’t. My old man’s buddy, a lawyer, explained it to me. She isn’t able to give any kind of consent, so she’s under their care.
Fuckers. They say this is my fault, every damn bit of it. They ain’t wrong, but fuck if I wouldn’t go back in time and put myself in her position if I could.
I’d die and go to where I’m supposed to if I could just save her ass from all this shit.
“Coy,” Gremlin calls to me as I walk out of the clubhouse and head to my bike.
“What?” I ask as I mount my bike and stand it up, kicking the kickstand up.
“You headin’ to the hospital?” he asks as he walks past me to his bike.
Staring at him, I wonder just how fucking thick he is to even bother askin’. I’ve been going there every day since the accident.
Nodding my head, I say, “Yeah.”
“Alright, let’s go,” he grunts.
“Any reason you’re comin’?” I ask.
“Yeah, I gotta talk to you about some shit.”
I try not to sigh. “Club business?”
The Royal Bastards are my family and my life, but right now I need things to just fucking pause so I can fall apart for a few moments in my timeline. I need time to come to terms with knowing that the longer Allie stays the way she is, the more likely it is that our last words have already been spoken.
Nodding his head, I can see the understanding on his face, but he says “Yeah, got shit we need to go over.”
Time waits for no man’s tragedies.
“Alright, we’ll do it there. Not like I can get past the waiting rooms, anyways.”
“Nah, I also got a plan for that,” he says with a smirk.
“Seriously?” I ask and for the briefest of moments I can feel my heart pounding in my chest.
“Yup,” he grins and starts his bike.
He revs the engine for a couple beats before looking back to me.
Fuck me, this is not gonna be good. Well, I mean it will, but I know we’re about to get in some shit.
Smiling over at him, I nod my head and then tear ass out of the clubhouse parking lot.
Just the possibility of getting more than a brief passing look of Allie has my heart thumping nonstop in my chest.
Walking up the stairwell to the third floor, I look over at Gremlin and still can’t believe I’m gonna get to see Allie.
See and maybe touch her again.
“One thing I need to talk to you about though, before we get started,” he says and looks over at me seriously.
“Yeah?” I pause on the landing, waiting for him to continue.
“You’re not in the right spot for the shit coming down the pipe, brother. I know this shit’s got your focus, and we as a family understand that,” he says. “But shit is happening soon, and I need to know you’re gonna be with the club. You can’t live in two worlds; you won’t ever win this girl’s parent’s approval.”