The sound echoed over the deserted road, seeming to travel up to the heavens with its ferocity.
But the heavens were currently closed for business.
Hell, on the other hand, was open and here on earth.
I’d never, not in my entire life, heard Luke yell like that. Heard him inject so much fury into a sentence. It scared me enough to get out of the car. As soon as I did, Luke slammed the door shut so I was backed right up against the vehicle.
He boxed me in, eyes glowing like a wild animal’s under the illumination of his patrol car’s headlights.
“Tell me you’re not going to get yourself killed too,” he whispered.
I didn’t flinch at the mention of it. The shadow following me around, like a stalker, lying in wait, watching me, waiting for me to acknowledge him.
“Where I’m going is none of your concern,” I said, my voice still not my own.
The flat of his palm slammed down on the roof of my car in a fury I’d never seen.
From anyone.
Maybe because fury, even uncontrolled fury, wasn’t surprising when it came from someone like Cade.
Like Bull.
But from Luke, who normally locked down such emotions, who was all about calm and order, it seemed to shake the very foundations of the earth beneath us.
“I beg to fucking differ. You going out to your death is a great fucking concern,” he yelled.
He did it again. Mentioned the D word.
I had to acknowledge it now. Its ears had perked up, it had leaned forward, rancid breath at the back of my neck.
“It’s not my death I’m going out to meet,” I whispered, like if I said it low enough, maybe it wouldn’t hear me.
Luke stared at me, eyes still glowing in the light like a lion’s, but the fury retreating to its cage. “Rosie, you know I can’t let you do that.”
“You have to,” I choked. “You have to let me do it because there’s nothing else I can do! I’m bleeding. My family is bleeding. Everything is Fucked Up. I have to fix it.”
The hand that brutally slammed down on the roof of my car gently caressed my cheek. I didn’t even have it in me to feel anything at the contact. All of my feelings about Luke before that day seemed so far away, locked in another room of my mind.
“Baby, you can’t fix it,” he whispered, hurt rippling through his words.
“But I have to!” I screamed, rebelling against the still, the quiet. It could get me there. Death. I tried to escape him, tried to get back into my car. Luke’s caress became a restraint, stopping me from moving. “I have to!” I screamed again, pounding at his chest. “You need to let me go. I need to fix it. I need to….”
Despite my frantic attempts, it caught me. And I collapsed under the weight of it. Right into Luke’s chest, my hot cheek resting against the cool metal of his badge.
He stroked the top of my head, clutching me to him, rubbing my back.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured.
And he did. For who knew how long, he held me, right there on the side of the road, let me sob into his chest, weathered the first wave of my grief with me.
Stopped me from seeking out the men who had killed my friend.
Saved me from the same fate.
Because I would’ve died that night. Some intuitive part of me knew it when I’d started driving. But I was blind. Maybe I didn’t care.
Maybe I wanted to. In that horrible time between immediate and unexpected horror and lucidity at accepting that you have to continue to live despite it, I was touched with almost suicidal insanity.
Whatever it was, Luke saved me.
No one ever knew.
That night, Luke stopped the club from digging a second grave.
Ensured my broken heart was his forever.
And no one would ever know.
Present Day
This time, the doorway was different.
I didn’t have the luxury of falling back on anyone. Especially not Luke. He was done saving me.
I made sure of that.
But this time I had seen more. Death was a begrudging friend rather than a terrifying monster, snatching away everything I loved.
I was stronger now.
Or maybe there was less of me to break.
So I sucked in a breath and moved my feet forward, into the room that stank of death and pain.
It was familiar.
Keltan was leaned over the bed, murmuring quietly. Everything in me exhaled. He was murmuring not to himself, not to the world for taking something away.
But to someone else.
Lucy.
Her husky tones murmured back.
So I wasn’t getting another part of me chipped off today.
Thank fuck.
“I don’t care what kind of sweet nothings you’re murmuring,” I near-yelled, puncturing their private moment. I stomped into the room with my usual bravado, wearing my previous persona like a costume that someone else had stretched out. “This is my best friend, who almost died.” My breath hitched on that part, a mental stutter of the reality of it all. Though I managed to recover before anyone noticed. “I’m getting my own sweet nothings.”
I reached the bed, eyes flickering to Keltan, who was smirking at me. But like me, he was wearing a mask of his own. Stretching it over his face so the woman in that hospital bed didn’t see the horrible scar that the grip of death had left on him.
I focused on Lucy and congratulated myself for not visibly flinching. The bed almost swallowed her, sucking her into its fatal embrace.
Almost.
She’d always been pale, my best friend. But now her skin wasn’t that milky white tone that even Snow White couldn’t mimic. No, it was a sickly gray, almost translucent. Somehow, her hair managed to look like it was fresh out of a shampoo ad, midnight locks tumbling down her head, doing even more to emphasize the pallor of her skin.
Her eyes were too big, sunken in, filled with something that I hated having to see in them. Something like what Keltan was trying to hide, but worse.
I swallowed.
“Bitch, I go away for a hot minute and you get stabbed,” I snapped, going for jaunty blasé but failing as a tremor hit my voice.
I was horrified to see my hand was shaking as I snatched Lucy’s free palm, lying weakly atop the polyester of the hospital sheets.
Something more than the shadow of Hades flickered in her beautiful face. Something welcome. “Hot minute?” she snapped. “Try almost a year.”
I flinched inwardly again, seeing beyond the anger in her voice to the hurt that lingered beneath it.
I had been doing it for her.
No, who was I kidding? I’d been doing it for myself. I was selfish, running from my problems, deserted everyone who cared about me without a word.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy punched me.
Though she’d probably have to get Keltan to do it, since she was otherwise engaged with recovering from a stab wound.
I flinched inwardly again.
My best friend had been stabbed.
And I wasn’t there.
“I needed a hiatus,” I said truthfully. Nice euphemism for cowardice.
“From what?” she demanded.
I blinked at her in her hospital bed. Then it wasn’t her—it was Laurie. Her corpse all shriveled up, decaying, empty eyes staring at me in horrifying focus. Another blink and it was Skid, half his head gone, blood all over my white dress. Then it was me, pulling the trigger, ending a life. More blood.