When I get back out to the locker room with my scowling guard Mel is crying as she gets dressed, deep sobs that shake her entire body.
Diamond stomps over to me and snarls at me, "Tomi is picking you up tonight. You need to go sit in the office and wait there for him, no walking around, no showering, just go there right the hell now. Don’t leave or he'll be finding you and dragging you back to the clubhouse by your fucking throat. His words not mine, I hope you run and he guts you."
She walks off and I try not to panic. I mean, I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't betrayed the club or stolen anything... I just come here and dance. That's it.
Why would he be so damn worried about where I am?
I manage to grab my bag before the biker locks me back up into Tomi’s office. I pull on a pair of yoga pants and an oversized sweater. I feel like I need the armor, like whatever is going on tonight is going to be so bad I’ll need to freaking hide from it.
It’s almost seven in the morning before Tomi comes for me.
He looks so fucking bad I want to cry but he doesn’t look at me. “Grab your shit.”
I stand up, already packed and ready to go but I feel so fucking dirty with the glitter and hairspray still coating me. “Can I grab a shower now you’re here? I’m guessing everyone’s gone anyway.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
I follow him out of the office and find that no one has gone home yet. Great. Diamond is glaring at me like I killed her fucking puppy and the other girls are all still sobbing.
I don’t know what the fuck is going on.
“I can’t get on your bike like this.”
He doesn’t snap at me, he barely reacts, he just strips out of his jacket. Diamond gasps but I ignore her. Fuck, I try to forget she exists.
He holds it out to me and says, “Put it on.”
I do and then I follow him out, trying not to piss him off. I kind of get the feeling he’s holding his shit together by a thread and I don’t want to cop whatever it is he has to say.
Not today.
I check my phone but there’s still no reply to my message and bile creeps up the back of my throat. Surely not.
Please, don’t let it be that. “Where’s Speck?"
He hands me a helmet and says in the same empty voice, "Hospital. He was shot tonight, point blank in the chest.”
My stomach drops. "Oh my God. Oh my God, who shot him? Jesus Christ."
He frowns and turns away from me. "Put that on and hurry up."
I fumble a little with the straps but I get it on, climbing onto the motorcycle the same way he’d shown me last time I’d been on it.
The drive over to the hospital is short enough and I do my best to just hold onto him without crushing my body up against his but if my grip loosens even a little bit, he grabs my hands and moves them around himself more so I give up and just hold onto him like he’s a freaking life raft.
I’m crying by the time he cuts the engine.
I duck my head so he can’t see the tears, and then I follow him into the hospital. The nurses all seem to know him, half of them calling him by his name as he navigates us through the building with ease.
When we stop in the ICU Tomi pauses at the door for a second like he’s psyching himself up to walk in there.
I feel like an intruder.
This is a private moment and here I am witnessing it, seeing him during something so traumatic. He must be feeling so fucking bad right now, so exposed, and I’m just tagging along because I need a couch to sleep on.
Fuck.
"Why am I here?" I whisper and Tomi shrugs.
"I need to know where the fuck you are. I need eyes on you all night so I know you aren't targeted next. Rue's heading home in a minute to sleep, you can take the pull-out and I'll sleep in the chair if I need to."
Oh.
Right. I guess if they're going after club assets and I am now making the most cash, makes sense that they'd want to protect me. Jesus, that must be why Diamond is so pissed off, she's out there on her own and I get an armed brother to myself.
He steps into the room and I follow him in on autopilot.
Rue gives me a grimace of a smile as he rolls up out of the chair, his back cracking and shifting as he moves. He's clearly been here for a while, sitting in that chair and just... watching his cousin breathe.
Fuck, he's a mess of tubes and wires, everything beeping and looking vital to his survival, tears start up the second I get a look at him.
"Are you crying right now?" Tomi whispers, and I swallow.
"I can't help it. He's... my friend. Why did this happen?"
Rue claps him on the back and walks out, his phone to his ear as he checks in with King. I subconsciously lean into Tomi, seeking comfort or just to know that he's okay. He doesn't complain, or move away. He just stands there and lets me lean into his back.
He smells like a garage and gunpowder.
"You're shaking," he murmurs and I blow out a breath, trying to calm my nerves.
"This shit scares me. Were you with him when he got shot?"
He steps away from me and over to look at Speck's chart. I glance at it as I pass and I see all of his details. Jesus, he's only eighteen years old and now he has a machine breathing for him and his rib cage is hanging freaking open.
A six-hour operation to save his life and it still might not be enough.
I feel sick.
"I was there. I held my fucking shirt in his chest to try to stop the bleeding. Doesn't matter, that's what this life looks like. You look like you're about to pass the hell out, just lay down on the pull-out bed and get some sleep."
I don’t want to make any more trouble for him so I do as he says and, even with the beeping and the door opening every few minutes with nurses and doctors coming by to check Speck's vitals, I still manage to fall into a deep sleep, not waking for hours.
Chapter Twenty Two
Tomi
The day passes too fucking slowly.
Angel sleeps the whole day away which is a good thing, but she twitches and jerks around in the pull-out bed like she’s being fucking murdered which, combined with the mess Speck is in, means there’s no chance of me sleeping.
Instead, I sit and fucking stew on the rat problem.
I’d managed to get through all of the footage for the bar with nothing. Fucking frustrating, but I’ll be back to looking through it once my shift here is over.
The hours crawl by.
Rue steps back in around three in the afternoon, looking like a pile of ass but at least he's clean and, most importantly, he hasn’t been locked up for the shooting.
"Any news?"
I shake my head. "Nothing. His vitals only dropped twice so that's a good thing, I guess."
He nods and steps in, his eyes tracing over Speck like there'll be some sign he's going to survive. I know the feeling, that's all I've fucking done all night.
"She looks exhausted." he mumbles and I glance down at Angel. She's mumbled and thrashed around all day like she's been chased around in her dreams and even with the sun streaming through the windows she's still asleep now.
I'm going to figure her the fuck out. Just the second I get the fucker who is responsible for Speck's shooting, I’ll fucking gut him first, then I'm finding out every little scrap of information I can about Angel and I'm deciding once and for all if I need to cut her out.