“But—”
“I can’t promise it’ll work. But I can promise that if we go to the hospital, they will find a way to kill Asher while making it look like an accident.”
I bit my lip. What choice did I have but to trust Sonny right now? Even if I thought he was full of shit, Ash was in the back of the van. I was in the front. We were on the road.
Nothing in those facts allowed any wiggle room.
“You’d better save him.”
“He’s one of us,” Sonny said. “We’ll do everything we can.”
One of us.
The loner has found his club again.
I didn’t say another word as we pulled into the complex. A horde of bikers had made it so they’d have quick access to my apartment. At the front door, three women waited. They took Ash into the room and started working with equipment that…well, I wasn’t sure how they’d gotten hold of it, but I wasn’t about to say anything.
I watched like a hawk, careful not to interfere but also cautious to not let a moment go unexamined. The women seemed confident in what they were doing—one, Justine, said multiple times that she expected worse—but I refused to believe things would be fine until I saw Ash wake up and address me.
Otherwise…
Well, to consider the alternative was much too painful.
The surgery they did lasted only about half an hour. But Ash didn’t wake up. Justine told me that he’d need some time to do so, but it left me waiting on razor’s edge.
What if he didn’t wake up? After all that? After all the efforts to save him…what if they failed?
I paced in the room that had once been our bedroom for what felt like hours. The other bikers, aside from standing watch outside, gave us all the space we needed. No one came in.
The sky outside brightened. I hadn’t had good sleep in hours. It felt like…
“Callie?”
I looked over in shock.
He was awake.
Ash was awake.
“Ash!”
I practically jumped on the bed. He groaned, laughed, and pulled me in for a kiss. And when he looked right in my eyes, he knew there was no point in hiding anything anymore. He got right to it.
“Callie, it’s not you... It’s never been you. It’s me. It’s my fault, and I know it.”
I had to stop myself from crying. Between him being alive and him being like this, it was unlike anything I’d seen from him since probably our wedding day.
Maybe ever.
“You’ve always been right for me, and I want everything to be right for you.”
Ash reached forward with an open hand, palm up, stopping just short of mine. I reached forward and embraced his hand, our fingers intertwining.
“For us.”
My heart skipped a beat. My lips quivered slightly with cautious joy as I held back a smile. Could this be real? Could this really, truly, actually be happening?
My man, her Ash, was finally right where I had always wanted him. I didn’t mean that he was physically here. I meant that he was emotionally present, more than I’d ever seen him.
