Whatever is going on in that hallway, I can’t think about it right now.
There will be fallout from what happened on the homestead.
People are dead.
People connected to a very dangerous and powerful criminal empire…
There will be consequences.
All because of me.
The guilt that sits like a thousand-pound boulder in my gut only grows heavier and heavier with each passing moment, as the future that might have been so bright with Liam in McBride Mountain is overshadowed by the very dark reality of what I’ve set in motion.
“Hey…” Willow squeezes my shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking, and you have to stop.”
“What am I thinking?”
She releases a little sigh, shoving her hands through her long hair. “When I was taken, I thought it was my fault. Because I left Killian instead of going back to talk. I kept thinking that if I had just never tried to leave McBride Mountain, none of it ever would have happened.”
“What?” I gape at her. “Of course it wasn’t your fault! Earl was unhinged, completely out of his mind. How could you ever think you caused any of that?”
Her slender shoulders rise and fall. “The same way you think you somehow caused any of this.”
I recoil slightly at her words, the force of them rocking my feet back a step. “I don’t?—”
She nods. “You do blame yourself. And you have to stop doing that.” One of her hands waves absently around the room. “All of this was caused by one person—Brent Lorell. You were an innocent victim in all of this, just like I was with Earl.”
“But—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I know you blame yourself because you think you should have seen through him and his game, but wanting to believe in someone, in something good, isn’t a fault, Lucky. It isn’t something you can blame yourself for or see as a weakness.” Her eyes glisten with tears. “It will ruin everything good in your life if you keep seeing it that way.”
I don’t know how to process what she’s saying, how to reconcile the guilt and regret in my heart with what is true in my head.
It’s all too tangled up with my worry for Liam and what might be coming for all these people—including the woman standing in front of me who has become such a good friend.
She pulls me back into her arms, tightening them around me. “It will all work out. Maybe not the way we all imagined it, but the way it was meant to be.”
I hope she’s right, and for a moment, I allow myself to just absorb her warmth and the confidence she has that I’m not sure I can share.
When she pulls away, she gives me a small smile. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be right out there.”
What I need is Liam to wake up…
Once that happens, there might be a chance of being able to sort through everything else, but until I hear his voice again, this wicked spiral I seem trapped in will just keep spinning downward.
Willow slips from the room, and I stare down at my hands, still tinged with Liam’s blood that won’t completely come out, even after scrubbing them raw when they took him back for surgery.
His blood is literally on my hands…
My legs wobble, another breakdown threatening, and I stumble over to the chair beside Liam’s bed to collapse into it before I hit the floor.
I pull his hand into mine, trying to ignore the discoloration.
The rough callouses on his palm rub against my smooth skin, and all I want is for him to squeeze back. For him to acknowledge that I’m here. For him to wake up and smile at me and call me Bluebell again.
Lowering my head, I brush a kiss across his cheek. “Please wake up for me.”
I don’t know if he can hear me or not, but it helps to talk to him, to think that he can and that it might somehow draw him away from whatever place the lingering medications in his system have him trapped in.
