Steel fucking Vanderbilt might be my Prez and like a damn brother to me before he pounded me into the dirt, but this… this is too far.
I’m like a wild animal shoving doors open, stumbling back from silent rooms, machines beeping, people sitting at bedsides clutching loved ones’ hands. I’d feel bad if I could think straight, but right now I’m just a cloud of anger.
My chest heaves with unrestrained fury, my hands are balled into fists. I must look like the devil himself when I bust into those rooms and all I can do is mutter a few words, back the hell out, and slam the door behind me.
I burst into room after room and none of them are hers.
The panic growing inside of me grips me tight, squeezes the life out of me, wrings out my lungs until they’re useless sacks and I know that each breath I take is precious because it might be my last.
I stopped believing in anything as trivial as heaven and hell a long time ago, when I was just a kid and my mother was too busy spreading her legs for money and drugs to pay any attention to her brat that sometimes those same men liked to beat on just because they could. She hated that I existed, a product of a night with a man whose name she couldn’t remember because he was just another face in an unending sea of many, a sea that eventually drowned her. I knew there wasn’t shit after death, because a woman like her, she was just doing what she had to in order to survive. Poverty sucked the life out ofher long before she had me, so I can’t blame her for not knowing how to raise me, give me any kind of love, since she never had any for herself.
I didn’t believe in a divine judge telling her she was wrong, that she’d sinned, cocksucking bullshit like that and I sure as shit didn’t believe in some fiery red bastard who’d punish her more than life already had.
But now… now, as I near the end of the hall and I still haven’t found her, I know for a fact that if she’s not in one of these rooms, something must have happened. Something terrible.
And if it’s come to that, if my Harley is dead and I didn’t feel her soul leaving mine, I’m gonna do something that gets me put straight into the earth right beside her. I’ll hunt down and kill every single one of those bastards that shot the place up. That dared to take from me what was mine.
My heart slams punishingly against my ribs, brutal in its ferocity. It burns like fire, searing my skin from my bones, melting me, scarring me, twisting me into something brutal and wretched. Sweat pours down my back in wet rivulets. My leather jacket clings to me like a second skin.
If my love, the only woman I’ve ever dared love in a life that I thought would be devoid of it forever, a woman who took the chance on loving me back, a man who doesn’t deserve even a tenth of her goodness, if she’s gone… if Steel kept her from me, kept me from saying goodbye to her in those final moments, Prez or no Prez, brother or not, he’s a dead man.
There’s a door on my right and one on my left. I slam through the right, because it’s closest. I barely register my hand on that handle, my footsteps in front of me, any of the shit goingon in there, the machines, the surroundings, because the wet in my eyes and a cloud of black rage blurs my vision.
I know she’s in there before I even see her, because, even with the disgusting smell of bleach and antiseptic and the other regular hospital smells that remind me of death, not life, I can scenther. Her goodness. Her purity. Her light.
I grew up in Detroit and, in front of the decrepit apartment building we called home, there was a huge lilac bush. Call me a pussy for it, but as a kid, I loved the scent of them. Loved their delicate little purple blossoms, the way they’d perfume the air. Sometimes I’d even open the windows in the place to let out the dank air and their scent would creep in, delicious and good, covering up the smell of my life like a rug covers a stain on the floor.
Harley’s always smelled like lilacs to me. Even though it’s been a lifetime since I’ve walked by that bush, I remember exactly what it smells like. The room is flooded with her scent.
As well as the darker, spicier, acrid scent of pissed off man.
Because that’s when I fucking spot Steel.
Leah’s with him. She jumps out of the chair beside his, her hand on his arm to hold him back. Her eyes are red rimmed, her blonde hair a snarled, tangled mess, her cheeks swollen and tear stained. I know she was there, there with Harley when it happened, but the words are fucked right out of me when I turn and see her, my angel, my love, my heart and soul, lying so still in that bed, machines hooked to her, her normal honey-hued skin completely ashen.
My throat clogs up and all the words I want to say, angry and terrible or otherwise, lodge there, tight and ugly.
Steel stands slowly, unwinding, lethal and terrifying, murder in his eyes.
I tense up, ready for him. He’ll have to kill me to get me out of here, because I’m not fucking leaving for anything. I love that woman in the bed, love her more than my own life. I’d burn down the world for her, kill anyone standing between us, anyone who dared hurt her. She’s my breath and my bones, my blood and my oxygen, everything that gives me life.
We stand like that, breathing hard, our hackles raised, two male dogs circling each other, hungry and lusting for blood. One of us is going to tear the other’s throat out.
Chapter Eleven
Harley
Ican’t see him, but I know he’s there.
Even in the underworld of darkness that blankets me, wraps around me, holds me captive, an unwilling prisoner, I cansensehim.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why everything is black or why my body is a vortex of white hot, mutilating pain that twists me up on the inside, scarring me there, where no one can see. I don’t know why my lids are so heavy that they won’t obey my commands to open, but I know, even before that seam cracks and light floods through the sludgy, tar thick darkness, that he’s there.
Edge.
Suddenly, my eyes fly open, the grip of the heavy black shattered when I take them both in, two men who have been giants in my life, and not because of their massive, imposing stature. The two men I love most in the world, circling each other like they’re going to do battle with each other, right there in what I realize is a hospital room.
My father, mercurial and fearsome, his face shadowed and storm tossed. And Edge. My Edge, his burnished copper eyes tinged with sorrow, his beautiful, rugged face twisted with worry and pain, the brutality of his love twisting him up and wringing him out. He looks exhausted.
