“We can’t change the past, Starlight. If you’ll let me, I’ll spend the rest of my days building the life we need.”
“The life we need?”
He kissed me then. “I’m way past want. I need you.”
I brushed my fingers over his mouth. My gaze on him in the shadows. “I’m beginning to believe I need you too.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hayes
My eyes never left the living room window as Ash and Angel came together, kissing each other for a long time,drenched in the warm glow of the small lamp in the corner. When they broke apart, Ash took Angel’s chin between his fingers and said something. She smiled. It was small and didn’t meet her eyes.
“I take it we’re not going to bother them tonight.” Dominic’s assumption broke my train of thought, the compassion in his voice morphing it into a plea.
Let him have this.
Let Angel have him.
Just for tonight.
“No,” Grayson muttered. I looked over to him, finding his hands in his coat pockets, shoulder against the large pine tree at the end of Angel’s drive.
“Thank God.” Jake sighed, yanking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m not in the mood to ruin his night too.”
The truth, ugly and cold, had revealed itself tonight when Angel, Carrie, and Margo decided to sneak into our offices. I was fine with Margo going. I was fine with all of it, actually. After what our little family had been through the last few days, I relished the idea of her having fun with her friends. I knew they would be safe. When Margo called me in tears, I didn’t know what to think. By the time she got home, I was seconds away from getting the chopper. I held her for a long time as she cried, her anger taking over. And after, I stood, watching her in silence as she took a bat to wooden pallets behind the Buoy, raging over the unnecessary pain Ash, my brother, had suffered through. I left her in our bed with the intention of heading over to Grayson’s when her body gave out. I needed an update. My finger on the pulse. Ash’s pulse.
Unsurprisingly, I found myself here, standing in front of Angel’s house, watching two broken souls cling to each other.
Grayson was the next to arrive, a freshly printed copy of Angel’s CSIS file in hand.
Jake and Dominic trickled in, the pain of the past trailing behind them. It loomed over us; a dark storm cloud formed on the promise of destruction.
The light in the window went black, and I dropped my head, squeezing my eyes shut. All around me, I could hear the shrieking blare of the heart monitor, see the steady flat line glowing before me and a team of doctors and nurses scrambling to get the crash cart, surrounding my best friend. Broken, bruised, and bleeding on the bed. Dying.
“We’re going to lose him!”
“No! Don’t stop compressions!”
“He’s lost too much blood. Give me two bags of O-neg! Now!”
A hand landed on my shoulder. “Come back here, Hayes,” Dominic murmured. “The past has nothing else to offer you.”
I lifted my head, inhaling a deep breath through my nose as my body began to tremble. My eyes cut over to Gray. “I can’t lose him again.”
“We,” Jake corrected, his voice jagged. “We can’t lose him again.”
“And we won’t,” Grayson promised, his voice firm. He pushed off the tree and stepped into the street, slapping the file on the hood of my Jeep. “I’ve been informed by our friends in Canada that the Benson case is closed. His murder was the final nail in the coffin, no pun intended. Whoever he pissed off managed to take out all of his associates and contacts.”
“It was Ash.” The three of them looked at me, my words hanging in the air like a noose.
Dominic’s jaw ticked, and he turned his head, scrubbing a hand down his face. I studied him. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Ash killing Benson doesn’t surprise me,” Jake muttered, folding his arms over his chest. He tipped his head back to the purple sky above us. We had less than two hours until sunrise, and though I promised myself I would wait to knock on that damn door, all I wanted to do was give Ash more time with Angel. His soulmate. “Hell, we would’ve done the same thing.”
“And the others?” Grayson pressed. “Does that surprise you?”
I couldn’t read him tonight. Though I planned on keeping my thoughts on Ash’s violence to myself, I was curious to hear Grayson’s. The last time we’d had to clean up a mess, it was his and it was all over Carrie’s bedroom.
