Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Tripp and the club will clean up the mess here. Doc Kelly will have one of the duplex crash pads set up and waiting for us.
The yard smells like pine and diesel and the copper tang of blood close to the nose. Somewhere behind us, the past finally stopped breathing.
Crunch wrenches open the back door of Jenni’s sedan, reaches to take Jami. I shake my head. “I’ve got her.”
He doesn’t argue. He never argues when a decision feels like a vow. I climb into the back seat with Jami bleeding all over me, cradling her like she’s a rare thing that might fly away. The door slams. Crunch slings himself into the driver’s seat as Jenni gets into the passenger seat trying to keep her eyes trained to her sister, the engine flares to life, and we’re gone, gravel spit like buckshot.
One of the brothers will take my bike. One of the brothers will handle the mess we leave. That’s what brotherhood is, carrying the load the other guy can’t, no questions asked.
The road blurs under streetlights. I press my palm to Jami’s cheek. “Stay with me, baby. Hey—hey, Jameson, look at me. You hear me?”
Nothing. Her chest stutters shallow. Panic knocks around in my ribs, wild. I count breaths, mine and hers. I press my fingers above the wound and feel them slick. The car smells like iron and gas station air freshener and my own fear. I can’t lose her. Not like this, not in the same night she finally tore her chains off.
We blow past the last gas station on the edge of Haywood’s Landing and hit the country road out to the compound. Pines turn into shadows, then the gates, then home. The Hellions compound has always been a safe house, a church, a war room. And for nights like this, it’s a hospital.
Doc Kelly’s already on the duplex porch, scrubs on, hair braided. Head Case, her man, stands beside her, hands steady, eyes that soft, scary kind of calm only shrinks and snipers have. Floodlights wash the drive pale.
Crunch brakes hard. Doors fly. I’m out with Jami and the world narrows down to two things: her breaths and the front door. Kelly meets us with a gurney and a handful of profanity I take as a good sign.
“Inside,” she orders. “Now.”
We move like a machine. Head Case peels the bloody fabric away, eyes moving faster than his hands. Kelly checks pupils, vitals, and moves like it’s another day at the office for her. I hear numbers, blood pressure, oxygen levels, words like clavicle and fragment and internal. I hate every word because words can be tricks. I want facts. I want yes or no. I want alive.
“Let me in,” I growl when they wheel her toward the back room. Head Case plants a hand on my chest.
“Tommy, you don’t want to be in there,” he says low. “You want us to be in there.”
The truth of it hurts more than my rib did the time Red caught me bare-knuckle. I back up. “Fix her.”
He doesn’t say I’ll try. He nods once. “We will.”
The door swallows them. I’m left staring at my own reflection in the living room mirror—gray eyes I got from my grandfather, Tank’s jawline making it clear he’s my dad, and blood on my shirt that isn’t mine, but it belongs to me all the same. My hands shake. I don’t like that.
I turn and drive myself into motion because standing still is where the doubts live. The common area of the duplex is a tight, neutral thing—the kind of space you make when you know it has to hold grief and relief, both. There’s a couch, a coffee table, two chairs. A coffee maker sits like a promise in the corner. The TV is off. Everything hums—the building, the lights, my nerves.
Crunch comes in with Jenni two minutes later like I knew he would. She’s a wreck but she needed to get a once over too. He’s pale under the lights in the room, still wearing the weight of being a Prospect on his shoulders, and still a killer desire in his eyes. Ending Ezra Rivera didn’t bring him the peace to the monster that lives inside him. He wants to do it again. He keeps a gentle hand at the small of Jenni’s back like he’s not sure she’s actually here.
“Jenni,” I snap, because the first thing that slams into me is logistics, “are y’all the same blood type?”
She blinks like I slapped her. “I— I don’t know. Does she need blood? What do I do? Tell me, just, tell me what to do.” Panic threads her voice like barbed wire.
“Both of you.” Crunch’s voice is a surprise low, even, fatherly, the way he used to talk to me at two a.m. when I couldn’t sleep. “We gotta breathe. Doc Kelly will tell us what is needed.”