Page 66 of Beautiful Ruins
A choked sob escaped me, and I dropped to my knees, holding on for dear life. “You can’t leave me,” I whispered, kissing his bloodied knuckles. “Please don’t leave me.”
But I’d already started preparing for it. Grieving him before he was gone.
“Never.” Just one word.
It shattered me. Split me wide open until I was bleeding on the floor right there with him.
A small smile lifted the corners of his lips, and his eyelids fluttered shut. That smile—that same crooked smile I’d fallen in love with at thirteen.
But he was still fighting. I just didn’t know if it was going to be enough.
Tears dripped onto the white sheet, blooming red where they met blood.
“I love you,” I whispered even though I know he couldn’t hear me.
I didn’t even try to stop the words. I couldn’t. My dignity didn’t matter, not at that point. Not if I lost Rowan.
The club’s patch-job medic tossed a bloodied cloth into a bucket and stepped back, swiping the back of his hand over his forehead. He nodded at Bear. “The next twenty-four hours will be critical,” he said, his voice as grave as the blood soaking Rowan’s chest. “I’ll set up in the spare room, just in case. But he’s going to need monitoring around the clock.”
Bear nodded. “Thanks Doc.”
The doctor placed a hand on Bear’s shoulder, squeezing gently. Then he exited the room, the door closing softly behind him.
Rowan’s heartbeat remained steady on the monitor, each beep a flicker of hope in the darkness. It echoed with each shallow breath he took. I tried to match his breathing to prove he was still there, that I hadn’t lost him yet. Rowan was still warm. Still mine. And I wasn’t letting him go.
There was no way he was going to be the third person I had to bury. I’d buried too many people I loved. I held his hand tight, everything else slipping away. Everything except for Rowan. I focused only on him, on how his fingers twitched in mine as he slipped into unconsciousness.
I glanced over my shoulder at Bear. “What happened?”
He looked past me to Rowan and scrubbed his hands over his face like he could scrub away the memory. “We were ambushed,” he said finally, jaw clenched. “I should have seen it coming, Sades. The whole fucking thing stunk the moment he got that text message.”
“Text message?” The question shot out of me like a poison dart, heading directly for Bear. “When?”
“Earlier today.” He dropped into a chair placed at the end of the bed, the metal creaking under his weight. All the strength he’d been trying to hold up seemed to finally drain from his bones. He was barely holding on. Just like me. “Said they had news on torched bikes, but it was a fucking set up.”
“Did you see who it was?” My voice strangled itself before the end, too tight to keep steady.
The light overhead flickered once, drawing long shadows that made Bear appear even more hollowed out.
“Didn’t see shit,” he said, sniffing. “It happened so quickly. We barely had time to duck for cover when Rowan jumped in front of me and Scout. He took the hit.” Bear exhaled, sinking back as the memory knocked the breath out of him. “Scout and I barely managed to get him back into the van.”
My vision swam, the edges going fuzzy as I gripped Rowan’s hand tighter, my lungs fighting for air. This was deliberate. Someone had set in motion an event that could alter the trajectory of my future with Rowan. I’d been pushing him in one direction, while he tugged me in a completely different one.
With him, I never knew what he was thinking, or how he ever felt about me when all I’d done over the years was obsess over him. Putting walls up felt safer than letting them crumble around him. What if he saw the ugliest parts of me and decided I wasn’t worth it?
It didn’t matter, though. As much as we danced around the feelings neither of us would have admitted to, we had always found our way back to each other. Whether it was to pretend we didn’t feel it, or to admit we always had.
In the end, we were inevitable. But inevitability didn’t stop bullets. It didn’t change blood loss or bad timing.
“Where?” It was all I could manage, considering I was verging on a complete meltdown.
Bear’s gaze shot to mine. “Hollow Creek Farm.”
Chapter Twenty-One
SADIE
Iremained hidden in the back room of the clubhouse where Rowan lay drugged, the chemical smell of antiseptic filling the air. Almost twenty-four hours had passed and Rowan was still breathing.
