Page 87 of False Start

nineteen

She thinks she was there for about thirty minutes.

Mayhem’s words haunted me from the minute medics wheeled Lilith into the back.

My sister was stuck on her knees on the goddamned bathroom floor for half an hour and I had no clue. All while I was in the barn training, barking orders, trying to figure out what the fuck has happened to the chemistry on the track because something was off.

No phone on me. No phone on Lilith. Fuck.

Shit needed to change. My sister came first. She had to come first.

I stared out the wall of windows into the darkness, looking for answers as to how to split my time between two commitments. Answers, the pesky little bastards, they just didn’t want to come.

She’d been in with the doctors for almost an hour now. An hour and no word.

For the thousandth time I kicked myself for not trying hard enough to convince her to come to Boston and stay with me near some of the best hospitals in the country. Not that Bay Medical Center was bad. Just limited. They didn’t even have a twenty-four-hour anesthesiologist on staff, ruling out something as common as an epidural if she decided she wanted one.

I wanted Lilith to have everything. Every damn thing.

The emergency department waiting room hadn’t changed a whole hell of a lot since I was kid. The same metal framed chairs with blue vinyl. The same cherry wood end tables and chunky white lamps.

Hell, probably the same magazines.

I’d stood in this room too many times over the years. I waited here for them to tell me my mother was going to be okay. I waited after my grandfather’s heart attack for the same. I stood here searching for some sort of hope again when they brought my grandmother in.

And eventually, I waited here to find out Lana’s condition.

Almost every single time the staff stepped out those double doors, I waited for good news, and they brought me death.

I didn’t know how to expect anything different.

Warm arms slid around me, Mayhem’s tattooed hands locking over my stomach.

I blinked down at them for a minute, wondering if I was finally losing what was left of my damn mind after a nearly impossible week of watching her battle back from the way I hurt her.

I really outdid myself this time. I put her at risk and the way I did it tied my hands so I couldn’t even help her without putting her more at risk.

Closing my eyes, I laid my hand over hers. Another selfish step where I took what I wanted—what I needed—knowing I could only cause her more pain in the end.

Everyone who got close to me ended up hurt and there wasn’t one damn thing I could do to stop it.

“How is she?” she murmured from behind me.

But I wanted her in front of me.

I wanted her skin under my hands and her heat against my chest. I didn’t want to be alone one more time in this room, trying to figure out how I’d survive one more heartache I was powerless to stop.

Lacing my fingers with hers, I tugged her around to stand before me and pulled her in. Hanging my head, I buried my face in the curve of her neck for a minute. Just a minute.

“I haven’t heard anything yet,” I said as I took a deep breath while her arms tightened around me. Those pieces that felt like they might just burst apart held together under the hold she had on me.

I closed my eyes and took everything she offered, my hands splaying over her back, memorizing the dip of her muscles, the valley of her spine—who we were in this moment so damn different than the first time I was this close to her just weeks ago.

“She’s going to be okay,” she whispered, her warm breath sliding along my neck making me shiver.

“How do you know?”

“Because you were there and you did the right thing. You got her here fast.”

---