Page 94 of Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC 7)

Except I didn’t. I’d lost too much blood. It was obvious now. My brother’s protégé had seen to that before Bram had shown up. So Bram could watch me die.

“I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you,” I whispered. “Take care of our baby. And maybe tell him about his mom?”

Bram opened his mouth to argue with me, but my rasping breath caused his mouth to close.

“I wasn’t all bad, was I?”

His tears were coming faster now.

“You weren’t bad at all,” he choked. “I was. I was bad. I was bad for you. And I took you anyway.”

I laughed, but it was so breathless that it was nothing more than a sigh.

“One day, you’ll find someone to be good for,” I whispered. “That girl just isn’t me.”

I didn’t feel anything now. I felt like I was floating on air.

“Baby,” Bram croaked.

He sounded as bad as I felt.

“The man’s name that hurt me. Travis Haynes,” I whispered. “That’s his name. He’s the dude you punched in the parking lot of the courthouse the day we found out my brother was being declared mentally insane.”

Then, with that last task taken care of, I passed out and didn’t wake back up.

CHAPTER 25

I won’t cry over you. Mascara is way too expensive.

-Dory to Bram

BRAM

Her body was twisted awkwardly. As in, she lay where she was thrown, not able to realign her limbs. Her leg was folded underneath of her and I couldn’t be sure of her neck’s status, so I wasn’t taking any chances moving her.

And her head. The only thing holding her scalp in place on her head was a few twisted strands of skin. She’d been scalped.

That wasn’t including her arms. They looked like they were sacks of marbles.

Her eyes had been completely bloodshot, and she’d been crying tears of blood.

But the worst? The worst was the fact that she could feel the baby moving, when I damn well hadn’t been able to. Not a single movement had come since she’d said she wanted to feel it.

I hadn’t been sure what she’d been feeling, but it definitely wasn’t Harker’s movement.

Then her words had come to me.

How she’d wanted me to tell the baby about her—maybe.

As if I would ever let a day go by that Harker wouldn’t know his mother.

What a beautiful person she was, inside and out.

If he made it, that was.

I was sitting alone in the emergency room.

They’d taken her upstairs hours ago, yet I hadn’t heard a single word in all that time.

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