“My farmhouse,” I correct automatically, and Crown gives me this impossible look. I don’t understand any part of it, and I’m in no state to dissect the emotions of one of these assholes. “Thank you.”
“You’re the end and beginning of everything for me, aren’t you, Gidget?” Crown asks with an exasperated sigh.
“It’s Gidge,” I correct him, the reverse correction to the one I’ve used my whole life. At first, nobody was allowed to call me Gidge. Nobody but my sisters and Reba. Now, the boys have to call me Gidge because the sweet, soft familiarity of a nickname is a light in the endless darkness of my world.
I need that, a soft place to land.
Is it possible that four inked outlaw bastards could be that softness for me? Could be my landing strip when I descend from a stormy sky?
Fuck, you’re a maudlin bitch, aren’t you? I think, forcing another exhale to calm myself down.
Crown places his warm hand on the back of my neck and leans down, brushing a fervent kiss across my lips that burns as good as it hurts. I’m in so much pain from Gaz’s punch, but I’d accept that agony for the rest of eternity if it meant that I could keep kissing Calder Reid.
I’ve never kissed anyone that simultaneously tastes like the most loving man I’ve ever met, and also the biggest alpha-hole dickhead. Crown is both of things concurrently; there is no untangling one from the other.
He pulls away, and I see that his own mouth is now glossy with my blood, giving him that edge that Beast and I have, making him look a little more real and a little less perfect. Where were you? I wonder again, but I don’t have time to ask right now.
We’re on a strict time limit.
“Take care of her for me,” Crown breathes, licking my blood from his lips like that isn’t a particularly weird or morbid thing to do. It just makes sense here, in this strange world of ours.
“I don’t need any advice on how to handle my wife,” Beast says, almost absentmindedly, and Crown scowls at him. I mean, he fucking scowls. Viciously. And then off he goes, to deal with my brother’s body. He could probably use some help, but he’s right in that I don’t particularly want to be involved with burying Gaz.
My throat closes up as I move to head down the hall, subsequently stumbling and finding myself righted by Beast.
“If he were going to hide, where would he be?” Beast asks, his voice soft near my ear. I lean into it, so dizzy that I can barely keep my feet, even with my new husband’s help. Husband. But it’s so much more than that, isn’t it? Beast has chosen me, over everyone and everything—including the club.
I think on his statement for a minute, the wheels in my addled brain turning.
Where would he be? More like, where would I be? Because Grey and I are the same person in different bodies. I touch two fingers to my jaw, and blinding white agony explodes inside my skull. Did Gaz break my jaw? Fuck, I hope not. I hear jaw surgery’s a bitch.
If I were trapped on the mafia compound, then what would I do? What would I try for? Especially knowing there was an attack, that people would be looking for me. Everyone in the club and their fucking grandmother is going to be combing this place except … except for me.
Ding, ding, ding.
Grey would look for a place that’s undeniably mine. Somewhere that, if the club were searching, he might just be able to hide out.
“The farmhouse,” I say, turning to Beast and knowing that Reba could—and absolutely would—show Grey how to get there. If they doled out what they had of the antidote and took off while melee was still occurring, they might’ve been able to pull it off. “I think they’re already at the farmhouse.”
Beast nods, running his fingers down his smooth face and then frowning at them like he already misses his beard. He shakes his hand out like it hurts and meets my eyes with those gorgeous robin’s egg blue ones of his.
“Good. Because that’s exactly where I’d take you if we didn’t have anything else to do.” Before I can think to protest—or shit, maybe I should be thanking the guy—Beast grabs me and hefts me over his shoulder like a caveman carrying off his bride.
“Put me …”
I don’t remember finishing that sentence.
I must be particularly prone to fits of melancholy and rancor because my mind is filled with snippets of dark things. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Edgar Allan Poe’s dark poetry filters through my skull, likely summoned up by the same monster that encouraged me to compare the murder of my brother to a Steinbeck novel.
I guess it’s easier that way sometimes, to understand life through literature and dreams.
Images of the clubhouse, smoky and stinking of sex and alcohol, trickle into my subconscious followed by bursts of remembered carnality and heat. This is for Kian. I see blood; I see longing; I see Cat standing alone in a field.
More clearly than anything else, I see the four coffins laid out in front of him.
Four coffins for four children.
Three of them have closed lids, shiny and dark, littered with red roses and ash that’s wet from the rain.
The one on the end is open and empty.
I know in that disturbing certainty that only comes in dreams that the fourth coffin is meant for me. It’s only empty because I’m not in it—yet.
A groan of pain escapes my dry lips, so loud that it actually wakes me up.
My eyes flutter open, and I blink away sticky cobwebs to look up at a wood ceiling. My head is cradled by Beast’s pillow, my body covered with blankets that are undeniably soaked with his beautiful smell. Tea and books and leather.
I sit up suddenly and nearly conk my head into my husband’s.
“Easy, Gidge,” he breathes, putting his palm against my forehead. I move to shove him off, but he takes my wrist in his fingers and looks me right in the eyes. “Your friends are here; I put Grey in the attic for now. If he has to, he can climb onto the roof and crawl into the chimney. Crown forgot to put the cap back on after he did some repairs.”
“Can I come in now?” Reba demands from the other side of the door, and I moan as I force myself to remain in a sitting position. Beast releases my head and sits back on his haunches beside the bed. “That brute locked me out!”
I rub at my forehead, glancing over at the clock on the nightstand. Holy fuck!
“I’ve been asleep for six hours?!” I scream, shoving the blankets back and struggling to free myself from the tangled sheets. Beast grabs me by the shoulders and holds me still, using a gentle strength to keep me from thrashing around. “I need to get to the hospital, Beast,” I snap, trying and failing to move his hands even a fraction of an inch away from my shoulders. “Sin and Grainger …”
My voice breaks, and I lift up a gaze that I know isn’t appropriate. It’s one that begs with every blink, that shimmers with unspoken hopes that I have no right to have. My life has never been easy; it’s never been simple. I’ve lived through one horrible tragedy after another. How could I ever expect to ride into the sunset with not one, not two, but four men that I love with my whole heart? When the fuck did I ever allow myself to want and need that?
I’m a beautiful fool, that’s for sure.
“They’re both alive,” Beast says, wetting his lips in a way that tells me that’s far from the full story. “But Grainger needs another surgery; we need to get to the hospital quick, suge.”