Chapter 17
Rowan
Blood. There's so much blood. It seeps between my fingers as I press desperately against the wound in his chest. Each ragged breath he takes produces a terrible, wet bubbling sound.
"Stay with me," I beg, my voice breaking. "Please, Jace. Please."
His blue-green eyes grow unfocused, staring past me into the night sky.
The club brothers form a frantic circle around us.
Someone's on the phone shouting for an ambulance.
Zeus kneels opposite me, his face ashen as he rips off his cut and shirt, folding the fabric into a makeshift pressure bandage.
"Move your hands for a sec," Zeus instructs, his voice tight.
I lift my bloodied palms just long enough for him to place the wadded shirt over the wound, then press down again with all my strength. Jace's blood is warm and slick between my fingers.
"We can't call an ambulance," Zeus says quietly. "Cops will be all over a gunshot wound. They'll arrest him the second he’s stable.”
"He'll die without proper medical care!" I argue, panic rising again.
"Doc says get him to the compound," Jinx reports, phone pressed to his ear. "Operating room is prepped."
"The compound is forty minutes away,” I protest.
I stare down at Jace. His lips are turning blue. Each breath is a battle.
Jinx mumbles more words into the phone. “Doc's meeting us, bringing blood, plasma. Says he can stabilize him in the field."
Zeus’s eyes meet mine. "If we let the authorities take over, they'll cuff him to the hospital bed. Chaos has too many priors."
My heart hammers against my ribs. I've never felt more torn, more desperate. What choice do we have?
"Fine." I swallow hard. My very minimal medical training kicks in despite my panic. "His lung is punctured. Listen to his breathing."
Zeus looks at me. "What do we need to do?"
“Um… We need to create a chest seal. Something airtight." My mind races through emergency procedures I've only read about. “I need a first aid kit with gauze, tape, a board to move him properly…and something plastic. A flat piece of plastic to cover the wound."
The brothers spring into action. Within minutes, they've fashioned a makeshift backboard from the truck's tailgate.
Mayhem produces a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack. "Will this work?"
"It'll have to." I snatch it from his hands. My eyes meet Zeus’s. “Lift the pressure for three seconds."
When Zeus raises the blood-soaked shirt, I quickly place the plastic over the bubbling wound, taping three sides with medical tape that appears from a small first aid kit Prophet holds out. The makeshift valve should let air escape without letting more in.
Every movement as we transfer Jace sends fresh blood pulsing around my makeshift seal.
"Now we need to elevate his legs slightly to help with blood pressure," I instruct, surprised by my own calm despite the terror gripping my heart. Someone rolls up a jacket and places it under Jace's ankles.
"Jace," I lean close, my tears falling onto his face. "I need you to fight. Do you hear me? Fight."
His eyelids flutter, a grimace of pain crossing his features.
"That's it. Stay with me." I stroke his face, leaving smears of blood on his cheek. "Keep fighting."
"Careful," I warn as they lift him. "Steady."
We load him into the back of the pickup, and I climb in, positioning myself right next to him.
"I've got you," I whisper, brushing blood-matted hair from his forehead. "Just hold on."
The truck bounces over the uneven terrain, each jolt drawing a groan from Jace's lips. I whisper soothing nonsense, promises I'm not sure I can keep, anything to hold him here with me.
We meet Doc's vehicle on a deserted stretch of road. The older man works with practiced efficiency, inserting an IV, hanging blood, and checking vitals.
"Damn good job with that seal," he tells me, nodding approvingly at my handiwork. "Probably saved his life."
Doc's face is grim as he listens to Jace's chest. "Bullet's lodged near his left lung. He needs surgery immediately."
The rest of the journey passes in a blur as I watch the steady drip of fluids into Jace's veins. I hold his hand, squeezing gently, willing my strength into him.
"I love you," I whisper again, lips close to his ear. “I love you, you hear me? So you don't get to leave me. Not when I've just found you."
His fingers twitch in mine, the barest response, but enough for now.
When we reach the compound, everything accelerates. Brothers carry Jace to the medical room I'd seen during my tour with Mama Pat. It's been transformed into a makeshift operating theater—sterile drapes, surgical instruments laid out, monitors beeping.
"You need to wait outside," Doc tells me gently.
"I can assist," I argue. "I have medical training."
"Basic first aid isn't surgery, honey." His eyes are kind but firm. “Don’t get me wrong, you did great. But you're too emotionally involved. Let me do my job."
Strong hands guide me away from the table where Jace lies pale and still. Fury, I realize, as the door closes between me and the man I love.
"Come on," Fury says quietly. "Let's get you cleaned up."
I look down at my hands, my clothes, smeared with drying blood. Jace's blood. A sob tears from my throat, the first of many as the adrenaline finally ebbs, leaving raw terror in its wake.
He leads me to a bathroom, turns on the shower, and leaves me with clean clothes and a towel. I stand under the scalding spray, watching crimson swirl down the drain, and I break apart completely.
Time loses meaning. I dress mechanically in the clothes provided—sweatpants and a t-shirt—and find myself in a waiting area where club members gather in tense silence.
Zeus paces the length of the room. "You okay?" he asks gruffly when he sees me.
The question almost makes me laugh. Okay? Will I ever be okay again if Jace doesn't make it?
I sink into a chair instead of answering.
Mama Pat appears beside me. What’s she doing here?
She doesn’t live at the compound. Someone must have called her.
Based on the caftan she’s wearing and the bonnet covering her hair, she was probably at home relaxing.
She presses a glass of sweet tea into my trembling hands.
"Drink," she orders. "You're in shock. You need the sugar.”
I obey automatically as I stare at the wall. The voices around me fade into background noise. All I can think about is Jace's face, the way his eyes had started to glaze over as he stared up at the stars. The gurgling sound of his breathing.
Hours pass. Club members come and go. Someone brings food that sits untouched. Mama Pat stays beside me, a solid presence, occasionally squeezing my hand or murmuring words of comfort I barely register.
Finally, the door opens. Doc emerges, blood-stained and exhausted. The room falls silent as every eye turns to him.
"He's alive and holding steady,” Doc announces, and the collective exhale is audible.
"Bullet missed his heart by centimeters, punctured his left lung, and fractured two ribs.
I've removed it, repaired what I could, and drained the blood from his chest cavity.
The next twenty-four hours are critical. "
"Can I see him?" My hoarse voice sounds foreign to my own ears.
Doc nods. “Okay, but be prepared. He's heavily sedated and on a ventilator.”
I follow him back to the room where Jace lies unmoving on the bed, tubes and wires connecting him to various machines. The ventilator makes a rhythmic whooshing sound as it forces air into his lungs. His skin is ashen, and there are dark circles beneath his closed eyes.
I approach cautiously, as if afraid to wake him, though I know the sedation will keep him under. My fingers trace the tattoo on his forearm, then follow the line of his jaw, now slack.
“Keep fighting,” I repeat the words Grams always said to me. “As long as you keep fighting, hope remains.”
I press a gentle kiss to his forehead, lingering there, breathing him in.
"I'll be right here,” I promise. "I'm not going anywhere."
And I don’t.
The first night is the hardest. Every slight change in the monitors sends me scrambling. But I refuse to leave his side.
Doc, somewhat reluctantly, teaches me how to monitor vitals, check a chest tube, and recognize warning signs.
On the second day, Doc removes the ventilator, letting Jace breathe on his own. His color improves slightly, though he remains unconscious.
Club members drift in and out, paying their respects to their fallen president, offering awkward words of support to me. Mama Pat forces me to eat, standing over me until I swallow enough to satisfy her.
"Talk to him," Doc suggests when he catches me staring silently at Jace's face. "He might hear you even if he can't respond."
So I talk. I tell him about my childhood, about Grams, about my dreams of becoming a pharmacist. I read aloud from my textbooks, explaining pharmaceutical concepts I'm not even sure I understand myself. I read motorcycle magazines left by the brothers.
And in the quiet hours of night, when it's just the two of us, I whisper my fears. How terrified I am of losing him. How completely he's changed my life in just over a week. How desperately I need him to wake up. How much I love him.
On the third night, delirious from exhaustion, I’m curled up in the chair beside his bed, my hand resting on his arm, when a touch on my hair wakes me. Gentle fingers stroking, tentative and weak.
My eyes fly open.
Jace stares back at me, his gaze hazy with pain but unmistakably aware. Conscious.
"Jace?" I breathe, afraid I'm hallucinating.
His lips move, forming words without sound. I lean closer.
"Sweet...heart." His voice is a raspy whisper, damaged from the intubation.
Joy explodes through me so forcefully that I can barely breathe. "You're awake. Oh my god, you're awake."
I reach for the call button, but his hand weakly catches mine.
"Wait," he croaks. "Just...a minute."
I freeze, torn between the need to summon Doc and the desire to savor this moment alone with him.
"You..." he swallows painfully. "You said...you love me."
Heat floods my cheeks. "You heard that?"
A ghost of his usual cocky grin touches his lips. "Say it...again."
Tears blur my vision as I lean forward, pressing my forehead gently to his. "I love you, Jace Harlow. I love you so much it terrifies me."
His hand, weak but determined, cups the back of my neck. "Love…you...too. More than...anything."
Those words, rasped out through damaged vocal cords, are the most beautiful words I've ever heard.