Ramshackle (Raegan of Ruin #3)

27. Raegan

Chapter twenty-seven

Raegan

“Wake up, beautiful.”

A pounding headache and a pinch of nausea remind me that I drank too much last night.

I reach for the nearest blanket to yank over my head.

What happened last night? I can usually hold my liquor, at least in terms of avoiding getting sick or being too far gone, but when I try to recall specifics after our drinking game…nothing.

Kellan had challenged me and Dane to a drinking game he’d picked up on the streets, and like idiots, we accepted.

I haven’t been blackout drunk, where complete chunks of time are missing, in a long time.

Or…maybe I wasn’t? Didn’t we all just go to sleep?

The thought of Aiden springs to mind. I reach for it, trying not to panic on the reason why, but the only thing that comes back to me is Dane trying to convince me to talk to Aiden about something.

The blanket is pulled away from my face, and the strong smell of coffee fills my nose.

My eyes pop open.

Kellan grins at me while wafting the steam from the coffee mug at my face. “Morning. I’d planned to wake you in other ways, but food just got delivered.”

I groan and push myself upright. “Why did you order food so early?” I grumble, reaching for the coffee, then gasp when he moves it out of reach.

The man formerly known as Kellan breathing his last seconds of oxygen drinks my coffee . To my face. With a roguish grin and dancing blue-green eyes that says he knows exactly what he’s doing.

“It’s almost afternoon. And we didn’t order it,” Dane says from somewhere in the room. But I don’t take my eyes off the dead man.

I lunge at him like a lioness going in for the kill. He has one second of wide-eyed surprise-turned-laughter before I tackle him to the ground. My hands go for his throat, but he grabs my hips and flips us around.

Doesn’t matter.

I try to strangle him with my bare hands even while his massive body engulfs mine, and he could squish me without trying.

The bastard’s still grinning at me, and it makes me wild.

“How dare you, you motherfucking prick! You. Don’t. Tease. Me. With. Coffee!”

Kellan laughs and takes my wrists, tugging them from his throat and slamming them back on the floor above me. He leans down, his facial hair teasing up my neck to my face. “I think I still have some on my lips if you want it,” he mocks, and I snarl at him.

He licks his lips.

“You asshole! Get off me! You’ll be lucky if I ever kiss your lips again,” I rage, twisting and struggling in his hold.

Kell rolls away, and I rush to my feet. I jump onto the bed and then leap at him to land on his back. My arm wraps around his neck, the other arm holding it tight as I fight to get some advantage over him.

He grabs my arm and stalks to the bed, then jerks forward and throws me over his head so I thump onto the mattress.

And then the motherfucker steals an upside-down kiss from me while I’m too stunned to stop him.

“I love it when you’re all riled up.” He points a finger to my chest and the sprinting heart beneath it. “Now save this for training later, and you can try to kick my ass all you want there.” Kellan gives me another kiss and then squeezes a breast just to drive another nail in his coffin.

Oh, I’m going to destroy him during training.

He sits at the portable table that’s set up in the middle of the room and gives me a knowing smirk.

Dane’s sitting next to him, his fork shaking in his grip as he stares at his plate.

All the anger pops like a balloon and leaves me in a rush.

He catches me looking and loosens his hold on the fork before giving me a small smile of reassurance. Which only makes me feel twice as shitty.

The coffee mug— the coffee mug—appears in my peripheral vision. I sit up. I thought Kellan had dropped it when I attacked him, but there it is. Uncracked and still full. Looking around, I spot Jackson by the door. He sends the coffee to me now that I’ve noticed it and then strolls over.

I take the coffee floating before me and bring it to my lips, swallowing the bitter warmth and trying to contain my addict groan of satisfaction.

Jackson bends so we’re eye level and kisses me. I kiss him back, because I did miss him last night and I’m glad he’s back safe and without any blood this time—from what I can see. But I do cut it shorter than I normally would because I don’t want to upset Dane any more than I already have.

Jack smiles in that perceptive way of his that tells me he knows every little thing I’m thinking and then asks, “Did you have fun last night?”

Oh yeah.

Alcohol breath.

“I think so,” I reply honestly. I still feel like I’m missing something incredibly important, but the more I try to remember, the further away it seems. “When did you get back?”

“Now.” Ah. So, right in time to witness my moment of insanity with Kellan. At least he made it in time to save the coffee. Fuck, this man takes care of me more than I deserve.

I grab his hoodie and pull him down for one more kiss.

“All right, come eat. Both of you, since I doubt you’ve eaten anything in the last twelve hours either, Jack,” Kellan interrupts from his seat.

I give Jackson a full smile of appreciation, then take his hand for the brief walk to the table. There’s already a plate made and ready for me, as well as a glass of water and ibuprofen beside it.

“Oh, thanks, Dane.” I take a guess, since Jackson just arrived and Kellan was busy harassing me.

Dane finishes the bite he’s eating and shrugs. “The plate was me, but I didn’t order the food or the medicine.”

Kellan snorts. “I love how there’s only enough medicine for one of us. Is he saying we have to accept whatever hangover we might have? Because joke’s on him. I’m clear.”

Him.

Aiden?

Wait. How would he know I need medicine?

Realization sinks in my gut like a lead weight.

Fuck. Did I go see him last night?

If I did, it can’t be too bad considering he ordered food and medicine for me, right?

I hope I didn’t do anything embarrassing.

Jackson picks up a whole pancake and takes a bite out of it. He’s hardly sitting, just perched on the edge of his seat like he’s ready to move at a second’s notice. He catches me watching him and smiles. “Eat up, little one. There’s a guest waiting to meet you when you’re done, and you’ll need your strength.”

What does that mean?

After the food’s taken away and we take our turns in the bathroom getting ready for the day, Aiden joins us in the room. The light stubble he usually sports is a bit thicker than usual, and his face has lost some of its color. But the rest of him, his perfect suit, his firm stance, his controlled tone…all of that is the same.

When he looks at me, my heart trips beneath his stare, and it feels like he wants to say something.

Is he going to chew me out for last night? Because I’m sure, whatever I did, pissed him off.

His eyes take in my tight jeans and shirt before snapping back to my face. “Are you comfortable?”

What the fuck kind of question is that?

“In my clothes? Yes. With this conversation? Debatable.”

Aiden smirks. “Good enough. Come sit, and I’ll fill you in before he arrives to meet you.”

“He, who?”

“Sit,” he repeats tersely, and I sigh but do as he asked.

Aiden takes the seat opposite me, Dane between us and Kellan and Jackson in their own spots in the room. “His name is Gabriel. He’s here to see if he can fix your knee,” he explains, his voice smooth and nonchalant.

A sting of pain pierces my chest at the reminder. “No one can fix my knee.” I’ve accepted that. I won’t let false hope ruin what I worked hard to accept after it happened.

Aiden responds just as calmly as before, “He has a special gift that says otherwise. Are you willing to meet him and find out?”

“Are you saying I have a choice?” It’s Aiden. I’m sure he’s made up his mind about what’s best for me. Do I want to put myself through false hope?

“If you want to think about it, he can stay here for a bit until you decide. If you’re adamant this isn’t what you want, then I’ll send him home right now.”

We hold eye contact as I consider what he’s saying. Would he really send him home if I asked him to? After whatever work was put into finding this guy?

A part of me wants to do that. Just to see if he’ll follow through on it.

“Don’t you want to at least hear what he has to say?” Dane chimes in softly. “This isn’t another healer like Cassandra. And it took Aiden—”

Aiden slashes him a look, and he stops.

It took Aiden what?

“What would you like me to do?” Aiden prompts.

I glance at the others in the room. Kellan and Jackson both stay quiet, letting me decide what I want. It’s clear that Dane wants me to give this a try.

The piece of information that’s prodding at me is how Aiden found this guy. If he’s a guest, then he’s not part of the Guild. Where did he come from? And how did he happen to find someone who may or may not be able to fix an already-healed injury?

“I’ll meet him.” I won’t get my hopes up. I’m just going to meet this person that Aiden apparently found and treat it like that. Nothing at stake.

Aiden nods and calls someone on his phone. “Yes, she would like to meet him. I’ll unlock the door for when you get here.” He taps more on his phone and the door clicks open.

They must have been waiting nearby because it’s only a few minutes before Cibrina walks in with two strangers.

The first one is as tall as Kellan but smaller in size. He’s not bulky or a fighter from what I can tell. He’s wearing dark pants, a checkered shirt with a black dress vest on top, and he has multiple piercings. One in his nose, on his lip, two beads over an eyebrow, and then his ears are lined with them. His hair is buzzed on one side and long on top, flipped and hanging to one side and red at the tips before it fades to black midway up.

He peers around the room, looking at each of us and then checking out the rest of it with a bored expression.

The second one is average height with short brown hair sticking up in all directions. He’s wearing skinny-jeans and what looks like a woman’s cardigan. It has a plush interior and feathers running along either side of the opening in the front and along the edge of the sleeves.

This guy beams at us the moment he enters the room. “Well, hello!” he greets cheerfully. His gaze flips through everyone and then lands on me. He beelines it to me, and both Kellan and Jack are on either side of my chair in an instant. Dane and Aiden stand at once. “Oh! Did I get too close to the queen bee?”

He takes a polite step back, bumping into the first guest who had followed him like his own personal guard. Then he bows at the waist and slaps his hands together like he’s praying, bending his head behind them. “Sorry, sorry. Introductions first.” He straightens with another smile. “I’m Gabriel. Or Gabe. Or Gabby. Or Gabe-ey. Or whatever else you’d like to call me,” he adds with a chuckle.

The man behind him manages to frown harder.

Gabriel whips his hand over his shoulder to hit his statuesque friend in the chest. “And this is Zedd. He’s a bit of a grump, but he’s my grump, so don’t be too hard on him.”

“Wait.” Dane stares incredulously at the grump. “Zedd, the singer?”

“I don’t do autographs,” Zedd replies in a bored tone.

Dane slams his fist onto the table. “I wasn’t asking!”

“Right!” Gabriel claps his hands together. “Now that’s out of the way, is it correct of me to assume you’re Raegan?”

“Uh, yes, that’s me.”

“Wonderful.” He pulls out the open seat next to me. “Can I have a seat? Standing is incredibly exhausting.”

I don’t know why I bother, but I reply, “Sure,” after he’s already plopped himself in it.

Gabriel sets his elbow on the table and leans into his hand as he settles in, making himself comfortable. “So, tell me what you need, dear.”

Kellan growls at the endearment, and Gabriel rolls his eyes at me with a smile. I can’t help but smile back. His energy is infectious. Already, I feel more relaxed in his presence.

I glance to Aiden, having assumed he’d already filled him in, and he shrugs. So, he did, but Gabriel wants to hear it from me?

“I guess to see if you can fix my knee?”

He nods and waves me on. “Yes, but give me the whole story. How did you get it, what happened to it, and you know…all that jazz.” He waggles his fingers at me.

My eyes immediately move between my guys nervously.

“Don’t worry about them,” Gabriel says with a flippant wave of his hand. “It’s just you and me right now. Or, do you want me to have Zedd kick them out? He can do that, you know.”

I can feel the sudden tension radiating at my back and side from the others.

There would be an all-out war right here in my room if he tried that.

No, thank you.

“It’s fine. They can stay.” They already know the gist of it anyway, right? “Someone shot me in the knee. And he had the healer make sure to heal it wrong.”

Gabriel hums softly, the humor gone from his expression as he listens intently. “Why did he do that? Shoot you and then have that done?”

“Does it matter?”

“It matters,” he answers solemnly.

“He shot me because I didn’t do what he asked the first time. And he had it healed wrong so that I would remember that moment. Remember him.”

Gabriel leans back in his seat and clasps his hands together behind his head. “Is he still alive?” I nod, and he blows a breath out and shifts forward again with an encouraging smile. It’s like he can’t keep still for more than a few seconds at a time. “Well, let’s fuck up his plans then, shall we? Which knee is it?”

I point automatically to the messed up one. Wait. “Are you saying you can fix that? How?”

“I have the unfortunate privilege of the gift of memento dolor .” He says the last two words with a heavy lilt. “Or, as they say, remember the pain.”

I twist around to Jackson, who looks as surprised as I am. What are the chances someone else has some attachment to a similar phrase?

“Does that mean something to you?” he asks, and I turn back in my seat.

“It’s…it’s nothing. Sorry. You were saying?”

Gabriel blinks but thankfully continues without pushing it. I doubt it’s more than a coincidence, and I don’t want to share with others what Jack and I have with the similar Latin phrases. “My gift replays the memory of when you received that injury. You’ll live through it again as your body rewinds that injury back to the state of the memory. So, your hack healing job will go in reverse, and then we can have a healer here fix your knee properly.”

“I’ll call Cassandra,” Aiden says, his phone in hand again.

“I’ll bring her in,” Cibrina—who I completely forgot was still in here—says to him before leaving the room.

My stomach drops. “I have to re-live that?”

He smiles and pats my knee. “Yes, but I’ll be there with you, so you won’t be alone.”

“If you can do that, why don’t you bring her knee back to before the injury? Without making her go through that again?” Dane demands angrily.

Zedd shifts his stance to square off with Dane. “Don’t speak to him like that.”

“I’m just saying—”

“If it worked like that, he would do it. Gabe lives through the memories with them. He feels every injury he’s brought back. Don’t think this is easy on him, either.”

I stare at him in shock. He’s going to feel like his knee is shot, too? Why would he go out of his way to help me if he has to go through it?

Gabriel chuckles and strokes Zedd’s arm. “It’s fine. There’s no need to worry.” He searches around in his cardigan and pulls out a clear plastic bag filled with multi-colored pills. “That’s why I brought these!”

“Are those…drugs?” Is he joking, or…nope. He’s serious. His hand roots around in the bag, picking one out with a frown, dropping it back in, and digging for another one. “I don’t do drugs,” I tell him when it’s clear that’s exactly what they are.

Gabriel’s head pops up. “Oh. Good, good. Nasty habit.” He pinches another pill and smiles when he sees it, then pops it in his mouth without hesitation. “Don’t mind me. I’d go crazy if it weren’t for these. Too many re-lived torturous memories and all that.”

Fucking hell.

“Maybe this isn’t a good idea. I don’t want you to have to go through this—”

“Nope.” He grabs my hand, pulling me up and leading me to my bed. “We’re doing this. I’ve got you. We’re going to stick it to whoever this guy is, and then you can use that leg to kick his ass.” We stop at the bed. “You’re going to want to lie down and close your eyes.”

Gabriel kicks off his shoes and hops on my bed, scooting to the other side and lying down. “If it didn’t hurt so bad, I would stand, but if I have a preference—and I do—then I’d rather feel it lying down on a comfortable bed, wouldn’t you?”

He has a point.

I sit on the bed and lie back as the others gather around us. Gabriel puts his hand on my messed-up knee. Then someone takes my hand. Craning my face, I find Jackson with his hand over mine.

“I wouldn’t touch her if I were you, good sir,” Gabriel tells him when he spots it. “You’ll feel and see everything, too.”

Jackson smiles. “Good.”

“Jack, no.” I try to tug my hand free, and the next thing I know, the other three have pulled chairs over and have their hands on my leg. “What are you doing? Absolutely not. I don’t want you guys to see—”

“What you went through for us?” Dane snaps. “If you didn’t have to go through it too, I’d ask him to make me feel every second of pain you went through on that island.”

“That’s not what I want,” I grit out.

“Sorry, beautiful, but let us do this,” Kellan speaks up.

Aiden’s thumb circles my ankle, his gaze intense on my knee. “None of us are leaving, Gabriel. Let’s get started.”

Gabriel chuckles. “You’re all crazy. I like you.” He closes his eyes. “Now, picture the moment right before he shot you. I need at least thirty seconds to a minute before it happens. Tell me when you have it in your mind. Once it’s there, I’ll trigger my gift.”

A minute before.

Great.

I was murdering people a minute earlier.

I picture the indoor training room. The wood lacquer floor and boring gray walls. Mallory passed out at Holt’s feet. And Gordon watching me with crazed eyes as I use my gift to kill three people at once, tied to chairs in the middle of the room.

“Now.”

Heat flares in my knee, and I think I might have rushed too far in my memories, but I’m still picturing the three innocents in my mind. It must be his gift.

My memories begin to play out from there without my doing anything. Finishing the kill. The gunshot. White-hot, excruciating pain as I cry out and then collapse to darkness.