Chapter 46
forty-six
. . .
FINN
Nothing could prepare a person for seeing someone they love getting hurt. The trauma, even though you hadn’t endured it yourself, felt like a hole being ripped in your chest, shattering your heart to pieces.
I’d felt it the day West, Crew, and I were fucking around on the ranch as teenagers, and Crew fell off his horse, fracturing his leg.
Again the day Owen took the hit that fucked up his shoulder and ultimately ended his NFL career.
When I found Aria on the kitchen floor of the guest house a few months ago, surrounded by all that blood.
When Reagan was trapped behind the wheel of her car, the bones of her arm poking through the skin.
And now, as long as I lived, I’d never get the image of that bullet passing through Lane’s chest, his vest doing nothing to stop the large caliber at such a close range. Good luck or poor aim had kept it from going through his head.
Blood sprayed, and Lane fell backward, landing in a heap on the ground while all of the law enforcement present rushed forward, service weapons unloading on the already dead man who lay on the top step, his arms and legs sprawled awkwardly around and beneath him.
I’d fired the kill shot. He’d been dead before he hit the ground.
“Lane!” a woman screamed, and before any of us could reach our brother, Sutton raced forward, dropped her bag and followed it to her knees, and pressed her hands over the wound in his chest.
Everything happened quickly after that. Crew, who had gone through paramedic training a few years ago, rushed to Sutton’s side.
Together, they hooked Lane up to an IV, intubated him, and did what they could to staunch the bleeding from his chest. As a team, my brothers and I carried him the half mile to the chopper and loaded him in.
It all seemed to happen in a blur, all of us moving on autopilot.
“Stay with Reagan!” I shouted at West as I fired up the engines, Crew and Sutton getting in back beside Lane to keep working on him. My twin saluted as I lifted off.
“Boise!” Sutton shouted, but I was already on it.
Crew yelled, “We’re losing him!” as a horrible, steady beeeeeeeeeeep found its way to my ears over the roar of the engines, rotor, and blades.
“No!” Sutton screamed, her breath labored. “C’mon, Lane. Stay with me.”
Her words were punctuated by sobs, and I had to admit, I was barely holding it together myself.
I’d evacuated wounded soldiers and civilians before, but I’d never flown as fast as I did that day, knowing my big brother was dying. Knowing I was responsible for getting him to the hospital as quickly as possible because his life depended on it.
Thanks to me radioing ahead, when I touched down on the helipad atop the hospital’s singular tower, the trauma team raced out to meet us.
There was a lot of shouting of medical terms I didn’t understand as Crew and Sutton helped transfer him to a gurney.
Crew remained with me while Sutton raced inside with the team.
My baby brother was covered in Lane’s blood, his hands stained, his shirt and pants ruined.
“Come on,” I said, wrapping my arm around his shoulders. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Ten minutes and a fresh set of clothes for Crew later, we walked into the waiting room, dropping heavily onto chairs side by side.
“One of us should call Mama,” he said quietly, his steady tone belying the fear and worry radiating off him in waves.
My hand shook as I took my phone out of my pocket.
I swallowed hard, emotion clogging my throat, then pressed Mama’s name on the screen, putting it on speaker, its ringing far too loud in the silence around us.
“Finn?” Mama said when she answered. “Everything okay?”
“Hi, Mama.”
The relief in Mama’s voice was evident when she said, “Oh, Finn. It’s so good to hear your voice. You’re okay? What about Reagan and Lainey? Did you get them back?”
“I’m fine, and so are they. We got them,” I assured her. “But Lane was shot.”
“Where?” Mama asked.
I had no idea if she meant where he’d been shot or where he’d been taken, so I answered both. “In the chest. We’re in Boise now.”
“We’ll meet you there.”
An ambulance raced up in front, screeched to a stop, and Trey climbed out from behind the wheel.
What the fuck?
I rose to my feet, moving faster out into the lobby when my twin, a brunette woman, two blondes appeared at his side.
“Finn!” Reagan called, throwing herself into my arms a moment later.
“Oh god, baby,” I sighed, unshed tears pricking my eyes and stinging my nose. The last sixteen hours had been too fucking much. I wrapped her up tightly, certain it would be a long time before I could ever let go. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she assured me. “Lainey too.”
Her twin approached us, and even though I was a twin myself, the resemblance was…uncanny. Still, I could easily tell them apart. My body came alive in Reagan’s proximity, that tether in my chest drawing me right into her embrace.
“I’m going to get her checked out,” Reagan said, offering her face up for a kiss, which I gave her, letting it linger longer than I should have in polite company.
She gave my fingers a final squeeze before leading Lainey to the admission desk.
I was reluctant to let her go, but all danger to her had passed with Tuck’s death.
Soon, cops started to arrive, filling the room with Lane’s deputies, though I noticed Johns and the three other deputies at the farmhouse were absent.
Likely cleaning up the mess.
“Any update?” Trey asked when we settled in the waiting room.
“He flatlined on the way,” I said, “but Sutton and Crew got his heart going again. They wheeled him back the second we landed.”
West looked around. “Sutton go with?”
I nodded. “I don’t think they could pry her away from his side at this point.”
Trey straightened, scrubbing a hand down his face in a move so like the one Lane made when he was stressed, I damn near burst into tears.
“It doesn’t look good, does it, Finny?” he whispered.
I reached for his hand, not speaking. Words were useless, and we weren’t the praying kind.
Instead, I sank back in a chair and closed my eyes.
All at once, a bone-deep exhaustion settled over me—the crash after adrenaline receded from my veins, coming down from the constant fight-or-flight I’d put my body through the past sixteen hours.
And I was fucking sick of hospitals. Too many people I loved had found their way through these doors the last few years, and it had to stop.
Commotion had my eyes popping open in time to see Mama, Aria, Aspen, Owen, Delia, and Jace rushing through the door.
Mama sat on Trey’s other side. “What happened?”
Seeing her opened the floodgates, and when I opened my mouth to tell her, a sob broke free instead. Shaking my head, I buried my face in my hands and let it all go.
The rage of Reagan being taken from right under my nose.
The panic of not knowing where she’d been, of not knowing what was happening to her.
The utter relief of seeing both her and Lainey run out of that house.
Having her back in my arms, returning the missing piece of my soul.
The worry over Lane, the sheer terror of potentially losing him that strangled me.
All of it was simply too much to bear a second longer.
A warm hand settled between my shoulder blades as I fell apart, though I knew without looking that it belonged to West.
Through my tears, I saw a figure approach and kneel in front of me, but my vision was too blurred to tell who.
“Baby.”
I got up and stalked away, outside and around the side of the building. The last thing I wanted was for anyone to see me like that, let alone Reagan.
Naturally, she followed me.
“Don’t run away from me, Finn Lawless,” she said, tone far too stern for my fragile emotional state.
“Go back inside, belle. I’ll be fine.”
Instead of listening, she stepped up to me and wrapped her arms around my waist, resting her head between my shoulder blades, and held me. I covered her hands, which rested right above my waistband, with one of mine.
I didn’t know how long we stood like that, but enough time passed for me to regain some composure and spin to face her.
Resting her chin on my chest, she looked up at me. “Better?”
I choked on a laugh. “Not even close, but thank you for staying.”
“You don’t hide from me, Finn. Ever. You’ve seen all of my ugly. The least you can do is show me some of yours.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“I know,” she said with a sad smile. “But try, okay?”
She likely understood there were parts of me she’d never see.
Not necessarily because I was afraid to show them but because I was terrified to unpack them, to bring them back into the light of day.
There were parts of my and West’s time in the service that neither of us would ever talk about again—not even with each other. Parts I refused to think about.
But for her, I could try to be more open about the things that wouldn’t rip me to shreds to remember.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t make it,” I admitted.
Reagan reached up and smoothed her fingers over my face, clearing away the tears that lingered on my cheeks. “We’re not going to talk like that. We don’t know anything yet. In fact, for all we know, things might not be as bad as they seem. Let’s go back inside and sit with your family, okay?”
I nodded and allowed her to lead me back into the waiting room. Before we walked in, though, I pulled her to a stop as something occurred to me.
“How’s Lainey? Why aren’t you with her?”
Instead of answering, Reagan pulled me forward. The crowd of deputies parted, and I gaped at the scene before me.
Lainey sat in one of the uncomfortable chairs, a hospital blanket tucked in tightly around her, a pole with an IV drip connected to her arm sitting a few feet away.
“She refused to sit in the back,” Reagan said with an eye roll. “Wanted to ‘be part of the action.’”
“I just can’t believe it was Tuck,” Mama was saying incredulously. “Like…Lyle Tucker. He was such a goofy boy, but he turned into what I thought was a fine man.”
“If it makes you feel better, I spent a lot of time with him, and he did seem pretty normal.”
My family, which had gathered around Lainey, gaped at her.
The silence was broken by slightly hysterical laughter.
It took me too long to realize it came from me.
Everyone joined in, and once we composed ourselves, Mama turned to Lainey and said, “You know, that doesn’t make me feel better, but thank you for the laugh.”
Lainey smiled proudly. “Anytime.”
A murmur spread through the men and women gathered behind me, and I turned toward the door to see Sutton standing there. She picked her way through, Lane’s deputies patting her on the shoulder and offering words of thanks.
“Hey guys,” she said when she reached us.
I wondered if she knew her dark blue tee was covered in blood.
Honestly, I doubted it. She looked as wrecked as I felt.
Mama got to her feet and pulled Sutton into a hug. “Thank you,” I heard her murmuring over and over.
“I didn’t do anything,” Sutton said when she pulled back, obviously fighting like hell to keep her shit together. “I almost lost him.”
“But you didn’t,” I said, squeezing her shoulder. “You got him here. You gave him a chance.”
Sutton nodded but refused to look at me.
I had no idea what she was going through, and I had to admit, I almost thought being in my shoes was better.
With my brother, I knew where I stood. While we gave each other constant shit, we loved each other fiercely.
For Sutton…we as a family had always secretly agreed there was more to their relationship, some big piece of the picture we weren’t privy to.
They’d been friendly when they graduated high school, and both had gone to school at Boise State, right up the road from where we currently sat.
Next thing we knew, there was this…animosity racing like an undertow beneath each of their interactions.
But this reaction—the anguished scream, the despondence in her expression now…this wasn’t a woman who hated a man, who didn’t care what happened to him. In fact, I thought the opposite was true. She cared deeply about what happened to Lane, and she had no idea what to do about it.
That made two of us.