Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Emergency Collision
Lena
Seven bodies bleeding out, and I was sexting while saving them.
The warehouse on South Mountain looks like a war zone had a baby with a crime scene.
Blood pools reflect the emergency lights like abstract art nobody asked for, and I'm triaging gunshot wounds while my phone vibrates against my hip with messages from someone who'd probably contributed to scenes exactly like this.
"Two more coming in!" someone shouts—not sure who, everyone looks the same when they're covered in other people's blood.
My hands work on autopilot, pressure here, tourniquet there, while my brain processes the disaster. Deal gone wrong, both MCs involved, enough testosterone and bullets to redecorate the warehouse in Early American Violence. I don't ask who shot who. Don't care. Blood doesn't wear colors.
Bad Decision: Where are you?
I ignore it, focusing on the kid in front of me—because he is a kid, maybe nineteen, Coyote Fangs prospect patch barely visible under the blood. Gut shot, bad angle, probably hit the liver.
"This hurts," he whimpers.
"I know, baby. I'm gonna help." I work faster, packing the wound while calculating his chances. "What's your name?"
"Torch."
Torch. The same Torch who's been following me on Miguel's orders. Small fucking world getting smaller by the bullet.
My phone buzzes again.
"Doc, we got another one!" Someone drags in a guy wearing Iron Talons colors, shoulder blown open like an anatomy textbook illustration.
I should feel something about treating both sides. Guilt, maybe, or conflict. Instead, I feel nothing but the familiar calm of crisis, that place where my hands know what to do while my heart rate stays steady as a metronome.
Bad Decision: Angel. Answer me.
Between compressions on someone's chest—Iron Talons, Coyote, doesn't matter when they're dying—I manage to text back.
Working. Mass casualty.
Bad Decision: Where?
Can't say.
Bad Decision: I'm coming.
DON'T. Please.
Because the last thing this powder keg needs is another match. The warehouse already sounds like a medical episode of Sons of Anarchy—groaning, cursing, someone crying for their mother in Spanish.
"Need help here!" I call out to whoever's listening. My mobile supplies are running low, and I'm basically performing meatball surgery with supplies meant for minor wounds, not the aftermath of whatever territorial pissing contest just painted these walls red.
Three hours. Three hours of blood and bullets and boys pretending to be men while bleeding out like children.
By the time the last ambulance leaves—no cops, because nobody called them, because that's not how this works—I'm exhausted in that specific way that makes your bones feel like they're dissolving.
I sit in my van afterward, peeling off nitrile gloves that are more red than purple now. My hands are shaking—adrenaline dump, not fear. My scrubs are destroyed. And my phone has twenty-seven messages from Bad Decision.
Bad Decision: Tell me you're okay.
Bad Decision: Angel.
Bad Decision: If you don't answer in five minutes I'm calling every hospital.
I'm okay. Exhausted. Covered in blood that isn't mine.
Bad Decision: Where are you?
In my van.
Bad Decision: Alone?
Yes.
Bad Decision: What are you wearing?
The question should be inappropriate given what I've just been through. Instead, it's exactly what I need—something normal, something that isn't death and violence and the knowledge that I just saved Torch so he can keep stalking me for my brother.
Destroyed scrubs. Sports bra that's seen better days. Underwear that's somehow still clean.
Bad Decision: Take off the scrubs.
I'm in a parking lot.
Bad Decision: Take them off anyway.
My hands move before my brain can object, peeling off the bloody scrubs like I'm shedding today's trauma.
I grab the industrial sanitizer from my supply kit—the kind that could sterilize a crime scene—and scrub my hands until they're raw.
Can't be too careful when you've been elbow-deep in a warehouse full of hepatitis and bad decisions.
The van's tinted windows hide me, but it still feels exposed, dangerous, exactly the kind of terrible decision that's become my brand.
They're off. Hands sanitized. Happy?
Bad Decision: Touch yourself.
In a van that smells like blood and Purell?
Bad Decision: You saved them. Touch yourself for me.
The adrenaline from the trauma, the exhaustion, his voice in my head from all those voice notes—it all crashes together. My properly sanitized hand moves between my legs, finding myself already wet because apparently my body responds to crisis by getting inappropriately aroused.
Bad Decision: Tell me.
Touching myself in a van that smells like blood and antiseptic. Thinking about your hands instead of mine.
Bad Decision: Good girl. My perfect angel.
Those words hit like always, making me work faster, chasing an orgasm that builds quickly—too quickly, like my body needs this release after all that death.
I'm close.
Bad Decision: Come for me. Now.
I do, biting my lip hard enough to taste copper again, my body convulsing in the driver's seat while somewhere in this city, Miguel's probably getting the report about Torch, about the warehouse, about his sister being there saving everyone regardless of colors.
Bad Decision: Tomorrow. Real diner this time.
I can't keep doing this.
Bad Decision: Yes you can. Tomorrow. Midnight. Mel's on Grand.
Why?
Bad Decision: Because I need to see you. Need to know you're okay after today.
I might not show.
Bad Decision: You will.
That confident?
Bad Decision: If you don't show, I'll find you anyway.
The threat should scare me. Instead, it makes me clench around nothing, already wanting more.
Wear something that doesn't scream 'I break kneecaps for fun.'
Bad Decision: Wear red again.
Why?
Bad Decision: Want to see you in the color of blood. Seems appropriate after today.
He's not wrong. Everything about us is blood and violence and terrible decisions wrapped in mutual obsession.
Fine. Red. Midnight. Mel's.
Bad Decision: Good girl.
I sit there for another twenty minutes, half-naked in a van that's seen too much, knowing tomorrow I'm meeting him again. Knowing this time we'll touch. Knowing everything's about to get exponentially worse.
My phone rings. Miguel.
"Heard you were at the warehouse," he says immediately.
"I help everyone, Miguel. You know that."
"You saved Torch."
"I save whoever's bleeding."
"Even Iron Talons?"
"Even them."
Silence. Then: "Be careful, Lena. Not everyone appreciates neutral territory."
He hangs up, and I know he knows something. Maybe not what, maybe not who, but something.
Tomorrow at midnight, I'm meeting Bad Decision at Mel's Diner.
Tomorrow, everything changes.
Tonight, I'm going home to wash other people's blood off my skin and pretend my life isn't about to implode.