Chapter 21
LUCKY
I pace the length of the small hospital room and back, the same route I’ve followed continuously for the last several hours. The soles of my Chucks squeak on the linoleum floor, the sound mixing with the steady beeps of the monitors lined beside Liam’s bed.
It feels like being a caged animal…
Worse than being locked in that box meant to be my coffin.
Because it isn’t my life I’m worried about anymore.
I would give it up now if it meant Liam would wake, would open his eyes and give me that easy, smooth smile that always melts away any pain or worry I might have.
It’s what drew me to the youngest McBride in the first place. The way he so easily laughed off my accusation about stealing Gizmo in the diner that morning. How quickly he smoothed my ruffled nerves.
He’s always been an unmovable rock.
So solid.
So reliable.
But now that he hasn’t moved, it’s all I want.
I watch for it, never tearing my gaze off him.
It never comes.
Not a twitch.
Not a sigh.
I keep my eyes locked on him where he lies in the bed, eyes closed and thick lashes spread out across his cheeks, and despite all the machines telling me he’s alive, this vise wrapped around my chest won’t loosen.
It only seems to grow tighter as the minutes tick by and nothing changes.
All that exists now is this endless waiting and doom pacing.
Even when I paused it to change into the clean clothes Willow and Killian brought from the cabin, my body vibrated with the need to keep moving. As if it will somehow make him wake up quicker.
I turn and start another lap across the room, wrapping my arms around myself, as if that will somehow hold me together and prevent me from completely falling apart.
Again.
When we finally got to the hospital and they wheeled him away on the gurney, only Connor’s arms around me kept me from collapsing onto the ER floor.
Only his murmured assurances that they would do everything they could for him kept me from screaming his name.
Only his whispered promise that Liam would be all right kept me from dying right there.
But he isn’t here now to placate me.
And the longer it takes for Liam to wake up, the less those words mean anyway.
People say a lot of things that aren’t true. That horrible reality was proven to me at an early age. I didn’t believe anything anyone said until I met Liam. Until he proved to me through his actions that he meant every single promise made.
Which is why his final words to me keep slashing at my heart like a knife.
I’m so sorry…
He took a bullet protecting me, yet he apologized because he thought he had failed. But Liam McBride never failed me.
I failed him.
By not leaving McBride Mountain the moment I knew what a problem he was going to become for me, I failed him.
And as my feet move over the floor, back and forth, in the tiny room, that truth strangles my ability to remain rational and calm.
Willow steps in, her soft gray eyes flicking over to Liam before landing on me. “Hey…”
My feet stop, but my body feels like it’s still moving, like it has to keep up with my racing heart that won’t seem to slow. “Hi.”
Her dark brows rise. “No change?”
I shake my head, fighting back a sob that threatens to slip out. Clamping my hand across my mouth, I turn away from her, squeezing my eyes closed and doubling over so this feeling of being torn apart might ease.
Willow’s arms loop around me, and she presses her cheek to my back, holding me tightly and letting me completely lose it. “The doctor said it might not be until tomorrow.”
“I know, but—”
Another sob catches in my throat.
She turns me in her arms, and I let my eyes open to meet hers. Her gaze holds so much wisdom even though she’s only ten years older than me, and despite everything she suffered, the warmth there has never faded.
The past two years could have crushed her, could have turned her into a miserable, damaged woman who hated the world and everyone in it, but she didn’t let it.
Her hands tighten on my upper arms. “Don’t. He’ll be okay. The surgery went well. The doctor said he’s fine, right?”
I nod.
That is what the surgeon told us.
But after watching him fight with Lorell, after seeing so much blood, after being helpless when he passed out and not being able to rouse him, after that race down the mountain with his head on my lap in the backseat, waiting any longer is the worst type of torture.
All those worst-case scenarios won’t leave my head.
All the guilt and regret won’t stop choking me.
Willow reaches up and wipes the tears from my face. “When he does wake up, you don’t want him to see you like this, right?”
Shit.
I clear my throat. “Right.”
The last thing he needs when he finally comes out of this is my out-of-control emotions.
I try to force a smile and hope that it looks like one instead of the grimace it feels like.
Willow returns it, but hers actually lights up her face with the hope we’re all clinging to right now.
She glances over her shoulder toward the open door to the hallway, where Killian, Connor, Raven, and several other people I don’t recognize have been talking for what feels like hours.
But I’ve mostly lost track of time related to anything but how long it’s been since I heard Liam’s voice and those mossy green eyes found mine.
Whatever is going on in that hallway, I can’t think about it right now.
There will be fallout from what happened on the homestead.
People are dead.
People connected to a very dangerous and powerful criminal empire…
There will be consequences.
All because of me.
The guilt that sits like a thousand-pound boulder in my gut only grows heavier and heavier with each passing moment, as the future that might have been so bright with Liam in McBride Mountain is overshadowed by the very dark reality of what I’ve set in motion.
“Hey…” Willow squeezes my shoulders. “I know what you’re thinking, and you have to stop.”
“What am I thinking?”
She releases a little sigh, shoving her hands through her long hair. “When I was taken, I thought it was my fault. Because I left Killian instead of going back to talk. I kept thinking that if I had just never tried to leave McBride Mountain, none of it ever would have happened.”
“What?” I gape at her. “Of course it wasn’t your fault! Earl was unhinged, completely out of his mind. How could you ever think you caused any of that?”
Her slender shoulders rise and fall. “The same way you think you somehow caused any of this.”
I recoil slightly at her words, the force of them rocking my feet back a step. “I don’t—”
She nods. “You do blame yourself. And you have to stop doing that.” One of her hands waves absently around the room. “All of this was caused by one person—Brent Lorell. You were an innocent victim in all of this, just like I was with Earl.”
“But—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I know you blame yourself because you think you should have seen through him and his game, but wanting to believe in someone, in something good, isn’t a fault, Lucky.
It isn’t something you can blame yourself for or see as a weakness.
” Her eyes glisten with tears. “It will ruin everything good in your life if you keep seeing it that way.”
I don’t know how to process what she’s saying, how to reconcile the guilt and regret in my heart with what is true in my head.
It’s all too tangled up with my worry for Liam and what might be coming for all these people—including the woman standing in front of me who has become such a good friend.
She pulls me back into her arms, tightening them around me. “It will all work out. Maybe not the way we all imagined it, but the way it was meant to be.”
I hope she’s right, and for a moment, I allow myself to just absorb her warmth and the confidence she has that I’m not sure I can share.
When she pulls away, she gives me a small smile. “Let me know if you need anything. I’ll be right out there.”
What I need is Liam to wake up…
Once that happens, there might be a chance of being able to sort through everything else, but until I hear his voice again, this wicked spiral I seem trapped in will just keep spinning downward.
Willow slips from the room, and I stare down at my hands, still tinged with Liam’s blood that won’t completely come out, even after scrubbing them raw when they took him back for surgery.
His blood is literally on my hands…
My legs wobble, another breakdown threatening, and I stumble over to the chair beside Liam’s bed to collapse into it before I hit the floor.
I pull his hand into mine, trying to ignore the discoloration.
The rough callouses on his palm rub against my smooth skin, and all I want is for him to squeeze back. For him to acknowledge that I’m here. For him to wake up and smile at me and call me Bluebell again.
Lowering my head, I brush a kiss across his cheek. “Please wake up for me.”
I don’t know if he can hear me or not, but it helps to talk to him, to think that he can and that it might somehow draw him away from whatever place the lingering medications in his system have him trapped in.
The machines next to the bed beep.
His chest rises and falls.
And I lower my face against it, carefully avoiding his ruined shoulder so I can feel his steady heartbeat beneath my ear.
That familiar rhythm that has lulled me to sleep so many times starts to calm me the longer I stay like this.
Each thud a reminder that he’s alive and there’s hope.
I close my eyes, trying to bring myself back to those moments in front of the fireplace, or talking in the treehouse yesterday. The beautiful moments spent together before everything went to shit when I had hope that there may be a way out that didn’t end like this—
Liam’s hand twitches in mine.
That tiny movement hits like a bolt of lightning slamming into me and restarting my heart.
I jerk upright and search his face. “Liam?”
His brow furrows.
His eyes slowly flutter open.
Glassy.
Unfocused.
Confused.
He blinks a few times.
That mossy green gaze finally meets mine.