Chapter 16
Sixteen
Hayden
Darkness had weight.
Not just the kind that pressed against your skin, but the kind that sat behind your ribs and stretched out until it wrapped around your spine and made it hard to breathe.
I feel like I’ve been floating in that darkness for what felt like years but then I heard her voice.
Muffled, sharp, fierce.
Jaclyn.
“I almost lost the love of my life Killian. I know you acted the same way with Reign. You should understand exactly where I’m coming from and how scared and pissed off I am.”
I knew that tone. The one she used when her heart was breaking and she couldn’t stop it from turning into anger. I heard it once, when we were in college and she was breaking up with me. She was angry but also heartbroken at the same time.
And now I’m hearing it again.
I try to move when I feel her hand touch my forehead.
A groan slips out before I can catch it and something inside my abdomen flares like fire. My whole body protests like it isn’t ready to work again but I don’t care.
“Hayden?” she whispers my name, soft and filled with desperation. Her hand cups my face, trembling slightly. “Hayden, look at me. You’re awake.”
I blink, the light above me makes my head throb but I force my eyes open.
“The lights,” I mumble.
Her touch disappears, the light turns off before she returns and her hands are on my face again.
Jaclyn’s hovering over me, her hair pulled into a low messy ponytail. Her eyes are glassy with unshed tears and her lips parted like she doesn’t know whether to speak, cry, or kiss me.
I did it for her.
My hand found hers and I squeezed tightly. “You yelling at Killian again, princess?”
Her breath hitches and then she laughs. It’s watery and full of disbelief.
“Oh my God.” She leans forward and kisses my forehead and then my cheeks.
Her lips hover over my mouth like she doesn’t want to hurt me. “Kiss me,” I practically beg.
She smiles before leaning down and kissing me. I swear that kiss makes me instantly feel at peace and better.
It was a soft and desperate kiss, like she couldn’t believe I was alive and here.
My forehead rests against hers when we finally pull apart, barely breathing, still burning. “I thought I was going to lose you,” her voice cracks. “I didn’t know if I’d get a phone call, funeral notice, or a closed casket. You can’t do this to me, not again.”
I swallow hard and my throat feels like it is coated in sandpaper but I force out, “I didn’t want to leave.”
“But you did leave. And look where it got you.” Her hands move over mine, like she is grounding herself, like she needs to feel me to believe I’m real. “You don’t get to just disappear into this mafia bullshit and hope I’ll be waiting when you come home bleeding.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Bullshit,” she snaps. “Don’t give me that line. Protection doesn’t mean shutting me out or risking your life and bleeding all over an abandoned apartment floor.”
I close my eyes briefly. I hate that she is right, that this entire spiral started because I thought I could handle both worlds again.
I thought that the rush and my loyalty would be enough but I learned the hard way that the only thing that matters to me is Jaclyn and my life with her.
I can’t throw it all away just because of one rush.
“I thought if I just finished this one job...”
She stands and backs a few steps away from the bed.
“There is always one last job, Hayden. There is always some threat or mission or ‘I owe him’ and I’m done competing with that.
You’re not just mine anymore, you’re our kids’.
You’re River’s hero. Her dad, that is supposed to always be there to protect her and her mom from the nightmares and the monsters.
” Her voice cracks as she tears up. “You’re Easton’s whole world.
The person he looks up to. And Junior, he is basically a mini you.
Why do you think I named Junior after you?
You’re literally his idol, Hayden. What am I supposed to tell them when you don’t come home? ”
The room goes quiet.
She sniffles and wipes her cheeks. “I can’t do this again. I won’t. So either you leave that life behind or I walk away like I did all those years ago. I don’t want to, God, I don’t want to but I will if I have to.”
My chest aches worse than the bullet wound.
“Then I’m done,” I say quietly. “I mean it, no more. No more side jobs, no more Killian, no more bullshit. Just you and the kids. That’s it.”
Jaclyn blinks. “You mean it?’
“I’m looking at the only thing that matters right now. And it’s not some loyalty to an empire I didn’t ask to build, it’s you.”
She steps forward, her fingers brushing my jaw. I lean into the touch, even though the movement sends a jolt of pain through my abdomen.
“You scared the hell out of me, Hayden.”
“I know,” I rasp. “I scared the hell out of myself too.”
I pull her down gently, our foreheads touching. She kisses me, slow and tentative at first then deeper, more desperate and passionate. She climbs into the hospital bed, curling against my side, being careful of my wound.
We don’t say anything for a long time.
She just lays with me, her hand on my heart and my fingers tangled in her hair.
And for the first time in a long time, I let go of everything else.