23 | Addison
The next time my eyes open, it’s to a stark bright light and the chaotic sounds of gunfire, roaring voices and screams. It’s as if I’m in a bad movie, and I can’t turn it off. I can’t focus on anything. I don’t even know if this is real or some kind of hallucination. The light is so bright, and so blinding, that I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to let them focus.
“Get her out of here!”
Dad?
Trying to force my eyes open again, I groan in pain as I pitifully attempt to move my body.
“I got you, precious. I got you.”
Spike?
They’re here?
They came.
They saved me.
I can’t get my body to cooperate, but when I’m lifted off the ground, I get a waft of that familiar smell and I know it’s Spike. Clutching his jacket in my hand, I cling to him for dear life. He holds me tightly, and then we’re moving, his pounding footsteps causing pain to course through my body so intensely I cry out in agony.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he murmurs. “I’m fuckin’ sorry, but I have to move.”
I want to speak, I want to ask if Beccy is okay, but I’m barely staying conscious. It is taking every ounce of my strength to hold on to his jacket, let alone to communicate with him. With every pounding step, we move further and further away from the noise. Where is Cade? Why can’t I hear his voice? Why didn’t he carry me out?
I have so many questions, but I can’t manage to get them out.
Minutes later, I’m being placed in the back of a truck. The familiar scent of leather when I’m laid down on the seat is strangely comforting. A hand strokes my hair out of my face, and a familiar voice fills my ears. “You know how to cause a scene, princess.”
Muff.
They’re here.
They’re all here.
Raising my hand weakly, I search aimlessly for the comfort of him. A moment later, his warm hand curls around mine.
“I’m here. We’re goin’ to get you to a hospital. Hang in there, Addi.”
It’s only now that I realize how shallow my breathing is. With every bump the truck takes us over, it takes me more than a minute to get my breath back. It hurts, and it burns, and I’m terrified. The kind of fear that travels down my bones, a fear that is so incredibly raw I don’t know if I can shake it.
I don’t want to die.
A tear leaks out and rolls down my cheek, and Muff wipes it away. “Hey. Don’t you cry. You’re gettin’ through this.”
He is answering me as if he can read my mind.
I weakly squeeze his hand.
My mind drops in and out for the rest of the journey, and although I can vaguely hear voices and feel my body being move around, I can’t seem to get anything to work. It’s as if I’m aware of the world around me, but I can’t communicate with them. Like I’m trapped with no way out.
Hands and instruments touch me, and the surrounding voices are frantic as the chaos unfolds. Then, before I know it, I drift off into a blissful warm sleep that is, for the first time, painless.
~*~*~*~*~
OPENING MY EYES, I blink a few times and slowly take in my surroundings. This time, I can actually focus my vision. I’m in a hospital. It takes a minute or two, but I quickly figure out where I am. Groggily, I have to blink over and over to keep my eyes from closing again. They feel heavy.
“Addison, hi,” A woman’s voice has me slowly turn my head. “You’re in recovery. You had surgery. It might take a while to wake up, but you’re safe, and you’re okay.”
My throat is burning and dry, and I try to swallow, but it feels as though I have swallowed a spoonful of sand. Croaking, I reach up and press a hand to my throat, and the nurse immediately gets me a cup of water with a straw, bringing it to my lips. I sip at it slowly until some dryness eases.
“Are you in pain?”
Shaking my head, I try to take in every inch of my body. I don’t feel any pain. My body is heavy and is trying to take me back to sleep, but I don’t hurt. Not yet, anyway.
“That’s good. We have you on some strong medication, so if you feel any kind of pain returning, let me know. You do not have to suffer.”
“W-w-w-what happened?” I ask.
I’m actually asking what happened with the surgery, but she assumes I’m asking how I got here to begin with. Maybe it’s a good thing if I act like I don’t know.
“You got shot. You don’t remember how?”
I don’t know what they have been told, so for now, I’ll play dumb.
I shake my head.
“Well, you were in a bad way. Somehow the bullet missed anything vital, but you had lost a lot of blood, and you were dehydrated. Your lungs had received a little damage from small pieces of the bullet that broke off. The doctors have fixed everything, and you should make a full recovery. You were very lucky.”
She’s not wrong about that.
“When you are out of recovery, you can see your family. We just need to monitor you here for a few hours first.”
My eyes are so heavy, I finally cave and close them, letting them rest. The moment I close them, I find myself drifting back into an anesthetic induced slumber that is a blissful relief.
Just another few minutes.
That’s all I need.
A few more minutes.
~*~*~*~*~
“HEY.”
A warm, rough hand glides down my cheek.
Sweet bliss.
“Baby.”
That voice.
A voice I require so much.
My eyes flutter open, and I see Cade staring down at me, his gaze soft, his expression full of relief and a touch of sadness.
“Hey,” I croak. “Fancy seeing you here.”
He chuckles and brings his lips down to mine, pressing them to me for a long, long time. Like he requires it, like it’s the only way he can continue on. As if my lips are the only way he can breathe. Once his lips are removed from mine, his forehead presses to me, and we sit like that for a long time, just feeling each other.
Reaching up, I run my fingers through his hair, feeling the soft strands against my flesh. I have never appreciated the feeling of having him against me so much. I thought for a moment there, we were done for. I thought I might die, or worse, he wouldn’t come out of it alive. That is something I never want to feel again in my life. The helpless agony of loss.
“What happened?” I whisper.
“Jackson gave Marshall a choice. Either he handed us over and told him where Clara was, or he would bring in the kind of force that would put so much attention on what Marshall was doing, it would expose him.”
“I’m guessing Marshall didn’t agree, considering the amount of gunfire I heard when I was being whisked away.”
“He didn’t agree, but it didn’t take long for him to call it all off. He knows that while he might have the power to bring us down over time, it’s a battle he really doesn’t want to deal with. It takes away too much time from the evil shit he is doing and for that reason, he came in mid-fight and told Jackson they had a deal.”
Marshall is a smart man. Kind of.
“He just gave up?”
Cade grunts. “Like I said, it wasn’t worth the battle he would have to carry on for a long fuckin’ time. He wants his world to flow easily, and if he has to take out people, he will, but an entire club is a war he wasn’t willing to fight.”
“Do you think he was just saying that? What if he comes back with an unexpected attack?”
“It’s goin’ to be fine, baby. I promise.”
My eyes lock on his. “Wait, Jackson said he needed to tell you where Clara is? Cade...did he tell you?”
Cade gives me a look, a long, unreadable expression that has my heart clenching.
“Cade?” I plead, sliding my hand up to his face and cupping it.
“She’s alive. She and Darth did steal from Marshall, and because of that, Darth was killed. He took the fall, and Clara did a runner before Marshall could get to her. He maintains he doesn’t know where she is and quite frankly, he doesn’t care. He has bigger fish to fry than a rogue woman who meant nothing to him.”
“If she ran,” I say, my voice shaky with shock. “Why didn’t she come looking for you?”
“She doesn’t know that he isn’t still lookin’ for her. Chances are she changed her name, started a new life and hasn’t dared come back in fear that he will kill her. When you run from a man like Marshall, you do not show your face again. Not to mention our relationship wasn’t exactly strong, she had no reason to reach out to me. Why would she? I left her.”
I’m sad for the entire situation, for Clara, for Cade, and mostly for the years they have lost.
“How are you going to find her?” I ask.
“I have no fuckin’ idea. Darth would have had someone create a whole new identity for them before they stole those goods, he was smart enough for that, but it is goin’ to take time to try to find out who that was and if they even know what the hell they did back then. There might be a chance we never find her.”
That breaks my heart.
“Celeste doesn’t know Darth is dead,” I whisper. “That means I have to tell her.”
Cade nods. “I can’t give her closure, sugar, because I don’t know where they dumped him. All I know is we can at least let her know he’s gone. It’ll be a hard thing for her to process.”
My heart breaks for her.
For all of them.
Being tangled up in a world that you thought would help you, and in the end, it was the reason your life was cut short.
Darth and Clara were young, they were in love, and they thought they could have a life filled with riches and good things, that they could do better than the life they were raised in, and because of that, they chose the wrong path. Nobody is to blame for that, and I’ll do everything in my power to help Cade find Clara, so at the very least, the two of them can have closure.
He deserves it, but mostly, so does she.
This puzzle needs to be pieced back together so that everyone can heal.
Finally.