Chapter 7 #5
Nate got drunk enough to toast “the death of Dylan’s tragic bachelor era,” then got sentimental enough to hug me in a way that made both of us uncomfortable.
Callum shook my hand.
Held it a second too long.
“You happy?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He watched me.
I held his gaze.
“Yeah,” I said again.
He nodded like he had decided to accept the lie because I was trying so hard to make it true.
We didn’t set a date.
That was easy to explain.
I had work. Georgia had work. We were saving money.
The business was growing. The club had problems. There was a run coming up down south, and the border had been heating for months.
Cargo getting hit. Routes shifting. Old alliances fraying.
Men with too much pride and too many guns deciding territory meant more than blood.
Everyone was on edge.
Even Nate joked less.
The night before the run, Georgia came over with takeout and a stack of bridal magazines her mother had bought despite us not choosing a season, a venue, or even whether we wanted a big wedding.
She spread them across my table.
“Don’t panic,” she said. “This is recreational.”
“Looks like homework.”
“Romantic homework.”
“That’s worse.”
She laughed and kissed me.
Warm.
Nice.
I kissed her back.
I looked at the ring on her finger and told myself I had done the right thing.
I was still telling myself that when the shooting started three days later.
The run went bad near the border.
Not bad like a flat tire or a checkpoint or a deal that needed more money to smooth over.
Bad like headlights cutting across dirt.
Bad like the first shot cracking through the dark before anyone had time to curse.
Bad like a brother going down beside me.
Bad like Nate shouting my name.
Everything turned white and red and dust.
Gunfire ripped open the night. Bikes scattered. Men dove for cover. Someone screamed. Someone returned fire. The air filled with the sharp stink of cordite, burned rubber, and blood.
I remember dragging one of ours behind a truck.
I remember Nate firing from the left side, face pale under the grime.
I remember thinking, Get everyone out.
Not heroic.
Practical.
The kind of thought a man had when fear had no time to dress itself up.
Then something hit me.
Not like movies.
No dramatic spin. No slow, graceful fall.
Just force.
A brutal punch low in my side, then heat spreading too fast.
I looked down and saw dark blooming through my shirt.
“Dylan!” Nate yelled.
I tried to answer.
Another shot cracked.
Nate jerked.
Went down hard.
The world tilted.
After that, things came in pieces.
Hands under my arms.
Someone cursing.
Callum’s voice on a phone, distant and furious.
“Nearest hospital?”
“Albuquerque.”
“Cops there.”
“No time.”
“No time.”
That phrase followed me into the back of whatever vehicle they threw me into.
No time.
Nate was somewhere beside me, breathing wrong and swearing worse.
I tried to turn my head, but the pain opened wide enough to swallow the thought.
“Stay with me,” someone said.
Maybe Rafe.
Maybe God.
Maybe no one.
Blood made everything slick.
The ceiling of the vehicle bounced above me. Lights streaked past the windows. Sirens eventually joined us or followed us. I couldn’t tell. Pain came in waves, then faded into something colder, which I knew enough to understand was worse.
I thought about Georgia.
I should have thought about Georgia.
Her ring.
Her yes.
Her mother’s tears.
Her father’s disappointment if I died before making her daughter a wife.
I tried to hold her face.
Tried to put her in the center of the dark.
But death, or whatever waited near it, did not care about what a man was supposed to feel.
The face that came was Destiny’s.
Fire behind her.
Blood on her lip.
Beautiful, haunted eyes.
I almost laughed.
Of course.
Of course it was her at the end.
The vehicle stopped hard.
Doors flew open.
Voices exploded around me.
“GSW, abdomen, unstable!”
“Second patient, shoulder and chest!”
“Move, move, move!”
Hospital lights hit me so bright I thought for one stupid second I was already dead and heaven looked a lot like fluorescent bulbs and panic.
Then pain brought me back.
A mask came over my face.
Hands cut through my shirt.
Someone pressed hard on my side, and I made a sound I would have been ashamed of if shame hadn’t floated somewhere above me, useless and far away.
“Stay with me,” a woman said.
That voice.
My heart stumbled.
No.
Impossible.
I tried to open my eyes.
Everything blurred.
White ceiling.
Blue scrubs.
Masks.
Gloved hands.
A curtain being shoved aside.
Someone calling for blood.
Someone else yelling that OR was ready.
Then a face came into view above mine.
Mostly covered by a mask. Hair tucked back. Eyes focused, fierce, wet with terror she was trying to bury under training.
Those eyes.
I knew those eyes.
The drugs were supposed to make things softer. Kinder. Less cruel. Instead, they handed me the one ghost I had spent years trying not to worship and put her right above me under ER lights.
“The hell?” I rasped.
The woman leaned closer. “Dylan, stay with me.”
Destiny.
Older.
Sharper.
In scrubs.
Her mother’s diamond studs in her ears.
Turquoise ring on one gloved finger? No. She wouldn’t wear it under gloves. My brain was inventing things now. Filling in the pieces it needed because blood loss made a man sentimental and stupid.
Beside her, another face appeared, glasses fogged slightly above a mask.
Lily.
Lila?
Whatever the hell her name was.
Idaho.
Cupcake.
Matcha.
The roommate.
I blinked at her.
“The fuck?” I whispered. “Doc was supposed to give me the good drugs.”
Lily’s eyes widened behind her glasses.
Destiny made a sound that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t broken in half.
“Dylan,” she said, voice shaking now. “You’re at the hospital. You were shot. We’re taking you to surgery.”
“No,” I muttered.
“Yes.”
“No, you’re not supposed to be here.”
Her hands moved over me, quick and sure, checking lines, checking pressure, helping prep me while other people worked around her. She was not the girl from the fire anymore.
She was not the birthday girl under the palm tree.
She was not the woman on the Santa Monica sidewalk with fury in her eyes and my cuff under her sleeve.
She was all of them.
Every version.
Every ghost.
Every choice I had made and every one I had run from.
“Pressure’s dropping,” someone said.
“Dylan.” Destiny’s voice cut through everything. “Look at me.”
I tried.
God, I tried.
Her eyes found mine and held.
There were tears in them now, but her hands stayed steady.
That was my girl.
No.
Not mine.
Never mine.
Always mine.
“Don’t leave me,” she whispered.
Maybe she didn’t mean to say it.
Maybe the ER swallowed it, and I was the only one who heard.
Maybe I imagined it because dying men were selfish.
But I heard it.
Don’t leave me.
“I already did,” I tried to say.
It came out as nothing.
Her fingers pressed against my wrist, over my pulse.
Same place Brett Harrison had touched her years ago.
Same place I had fastened the mother-of-pearl cuff.
The symmetry of it was so damn cruel I would have laughed if I had any blood left to waste.
“I need you to stay with me,” she said. “Do you hear me? Stay.”
I wanted to tell her I was trying.
I wanted to tell her I finished school.
I wanted to tell her I built something.
I wanted to tell her I proposed to Georgia and still saw her face every time I closed my eyes, which was a rotten confession for a dying man and worse for a living one.
I wanted to tell her Daniel Ducati seemed decent and I hated him anyway.
I wanted to tell her I wasn’t noble.
I was scared.
I had always been scared.
Of wanting her.
Of ruining her.
Of being wanted back.
But the world was narrowing.
The lights stretched.
The voices blurred.
Destiny’s face was the only thing left.
Not the mask.
Not the scrubs.
Not the nurse she had become.
The girl in the desert.
Fire behind her.
Smoke in her hair.
Crimson on her lips.
Haunted eyes asking if I had come to save her.
Beautiful.
My mouth moved.
This time, the word made it out.
“Beautiful.”
Her eyes shattered.
Then the doors swung open, the lights went white, and everything went black.