Chapter Ten
Edge
“Where is she?” I storm into the hospital with Wraith at my side.
He’s the only one without connections here in Helena, so after we got word of the shooting and rode back like devils straight from the bowels of hell, come to unleash our fury on the earth, he’s the only one who didn’t immediately have to deal with the aftermath.
Wraith’s hand lands on my arm, hot and cloying and as I whirl, staring into his wide, dark eyes and a face that is still too gaunt after the ravages of drugs, I want to wrap my hands, big, beefy, ugly looking hands, around the bastard’s neck and squeeze until he isn’t breathing, just for daring to touch me.
“Shut up,” he grinds at me out of the corner of his mouth. “I’ll handle this, since you’re understandably incapable at the moment.”
I don’t want to admit it, but as we near the nurse’s desk, he’s right. We’re both clad in leather, big, feral looking men that would send any of those nurses scurrying around back there straight to the phone for security.
I can only stare, dumbfounded, subdued rage simmering in my veins like cooling oil in an engine, as Wraith leans on the desk, his long, leather clad forearms on display, his hands folded in a gesture of outright supplication.
A peace offering for the pretty nurse who spots us and walks over, a frown knitting her delicate brow.
Wraith offers her a smile, not the kind of greasy smile that he saves for all of us because he’s an annoying little prick, but a charming, sexy, I’d like to bed you kind of smile. Understandable that we’ve never seen that. Thank fucking all that is holy.
The nurse is a petite brunette, cute in a pair of lilac scrubs. She’s not more than five foot five, and she has to look way the hell up, even though Wraith is bending over the desk.
I suppose, in some life, females might find the bastard attractive.
He’s got this charming personality, the easy type of leader that people look to without realizing he’s a leader at all.
Which makes sense, because he was Prez of the club we took down two years ago.
He might be tall and still on the thin side compared to monsters like Steel and me, but I have to admit, we defy logic with our size.
I realize, when I look at him, that Wraith is healthy looking.
Filled out. Broad shoulders, athletic build.
It’s not a wonder that the nurse falls all over herself, her tongue tying up in knots, when he explains why we’re there. He gives a quick description of Harley and the incident and then stares at the woman while she melts on the spot.
Fucking hell.
Her panties probably just melted off under those scrubs.
“I’m sorry,” she says breathlessly. She glances around like she’s afraid that someone will notice her flushed cheeks and lips that have suddenly gone a little pouty. “I- you’re not- we’re only allowing family in right now. If you’re not family, then there isn’t anything I can do.”
I want to climb over that desk and tear the fucking thing apart until I find out where the hell they’re keeping Harley, but Wraith glances over his shoulder and the ice in his glare is enough to keep me locked down, my shit-kickers firmly planted on the stark white, cold and impersonal, tile floor.
I hate hospitals. Hate the smells. Hate the sounds. Hate the rules. Hate all of it. Most of us do. There’s a reason why we have a private doctor on staff that we call to stitch us up, remove bullets fucking etcetera, etcetera, when shit goes down.
“My friend here, he’s technically, by law, not family, but he is Harley Vanderbilt’s man. They live together. I know they don’t have the same last name on paper, but you know… common law and all that.”
The little nurse’s brow wrinkles up along with her nose, deep, worried furrows.
Her eyes dart around, looking for a lifeline, someone to come save her.
Wraith grins. He shifts, arranging himself so that his unzipped leather jacket falls open, displaying a tight black t-shirt below.
He gives her a full view of whatever’s going on underneath.
Judging from the way her eyes widen, she obviously likes what she sees.
“I- I’m sorry,” she says. “Just- family. She already has her- uh- mom and dad in there with her and we- I’ve… I’m sorry, her father said no one else is allowed to see her. He said that she has no other immediate family, and she still hasn’t come to yet…”
“Oh fuck,” Wraith bites out. “Darlin’, you better call security.”
It’s the last thing that I hear before I lose my fucking mind.
I tear off down the hall behind that stupid desk.
Helena’s small and so is the hospital. I know I won’t have trouble finding out where she is.
All I have to do is follow the scent of the bastard asswad that is keeping me from her.
I’ll tear this whole place apart if I have to.
Nothing is gonna keep me from seeing my woman, holding her in my arms, looking down into her face and begging her forgiveness for not being there to protect her.
Steel fucking Vanderbilt might be my Prez and like a damn brother to me before he pounded me into the dirt, but this… this is too far.
I’m like a wild animal shoving doors open, stumbling back from silent rooms, machines beeping, people sitting at bedsides clutching loved ones’ hands. I’d feel bad if I could think straight, but right now I’m just a cloud of anger.
My chest heaves with unrestrained fury, my hands are balled into fists. I must look like the devil himself when I bust into those rooms and all I can do is mutter a few words, back the hell out, and slam the door behind me.
I burst into room after room and none of them are hers.
The panic growing inside of me grips me tight, squeezes the life out of me, wrings out my lungs until they’re useless sacks and I know that each breath I take is precious because it might be my last.
I stopped believing in anything as trivial as heaven and hell a long time ago, when I was just a kid and my mother was too busy spreading her legs for money and drugs to pay any attention to her brat that sometimes those same men liked to beat on just because they could.
She hated that I existed, a product of a night with a man whose name she couldn’t remember because he was just another face in an unending sea of many, a sea that eventually drowned her.
I knew there wasn’t shit after death, because a woman like her, she was just doing what she had to in order to survive.
Poverty sucked the life out of her long before she had me, so I can’t blame her for not knowing how to raise me, give me any kind of love, since she never had any for herself.
I didn’t believe in a divine judge telling her she was wrong, that she’d sinned, cocksucking bullshit like that and I sure as shit didn’t believe in some fiery red bastard who’d punish her more than life already had.
But now… now, as I near the end of the hall and I still haven’t found her, I know for a fact that if she’s not in one of these rooms, something must have happened. Something terrible.
And if it’s come to that, if my Harley is dead and I didn’t feel her soul leaving mine, I’m gonna do something that gets me put straight into the earth right beside her. I’ll hunt down and kill every single one of those bastards that shot the place up. That dared to take from me what was mine.
My heart slams punishingly against my ribs, brutal in its ferocity. It burns like fire, searing my skin from my bones, melting me, scarring me, twisting me into something brutal and wretched. Sweat pours down my back in wet rivulets. My leather jacket clings to me like a second skin.
If my love, the only woman I’ve ever dared love in a life that I thought would be devoid of it forever, a woman who took the chance on loving me back, a man who doesn’t deserve even a tenth of her goodness, if she’s gone…
if Steel kept her from me, kept me from saying goodbye to her in those final moments, Prez or no Prez, brother or not, he’s a dead man.
There’s a door on my right and one on my left.
I slam through the right, because it’s closest. I barely register my hand on that handle, my footsteps in front of me, any of the shit going on in there, the machines, the surroundings, because the wet in my eyes and a cloud of black rage blurs my vision.
I know she’s in there before I even see her, because, even with the disgusting smell of bleach and antiseptic and the other regular hospital smells that remind me of death, not life, I can scent her. Her goodness. Her purity. Her light.
I grew up in Detroit and, in front of the decrepit apartment building we called home, there was a huge lilac bush.
Call me a pussy for it, but as a kid, I loved the scent of them.
Loved their delicate little purple blossoms, the way they’d perfume the air.
Sometimes I’d even open the windows in the place to let out the dank air and their scent would creep in, delicious and good, covering up the smell of my life like a rug covers a stain on the floor.
Harley’s always smelled like lilacs to me. Even though it’s been a lifetime since I’ve walked by that bush, I remember exactly what it smells like. The room is flooded with her scent.
As well as the darker, spicier, acrid scent of pissed off man.
Because that’s when I fucking spot Steel.
Leah’s with him. She jumps out of the chair beside his, her hand on his arm to hold him back.
Her eyes are red rimmed, her blonde hair a snarled, tangled mess, her cheeks swollen and tear stained.
I know she was there, there with Harley when it happened, but the words are fucked right out of me when I turn and see her, my angel, my love, my heart and soul, lying so still in that bed, machines hooked to her, her normal honey-hued skin completely ashen.
My throat clogs up and all the words I want to say, angry and terrible or otherwise, lodge there, tight and ugly.
Steel stands slowly, unwinding, lethal and terrifying, murder in his eyes.
I tense up, ready for him. He’ll have to kill me to get me out of here, because I’m not fucking leaving for anything.
I love that woman in the bed, love her more than my own life.
I’d burn down the world for her, kill anyone standing between us, anyone who dared hurt her.
She’s my breath and my bones, my blood and my oxygen, everything that gives me life.
We stand like that, breathing hard, our hackles raised, two male dogs circling each other, hungry and lusting for blood. One of us is going to tear the other’s throat out.