Chapter Eleven
Harley
I can’t see him, but I know he’s there.
Even in the underworld of darkness that blankets me, wraps around me, holds me captive, an unwilling prisoner, I can sense him.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why everything is black or why my body is a vortex of white hot, mutilating pain that twists me up on the inside, scarring me there, where no one can see.
I don’t know why my lids are so heavy that they won’t obey my commands to open, but I know, even before that seam cracks and light floods through the sludgy, tar thick darkness, that he’s there.
Edge.
Suddenly, my eyes fly open, the grip of the heavy black shattered when I take them both in, two men who have been giants in my life, and not because of their massive, imposing stature.
The two men I love most in the world, circling each other like they’re going to do battle with each other, right there in what I realize is a hospital room.
My father, mercurial and fearsome, his face shadowed and storm tossed. And Edge. My Edge, his burnished copper eyes tinged with sorrow, his beautiful, rugged face twisted with worry and pain, the brutality of his love twisting him up and wringing him out. He looks exhausted.
How long have I been here?
What happened?
I watch their lips, only catching half of what they’re saying, because their faces are turned, hidden from me as they face off against each other.
“Weren’t there to protect her…”
“Because I was chasing after your sorry, piece of shit ass…”
“Fucking bastard, this isn’t the life I want for my girl. I wanted her to get out of here, go see what the world has to offer…. Drag her down…”
“I didn’t want this for her either, but I love her… would fucking die for her in a second…”
My father turns his head just a little, angling in on Edge, and I can read all of what he says.
“You’ll never have her. I won’t let you break her and ruin her.
You know nothing about loving a woman. You couldn’t protect her tonight.
You won’t be able to in the future. If I have to take her to the ends of the earth, I’ll make sure that she’s safe from you.
Wish I’d have put a bullet in your brain the second I saw you.
If I had, my girl would still be safe and well. None of this would have happened.”
I can’t bear to see the terrible devastation and wretched vulnerability ruining Edge’s face, the pain slashed across there, opening him up.
I draw in a shallow gasp, struggling for air, because my father’s words are like a knife in my heart.
I can’t bear to see the doubt shimmering in those dark copper eyes.
I hate the way his massive shoulders and his proud chest deflate under his leather like he’s a balloon that has a slow leak, like he’ll fade away to nothing because of those words.
Words.
Words from a man he’d have died for. A man he’s served as a leader, his brother, for over a decade. A man we both love.
I have to save them. Save them both from what they’re about to do to each other.
I summon all the strength I have left. “Stop!” I rasp, my voice rusty and croaky, scraped out like boots over a rough wood floor. I don’t hear it, of course, but that’s what it feels like, in the deep recess of my terrible dry throat and aching chest.
Two sets of eyes turn to me. My father freezes, his gray eyes widening in shock, his shoulders falling with the tremendous relief he obviously feels.
A visible tremor sweeps through him. His stormy eyes shine with a sheen of moisture and his jaw clenches up.
He’s so overcome with obvious emotion, that he can’t move.
Suddenly, Leah’s head swims into view as she leans over the bed. She takes my hand in hers and squeezes it hard, like she’s willing life back into it.
“Oh god, Harley! Oh my god, you’re going to be okay. It was just a graze. Your arm. You needed twenty-two stitches, but it’s fine. It’s fine, honey. You lost a lot of blood. They gave you a transfusion, but you’re… it’s going to be okay.”
Her lips keep moving, but I can’t make out what she’s saying, because the tears flooding down her face, leaking out of her huge liquid blue eyes, distract me.
I breathe out a harsh breath, so thankful that she’s okay, that it brutalizes my insides, like I’ve taken another lethal kick to the chest or swallowed a bag of crushed up glass.
“Harley…” my dad takes a step towards the bed, but he stops when I shake my head violently against the pillow propped behind me. It’s hard and lumpy and hurts my skull just by existing.
“No…” I breathe, but on an inhale, I force my voice to be stronger, to come out whole, even if I can’t hear the words, I know how much pressure to put behind it.
“Don’t! I’ll always be your little girl, I know that.
I know you love me more than anything and I love that about you.
But you can’t say that. Edge is like your brother.
He has nothing to do with why I’m here.”
It hurts, but I incline my head in Edge’s direction.
I keep my eyes locked on my dad’s face, watch as his expression hardens into something fierce and unforgiving and my heart aches.
He’s a stubborn bastard, and I am just like him.
Fierce. Wild. Stubborn. Born with a spirit to be feared and a thirst for justice.
With each word, my voice gets stronger. I feel stronger, because I’m not just fighting for the man I love, I’m fighting for all of us, trying to stitch us back together the way they closed the wound on my arm, give us a blood transfusion of love to save the only family each one of us has ever known.
“I love you, dad, but I’m not your little girl anymore.
My heart, my soul, my body—belongs to Edge.
He might forgive you for saying what you did because he’s a good man with a far more generous heart than even he knows, but I won’t.
I won’t forgive you. I’ll remember what you said to him for as long as I live.
Someone shot up our place. Someone tried to kill us.
You shouldn’t be in here, fighting with your brother when you should be acting like the leader you are, trying to figure out who did it and get vengeance.
Edge wasn’t here to keep me safe because he went out after you! ”
I blink hard against the brutal pain on my father’s face, against the way he flinches back, the regret already storming in his eyes. Tears leak from the corners of mine, burning their way down my cheeks, bitter and acrid as coals, branding me.
“Edge…”
He stands trembling at the foot of the hospital bed, trembling with rage and suppressed emotion, with fear and something far more dangerous. Hope.
I meet his gaze, that beautiful copper hued iris. The bruises on his face are already fading, because he’s tough as stone, but his eye is still swollen shut.
He takes one halting step forward than another and another, then my warrior, a man brutal, huge and unmovable as a mountain, a man as tough and wild as the last untamed lands out there—drops to his knees at my sides. He takes my hand and knits our fingers together.
He bows his head, laying it across my stomach, and it takes me a full minute to realize why his powerful shoulders are shaking, because I can’t hear the sounds.
Edge. The man who has always been a mountain to me, a man whose soul is so thoroughly stitched up with mine that I can’t separate it without shredding both of them into ruined tatters, my fearless man who soars free on his wild chrome horse, who has looked death in the face and stood tall, who has lived through the neglect of a painful childhood, who waded through danger and hardship. That same man crumbles before me.
And weeps.
For once my deafness is a gift, because if I heard it, those broken sobs torn from his throat, it would break me too, clean in half.
He clutches me as his massive shoulders roll and bunch, shudder and vibrate under his leather jacket. All I can do is set my other hand on his hair, damp with sweat, and hold him to me while he breaks up on me like a wayward vessel of old on the rocky coast of a storm swollen sea.
Because I was born deaf, I can often sense things that others don’t.
The prickle of unease climbs up my spine, vertebra by vertebra.
I don’t have time to look at my father or at Leah, because my attention is snatched by two men dressed in black.
They’re wearing matching jackets with yellow writing on the front. Security.
They approach my bed like they have a right to be there. I look pleadingly at my father, but his jaw settles into a hard, determined line and he makes no move to stop them.
Their arms close around Edge’s, one at each side, catching him off-guard.
He didn’t hear them or see them coming, so it takes him a second to fight back as they drag him away from me.
He jerks hard and the average built men on either side of him are no match for the unholy rage of my man.
I catch the look in his eye, dangerous, cold, wild, like a spooked animal about to go completely wild to defend and protect what he loves.
It’s instinct for him, ingrained into the very essence of his being.
I don’t have time to be thrilled by that awesome display of power, the latent curl and flex of his muscles bunching below his jacket, the way his face hardens and his hands ball into deadly fists.
He could tear the world apart with those hands, hands that have known and are unafraid of even the most brutal violence.
I have to stop him before he does damage that he can’t take back.
“Stop it!” I struggle upright in the bed, even though it takes all of my strength and my arm protests the movement with a brutal burning throb that makes my eyes tear up all over again.
Every protective instinct in me roars to life and it’s not just Edge who turns into an animal. “Don’t do that to him!”
I watch Edge freeze at my command, the muscles in his legs bunching and straining against his jeans as he plants his black biker boots firmly on the tiled floor, but I know it won’t be long before he lands a savage blow into one of those men.
He’s one step away from being a wild animal with its paw in a trap, yowling and clawing and fighting like an unhinged demon.
I don’t want him to hit one of those men and end up getting charged for it, or even worse, going to prison.
“Stop it, I said!”
That time, my scream, torn from the black fissures of pain shredding me wide open, stops the men in their tracks.
They raise their heads and stare at me. One is younger, probably in his early twenties.
He looks at me with a mix of pity and uncertainty.
The other, a more seasoned, middle aged man with dark hair that’s rapidly receding from his forehead, shakes his head, but his hold on Edge’s arm doesn’t loosen.
“Why are you taking him away?” I wail. “He can stay. Please let him stay.”
“Sorry, family only,” the older man says as he shakes his head at me like I’m a wayward child and he’s tired of explaining the rules. His eyes shutter off and I can tell he’s used to doing this job without feeling, because there’s no place for emotion.
“He is my family!” I protest, with every ounce of strength I have left.
“He’s not on the approved list and he created one hell of a disturbance, busting past the front desk and throwing doors open left and right. He’s gone, lucky if he’s not banned from here for life.”
Edge turns his face and snarls, silently telling them he doesn’t give a fuck about being banned in the future, but his head whips back to me when I move, his gaze cutting through me.
I can’t let him face this alone. Edge is mine now, just like I’m his. I know that they’re going to force him to leave, and I’m not staying by myself. I’m not letting him leave me behind.
I shove myself upright on the bed, youth and strength on my side, even after my ordeal.
I swing my legs over the edge, but when I turn, my hand hitches up, tugging me back with a violent burn that singes its way up my arm and into my chest. I nearly gag on the jolt of pain, while everyone around the room watches me, astounded, frozen with their shock.
My dad recovers first, just as my fingers fly to my left hand, the hand holding me back like there are chains wrapped around it.
“What are you doing? Harley, stop! You have to stay here, at least overnight.”
“Honey, you’ve been through a lot,” Leah pleads, her dainty hands landing on my arms.
I shrug them away and grasp the stupid IV planted into my vein. “I have to get out of here,” I mutter, “before Edge uses all his strength to bring the entire place down around all of us.”
I pull hard on the taped up end of the IV, suddenly frantic to have it out of me no matter how much it hurts.
It gives way with a sickening burst of white hot pain and a streaking trail of blood that makes my stomach lurch.
Bile claws at my throat, but I swallow convulsively, pushing it down.
I unhook the little clip from my finger and the flashing of the machine in the room tells me that it’s alerting someone else, the nursing station probably.
Before anyone can burst into the room to see what the hell is going on, I rush to Edge.
I wrap my arms tight around his waist, not caring that it hurts like the hounds of hell have been unleashed and are gnashing their teeth against my flesh.
The cool air of the room rushes up the stupid hospital gown that is no doubt gaping open in the back.
Because I guess they have something of a heart after all, or maybe they’ve just been shocked so thoroughly that they can’t help themselves, the security guards release Edge’s arms and they close around me, carefully pulling that gown together, holding me like I’m made of glass, but I don’t mistake the strength in it, the raw territorial possessiveness radiating off of him in hot waves, the sorrow and terror, relief, and love in him.
I know he feels it, because I feel it too.
He draws it out of me like a magnet, my polar opposite, stuck so hard that we’ll never be pulled apart.
And that’s how the frantic nurses find us, locked together, an embrace of life and near death, an embrace that time and distance, that age and circumstance can’t hope to break.
Neither of us cares that it’s against everyone’s wishes—my doctor’s, the nurses, and my father’s. Edge sweeps me up in his big, brutally strong arms, my hands wrapped around his neck, my face pressed tight into his leather clad chest, and we walk out of there together.