Chapter 33
Icouldn’t stop replaying the events of this evening.
From the moment I left Mallory in front of her condo door with her Davis, to the moment multiple nurses had to physically restrain me from following her into the sterile, stark white emergency operating room, while I’d fought and shouted Mallory, wake up!
That’s my wife! like a man possessed by his grief.
As if they hadn’t already known. As if I hadn’t already known I couldn’t go with her.
With them.
As if I wasn’t usually numbed to death from everyone we’d lost in the military.
Every time, I changed an action of mine.
Kicked down the back door sooner, because it had taken too long.
Not left Mallory in the first place. Killed Davis as soon as he’d appeared during our fake fight that had been laced with real hurt from all our recent arguments.
Forced Mallory to stay back at Shadow and took care of the entire thing myself.
But I knew, no matter what I did, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome.
Mallory would’ve found a way to follow me to her condo, fuming and looking for a real fight.
The second man in her apartment would’ve been ready, and would’ve caught both of us unaware—caught her unaware, because I knew he’d been hiding somewhere deep in the back, where she would’ve stormed off to first. And if I would’ve kicked down that door any sooner than I had, Davis would’ve just stabbed her sooner.
But then she might not have lost all that blood.
I was staring numbly at my blood-stained hands, arms, and shirt when I felt a heavy, familiar hand land on my shoulder and squeeze. I didn’t react, just continued staring as grief gripped at my throat and squeezed.
Why didn’t you yell?
I knew the answer, but it hadn’t stopped me from thinking the question a hundred times.
Mallory hadn’t yelled because it would’ve killed her. She hadn’t yelled because she’d been trained not to. She hadn’t yelled because she’d grown up needing to prove herself.
But even if she hadn’t had that knife in her back—in her lung, as the paramedics had confirmed while the ambulance had raced back here—there’d been so much blood pooling from her neck and soaking into her shirt. A terrifying amount of blood.
When you’d lived the lives we had, blood no longer fazed you, but you understood it. I’d understood that amount of blood. The sight of it had also nearly dropped me to my knees, because I’d known in an instant that I was going to lose her.
“Briggs just arrived,” Thatch finally said when I didn’t respond to his grip.
“Let’s go talk to him.” When I didn’t move, Thatch moved around to the other side of me and forced me to look at him, not even trying to mask his worry.
“The surgeon will come talk to you in the waiting area when they’re done.
You don’t have to be standing at the doors. ”
Yes, I did.
It was the closest they were letting me near her—them—and I didn’t want to be farther than I was now.
As if sensing that, Thatch gripped my shoulders tighter, his jaw clenching as he glanced at the double doors for long moments before meeting my stare again.
“I get it, Gray. I swear, I do. I would’ve done the same thing you did—fighting to follow my wife anywhere.
But I need you to sit somewhere. I need you somewhere—” He cut off abruptly, swallowing as he did.
It took too long to realize what he’d been about to say. Took too long to realize his worry wasn’t only for the girl he’d also loved for over a decade, just in an entirely different way.
He was worried about what I’d do.
He wanted me somewhere he could watch me . . . control me when I received news.
Before my mind could fully grasp that, Thatch was reluctantly stepping away from me just before the back of my neck was grabbed, and I was pulled into a tight, unexpected hug.
“I’m sorry,” Briggs rumbled.
And that embrace, those words, broke me.
I shoved away from him as tears burned my eyes. “Don’t say that,” I snapped. “Don’t say that like she’s already gone.”
“Not what I meant,” Briggs muttered as he watched me drag my hands through my hair, gripping tight as my chest heaved like it was mocking me because hers had gone so still.
A sob ripped from deep in my chest and tore from my throat as I stumbled back to the wall and slid down it.
“She wasn’t breathing. She stopped breathing.
She was responsive, but only—she stopped breathing,” I rambled.
“They got her breathing again, but it—I dunno how long. And there was—” I held my arms out, like they might not have noticed the blood before then.
Like they might understand just how much there had been.
I wasn’t even sure she had understood how much there had been.
Briggs crouched in front of me, face solemn as he listened. Thatch stood just behind him, arms folded across his chest and looking more worried than before.
“Tell me what happened, from the beginning,” Briggs softly demanded, prompting a harsh laugh from me.
“The mission went south, Briggs,” I seethed. “My wife and baby might be dead. And you’re asking for a review?”
He just nodded. Slowly, gravely. “Tell me what happened, from the beginning,” he repeated.
I launched into everything from the time we left Shadow, hissing the details at him like I was holding him personally responsible for making me relive this failure, when I’d already been doing it to myself. Repeatedly.
But his focus was on the job, when mine was on Mallory.
It wasn’t until I was nearing the end that I realized I was no longer snapping at him, but relaying details calmly. Quietly. Instead of gripping at my chest and hair, I was sitting forward as I stared numbly at the dried red streaks on my arms.
“I know what it felt like when I got the call about my brother,” Briggs began a while after I’d finished, mentioning the guy he’d practically raised and had done everything to keep alive, “but I know I can’t imagine this.
Still, I needed to get you away from that consuming panic you were falling into. Understand?”
I nodded without meeting the stares I could feel on me.
When minutes passed in tense silence, I asked, “The other Davises?”
“We’ll discuss those later,” Briggs said as he stood.
“Just tell me if they were taken care of.”
Briggs hesitated before acknowledging, “As far as we know, they have been.”
With another dip of my head, I registered Briggs settling against the same wall, a handful of feet away. Thatch still hadn’t moved from where he stood across from me, and he didn’t move.
None of us did.
I’m not sure how much time passed as we stood there. Seconds felt like minutes and minutes felt like hours as I drowned in my grief and self-loathing, sure I could’ve prevented this. As I prayed relentlessly to a God I’d never really given much thought to before.
I was vaguely aware of Evans coming over a handful of times.
Same with the girls. All of them—even Ada.
But if any of them tried talking to me, I wasn’t aware of it.
Every time those double doors pushed open, my heart shuddered to a stop, only for the nurse, doctor, or visitor to walk right past us like I wasn’t dying a little more with each eternal hour that passed.
By the time the surgeon finally pushed through the doors and called Mallory’s name as he, too, walked right past us, I was dropped in a crouch, gripping at the sides of my head and grasping at my hair as my body uncontrollably shook with the need to get to my wife. To take her place. To just be there.
I was normally so steady on my feet and in my movements, but as I shot to my full height and rushed after him, I stumbled. Staggered.
Shoved Briggs away when he reached out for me and choked as I tried to call out to the surgeon.
Paralyzed.
I’d been waiting for this. I’d needed this news to come hours ago. But I was so paralyzed by my fear that I couldn’t make my legs work properly. Couldn’t make the words dislodge from the knot they’d formed in my throat.
“Here,” Briggs finally said for me and grabbed my shoulder anyway, steadying me because he knew I needed it. “We’re here.”
The surgeon turned, eyeing us in a solemn, careful way that had my heart wrenching and Briggs’ hand twitching against me.
The man’s head dipped as if preparing to destroy my entire world, and I felt Thatch step up on my other side, hand pressing against my back like he knew I was about to fall to my knees.
“Which of you is the husband?” the surgeon asked, as if he couldn’t figure that out from the way my friends were keeping me steady.
When I just struggled around that jagged knot in my throat, Briggs answered, “He is, but we’re family. So, talk.”
The surgeon gave him a disapproving look, but when I didn’t argue—not that I would’ve, even if I’d been able to speak—he sighed and focused on me as he informed us, “We aren’t out of the woods yet, but your wife is out of surgery.”
The fact that she was alive at all had me staggering back a step as hope and gratitude built so fast and thick. My body sagged and my vision blurred with tears I didn’t know how to be ashamed of . . . before he went and tore it all away.
“Your wife lost a lot of blood, mostly from the wounds to her neck, but not so much that a transfusion was necessary. In that regard, her pregnancy is likely what saved her in the first place—women produce extra blood when they’re pregnant, so she had blood to spare. However . . .”
No.
“That blood is needed for the fetus.”
No, no, no . . .
“We’re monitoring both, but the fetus’ heart rate is very low, and we don’t expect it to survive.”
My jaw shook and ached from the strain I was putting on it.
It didn’t matter that it’d been less than a day of knowing. This was something I’d wanted for so long, had known I would never have, and it’d somehow, incredibly, fallen into our laps. This was a life. This was us.
And it was being ripped away just as quickly as it’d been given to us.
“As for your wife’s lung,” the surgeon went on in that same matter-of-fact, yet consoling, tone, “I’ve seen and worked on lung punctures before.
They can heal in a couple weeks if treated properly and quickly enough, but this piercing wasn’t clean.
The knife went in and tore in multiple places, as if it was repeatedly shoved in after the initial impact.
It was also a severe puncture, which can lead to the heart stopping, as I’m told you witnessed before the medics arrived on scene.
” He held out his hands in a gesture that would’ve said more than enough, but still added, “Her pulse has remained steady, and I’ve done what I could. Now, it’s up to her.”
Her.
Not them.
Because, like he’d said, he didn’t expect our baby to survive.
The baby we’d just found out about this morning.
The baby Mallory had been horrified at just the thought of and had shut down over when it’d become a reality.
The baby Mallory had been planning on taking care of tomorrow.
The baby Mallory had looked anguished over when she’d forced out those two words as she’d bled in my arms. As if the devastating thought of losing our baby had been enough to make her see everything differently—as if it’d destroyed her more than the thought of losing her own life.
With a smile that looked as weighted as it did cautious, the surgeon added, “You’ll be let back soon.
If you’re the type to, I would start praying.
” But his sigh, as if he didn’t expect it to help, had a strained sob catching in my throat as Briggs’ grip on my shoulder tightened to the point I was sure should’ve been painful.
But I couldn’t feel it.
I couldn’t feel anything other than the grief and denial ripping through my chest. Shredding my soul and drowning out everything I knew as flashes of my years with Mallory tore through my mind.
Her ice-cold glare and her mesmerizing smile. Her blatant irritation and her captivating laugh. Her ferocity that stunned me and the recent softness that made my heart trip all over itself. Countless missions and even more fights. Green lattes and shawarma wraps.
Everything. Most of my adult life was her. And I didn’t want to do the rest of it without her.
“We’re monitoring both, but the fetus’ heart rate is very low, and we don’t expect it to survive.”
“I’ve done what I could. Now, it’s up to her.”
A strained curse wrenched from my too-tight throat on a guttural roar as someone wrapped their arms around my chest, keeping me up as my knees hit the hard floor and my body sagged—keeping me away from the wall I was suddenly near.
“Hey, it isn’t over.” That was Thatch. I knew that. But I couldn’t focus on him as he crouched in front of me and grasped my shoulder, forcing me up even more. “They’re alive. Both of them.”
“I can’t lose her,” I repeatedly muttered as he spoke.
“Focus on that,” he added through clenched teeth, his own emotion weaving into his voice. “Gray, they’re still alive. And you know Monroe—that girl’s a fighter. She isn’t going down without a fight to prove she’s stronger than the rest of us.”
A strained laugh tore from me, even as my head shook. “Thatch, you didn’t see her.”
“I didn’t need to,” he said softly. “I could’ve watched that girl die in front of me—I could’ve heard medics confirm it—and I would still stand there, waiting for her to fight her way back, because that’s just what she does.
” Briggs grunted in agreement from behind me, and it was then I realized he was the one holding me up, even still.
“Deep down, past your grief, you know it too.”
I did.
I knew it better than the rest of them.
But all rational thinking becomes warped when this level of grief and fear come into play.
So, it didn’t matter that I normally would’ve been the one arguing for Mallory.
Every fiber of my being was trembling with the soul-gripping dread that we’d had our last fight and kiss.
That we’d worked our last job together and, even though we’d just started a life together, it was already at its end.
The double doors opened again, and a nurse called out, “For Mallory Monroe?”
My numb legs struggled to get underneath me as I stood—Thatch and Briggs helping keep me steady, as if this was something we all did for each other regularly. Not that we wouldn’t, it was just that we hadn’t.
We’d all seen too much. We’d all experienced too much. We’d signed up for it.
But I guessed they understood nothing compared to the possibility of losing the woman who owned your soul.
Still, nothing would’ve stopped me from getting back there. I would’ve dragged myself if it meant getting to Mallory.