Chapter 38 #3
“Allie, come on.” My forehead nearly hits hers. I don’t even care who sees. “Open your eyes for me. C’mon, baby. Just one second. Give me one second.”
Her lashes don’t move.
My chest is caving in around my heart.
Landon’s hand lands hard on my shoulder once. “Take her inside.”
I don’t answer because if I open my mouth again, something ugly and broken is going to come out and I don’t have time for it.
I lift her.
The second her weight settles into my arms, something in me both calms and fractures all at once.
She’s here. I’ve got her. She’s not slipping out of my hands. She’s alive.
Alive.
I cling to that word like a lifeline while I stand and turn toward the clubhouse.
Her head falls against my chest. Her bound hands shift awkwardly behind her back. That nearly sends me into another spiral.
“Cut those,” I snap.
Blaze is there in two strides with a knife already out. One clean slice and the plastic gives.
Her wrists fall free. The bruises around them are dark and ugly.
A fresh wave of rage rises so fast it blacks the edges of my vision.
No.
Later.
Rage later.
Now her.
I tuck her tighter against me and start moving.
Fast.
Every step toward the clubhouse feels too slow. The porch blurs. The door opens before I hit it. Women move. Voices rise.
Tracie makes this broken sound from somewhere to my left that nearly tears me in half, but Emma catches her before she can lunge forward and tells her something low and steady I don’t even process.
I don’t stop.
I carry Allison straight through the front room and into the quieter downstairs infirmary because it’s clear and I need a bed under her now, not stairs, not distance, not one more second of this damn lot between us and safety.
I lay her down as gently as I can with hands that still don’t feel fully connected to my body.
Her hair fans across the pillow. Dust smears the clean sheets instantly. Her face is too pale.
I’m on the edge of the bed before she’s fully settled, one hand on her cheek, the other sliding down her throat to feel the pulse there even though I already know she’s alive because I felt her breathing against my chest the whole way in.
Still.
I need to feel it again.
There.
Fast. Fluttering. But there.
Thank God.
“Allie.”
The room feels too bright. Too small. Too full of people trying not to crowd us and not succeeding.
Emma comes in first, then Mom and Raven, then Tracie despite whatever anybody said about her sitting down.
I hear Doc’s name being shouted from the hallway, Boots pounding.
Somebody cries. Somebody swears. Somewhere behind it all, Dom is on the phone with somebody and Cain is giving directions in that clipped Sergeant-at-Arms voice that means the club is still moving even while everything in me has stopped.
I don’t look away from her.
Not for a second.
“Allie, baby, come on.” I brush my thumb over her cheek. “Open your eyes for me.”
Nothing.
I dip closer, my mouth near her temple, near her hair, near the warm skin that still smells like dust and blood and Allison under all of it.
“You’re okay,” I whisper, even though I don’t know that fully yet, even though I’m saying it as much for myself as for her. “You’re okay. I’ve got you now.” My voice breaks on the last word.
I don’t care.
I don’t care who hears it, who reads it on my face, who walks into this room and sees exactly how wrecked I am over her.
No more hiding. No more pretending. Not after this.
I smooth her hair back again and again because I need something to do with my hands that isn’t breaking things. “I’m here,” I whisper. “You hear me? I’m here. You came home to me, baby. You did so good. You did so fucking good.”
There’s dirt under my nails. Her blood on my wrists. A smear of it across the front of my shirt where she lay against me on the walk in.
I would wear it forever if it meant she wakes up.
Doc barrels into the room then with his med bag and takes one look at her before his whole body shifts into work mode.
“Move.”
I don’t. Not fast enough.
Doc’s eyes flash. “Jimmy.”
Emma’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Let him look at her.”
I force myself back exactly one step.
No farther.
Doc checks her pupils first. Then the wound at her temple. Then her neck, her breathing, her ribs, the bite at her throat that I somehow have not had time to lose my mind over yet because there has been too much blood and too much almost and not enough air in the room since I got my hands on her.
“She’s concussed,” he mutters. “Likely from the crash, maybe the fall too. Pupils are responsive. That’s good.”
Good.
I latch onto that word like it’s holy.
He keeps going. Checking. Assessing. Talking in low fragments I can barely process over the pounding in my ears.
No gunshot wound. No immediate sign of internal bleeding.
Concussion likely. Watch for vomiting, confusion, loss of consciousness continuing too long.
Possible cracked ribs. Neck bite superficial but ugly. Wrist bruising severe.
Every word builds another ledger in my head of what Drew took. What he touched. What he did.
If he somehow ends up in the afterlife, I’ll kill him there too.
“Allison.” Doc says her name louder this time, tapping lightly at her shoulder.
Her face pinches. Tiny. Brief. But it’s movement.
Every person in the room goes still.
“There you go,” Doc says. “C’mon, sweetheart.”
Her lashes flutter.
Once.
Twice.
Then her eyes open halfway, unfocused and glassy with pain.
The sound that leaves me doesn’t belong to any version of myself I’ve ever known before.
Half laugh. Half sob. Entirely wrecked.
“Allie.”
Her gaze drifts. Misses. Comes back. It finds me eventually. And the second it does, something in her face loosens.
Not all the way. She still looks dazed, hurting, too pale. But she sees me.
That’s enough to make my knees nearly buckle.
“Jimmy,” she whispers.
I’m back at her side instantly, one hand on her hair, one on her shoulder, trying not to crowd Doc while also not caring in the slightest what anyone thinks of the fact that I’m two breaths from climbing into the bed with her just to make sure she stays right here.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough as gravel. “I’m here, baby.”
Her eyes close again for one second. Then open. “You came.”
That one destroys me. Not because it’s dramatic. Because it isn’t. Because she says it like there was ever any chance I wouldn’t burn this whole town down to get to her.
Always.
“I’ll always come for you,” I whisper.
The room goes very quiet around us. Nobody interrupts. Nobody looks away.
I lean down until my forehead rests lightly against hers, careful of the cut, careful of the pain, careful in every way I should’ve been from the start. “I love you,” I breathe. “I’ve got you. You’re safe. I’m not letting anything happen to you again, you hear me? Nothing. Ever.”
Her lashes tremble. Her fingers twitch against the sheets.
I take her hand and bring it to my mouth, pressing kisses to dirty knuckles, to bruised skin, to whatever piece of her I can touch without hurting.
“Forever,” I whisper into her hand. “You and me. I swear to God, Allison. Forever.” Tears burn hot behind my eyes and I let them.
I don’t give a fuck anymore.
Not after watching him drag her back out of the tree line.
Not after hearing her scream when he bit her.
Not after carrying her limp in my arms not knowing if I’d find a bullet hole when I put her down.
No more pride. No more distance. No more pretending the shape of what I feel for her can fit inside any smaller word than love.
She’s looking at me through all of it, dazed and hurting and alive.
Alive.
And somehow, in the middle of all this blood and dust and panic, the one thing I know with perfect clarity is that the world saw it too.
The lot. The brothers. The women. Our parents.
All of them saw exactly what she is to me when I ran to her.
Exactly what I became when he put his hands on her.
Exactly who I am now.
This claim is not private anymore.
It never will be again.