Chapter 45
Widow
The impact is fucking jarring, so much so that I lose hold of the back of the truck and end up in the water. If not for that stupid metal carabiner—I’mma kiss Bohnes later, swear to God—then I’d have been dragged off by the current and away from the truck itself.
My head is spinning and the water is freezing cold, despite the bright sunshine overhead. The Mohawk River isn’t all that wide in the spot where we fell; if I wanted to, I could swim myself pretty easily to one shore or the other.
If I wanted to.
All I want right now is to keep my promise to Ash.
Using the rope, I drag myself to the back of the truck. The force of the fall opened the loose roll-up door, revealing the dark and nearly empty compartment underneath. You have like a minute at most, Adrian. Cars sink quick, and this truck is heavy. If Ash is inside—
I haul myself over the edge of the truck, out of the water, and let myself fall into the relatively dry cargo area.
We’re at an angle, the heavier front end of the vehicle tilted down.
Once this thing dips a few more inches into the water, it’s going to come flooding over the sides like a waterfall and any chance of saving my friend is gone.
The carabiner is broken from the impact, so I use the bolt cutters to snip it off, freeing myself to slide down the tilted floor of the truck. My body knocks into something at the bottom, and I blink rapidly, trying to force my eyes to adjust to the shadowy interior.
Another face is blinking back up at me from inside what looks like a goddamn dog kennel.
It’s Ash. Naked and bleeding all over, a fresh scar underneath his belly button as he struggles with shaking arms to push himself up into a sitting position. Neither he nor the cage seem to be secured in here, so that crash and the subsequent fall were probably hell on him.
His dark eyes find mine, and it’s a spiritual fucking moment for me. Other than Scarlett, I’ve never seen into another person’s soul so clearly or ached so fiercely for their obvious suffering.
“Adrian.” This must be a spiritual moment for Ash, too, because my name on his lips sounds like a prayer.
With a sudden strength, the naked boy pushes himself up to his knees and reaches out, curling his pale fingers through the black bars of the cage.
It’s impossible to miss the tattoo on his ring finger, the one that matches so perfectly to mine.
I climb off the edge of the cage, standing on the wall that backs up to the cab. At this point, with the angle the truck is facing, that’s basically the floor. I grab onto Ash’s hands and squeeze them with my own cold, wet ones. We’re both shaking violently.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I tell him, wasting no time in letting go of his desperate fingers and getting to work. I try to lift the cage, but that’s impractical. Not only is it too heavy, but I’d never be able to swim in this current and this icy water carrying the whole thing.
Water begins to trickle over the walls of the truck, sliding like rain drops down to join us in the shadowy bottom of this horrible death pit.
Ash sees the water, purses his lips, and closes his dark eyes for a few seconds.
I’ve already got the bolt cutters in my hand, putting them up against the bars of the cage and gritting my teeth as I fight to clip just one of the many, many obstacles between me and Ash.
“Listen to me, Adrian,” he whispers, his voice sad and sage as he opens his eyes to gaze at me. “You’re not going to be able to get me out of here—”
“Parking space,” I growl, grunting as I snap another bar.
Setting the bolt cutters briefly aside, I reach out and try to see if I can’t mangle the damn cage, pull apart the seams, bend it into submission.
But this ain’t some cheap kennel, it’s a literal cage made of metal and it’s a hell of a lot stronger than the lock I snapped to get in the door.
“I want you to tell Scarlett that she’s the most beautiful mistake I’ve ever made.
Even though I know that if I’d stayed away from her, the outcome might’ve been better for both of us, I don’t know that I could.
Whatever our souls are made of, hers and mine are the same.
” Ash quotes fucking Wuthering Heights, twisting a rusty nail inside my soul.
Water is filling the space around us, all the way up to my knees now. It’s coming down in torrents on all four sides and we are rapidly running out of time. How dare Ash make me like him even more in his last moments on earth?
No. NO! I won’t let these be his final moments on earth. I won’t.
“I’m not telling her shit. Whatever you want to say to our wife, you can do it with your own chattering teeth when I drag you out of here.
” I’m snapping bars with so much strain that I can feel it in my neck, my jaw, my upper back.
Working on cars and beating ass and worshipping calisthenics in juvie, that’s all done me a lot of good.
Without all that, there’d be no hope at all.
“I love you, man. I’m not leaving you here. ”
“I love you, too, Adrian. Please tell Kellin and Alexei that the three of you taught me what it’s like to have brothers who care.
To have a family that makes me smile, that goes out of its way to lift me up instead of tear me down.
I’m not sure that I believed there were people like you all out there. I was alive, Widow, but I never lived.”
The water is at my groin now and Ash is rapidly running out of room to breathe. The cage itself comes up to my waist. He’s not able to stand in there. Trapped on his knees, he’s going to run out of oxygen even before the truck takes its final funereal dive into the depths of the frigid river.
Leaving Ash all alone, suffocating. Alone. Suffering.
“We got Jonas, Ash. Scarlett stabbed his eyes out.” I’m shaking from both cold and adrenaline as I adjust the bolt cutters, snapping another bar with monumental effort. My heart is racing. Hard to breathe. I’m a little dizzy.
“You got our babies back?” Ash whispers, clutching at the roof of the cage and tilting his head so that his nose and mouth are above the water. We have seconds left together. Seconds. I’m surprised he can even hear me over the rush of the water. “I can die in peace now.”
He says that, only he’s crying. I can tell, despite how wet it is in here.
He’s gasping for breath, his fingers rigid and white around the bars.
With that scar on his abdomen and whatever horrors he went through between the hospital and now, even the shock of this could kill him.
It feels hopeless, but I don’t stop. I won’t stop.
“If you die today, I’m going with you. I’ll never leave you again.” I snap another bar. Another.
“Please don’t. Scarlett needs you. Tell her I love her. Oh, God, Adrian. I love her so much. I—” His voice is swallowed up by the water as it surges over the top of his head and cuts off not only Ash’s words but also his air supply. Another bar snaps. Another. Snap. Snap.
I suck in a huge breath of air and lean down, putting my head in the water and my mouth through the opening I’ve made in the top of the cage.
I press my lips to Ash and push air into his lungs.
Sacrificial lamb he may want to be, but his body drinks it in greedily.
It’s a macabre kiss made of ice water, desperation, and need.
It’s a goodbye kiss.
I stand back up and suck in a huge breath of my own.
Take out another bar. Another. Just enough space to drag him through, even if it means ripping his stitches or tearing his flesh open.
I just have to get him out of here. The thought of my best friend dying alone in the icy dark all by himself, after everything he’s been through, it’s too much. I can’t handle it.
Bending down a second time, I offer Ash a rescue breath that’s received much less enthusiastically than the first.
He’s dying.
He’s drowning.
The rising water is making it difficult for me, blurring my task, numbing my fingers, tugging at the bolt cutters in my hands.
Another bar. Another breath, probably the last I’ll be able to give him. Another bar. Another bar. Another bar.
I drop the bolt cutters and reach both arms into the hole, grabbing hold of Ash by his upper arms. With a strange gulping sound, water surges over the walls of the truck and floods us both.
The vehicle plummets downward, but a strong, hard grip on the rope around my waist keeps both Ash and I from going with it.
Poor Ash is dragged through the hole in the side of the cage by the force of the truck sinking down.
It takes the cage with it, but my grip on Ash—and someone else’s grip on me—keeps us both in place.
With a surge of bubbles, the vehicle disappears into the shadows as the water closes briefly over my head.
I’m forcibly lifted up and out of the water. Ash is still underneath it, and I let out a violent snarl as I drive my aching muscles to the edges of their capabilities. I haul him up, bringing his head above the water.
My eyes flick over to find Alexei, holding onto a rope with one hand and me with the other. He’s clearly being pushed to his own limits, clinging to me and Ash against the current as we move slowly through it.
On the rocky shore, there’s Scarlett and Bohnes, their teeth gritted as they haul all three of us back to dry land and life.
Back to life.
Alexei jumped back in an ice-cold river for us.
I’m overwhelmed with gratitude and love and this insane feeling of safety and family and honesty and—
We scramble onto the rocks, all four of us working to get Ash onto his back. Scarlett is giving him rescue breaths while Bohnes begins compressions.
Alexei turns to me, helping me out of the rope I tied around myself and checking to see if I’m injured.
When he sees that I’m fine, he forces his dripping body over to a bag that’s lying on the ground nearby.
From it, he pulls out emergency blankets and brings them over to me and Ash, seemingly forgetting that he, too, was in the water.
“Please, Ash, please,” I grind out through chattering teeth, accepting the emergency blanket that Alexei wraps around my shoulders before I turn and do the same for him. He doesn’t fight me either, allowing me to put the blanket on him as he uses a phone from that same bag to make a call.
“Send the medical team to my house.” That’s all he says before he hangs up, the pair of us pausing at the sound of coughing.
Ash is rolled onto his side, vomiting water onto the rocks as he bleeds and shivers under another shiny silver blanket that Alexei drapes over him.
Scarlett is holding his head in her lap, her fingers stroking his face as he empties his lungs and Bohnes checks out the wounds on either side of his body.
Two lines of sharp red from Ash’s shoulders all the way down his arms and legs.
That’s the mark of the cage, carving its shape in him as it plummeted to hell and left him in purgatory with me.
“Oh my fucking God,” Scarlett is saying, over and over again. My eyes lift up to the bridge where the damaged Chevelle is just barely backed away from the edge. Pretty sure the truck slammed into it when it made that abrupt turn. “Oh my fucking God, you guys.”
Ash somehow finds the strength to push himself up into a sitting position, shivering and looking around like he’s not sure if he’s dead and in heaven or alive and…in heaven. With us, that’s how it feels when we’re together.
“Scarlett…” Ash’s voice is weak and gravelly, but that doesn’t stop him from turning and plowing into her.
He throws his body against hers so suddenly and so forcefully that Scarlett ends up with her back on the rocks, a naked and bloody Ash on top of her.
He grabs at her and kisses her with so much love and relief that… even I…
Pretty sure I’m crying, leaning against Alexei when he offers a warm place for me to rest my head.
“Are you okay?” Bohnes asks, his face soft and concerned in a way I’ve never seen directed at me before. Without thinking too hard about it, I grab his steady hand in my shaking one and press a king’s rough kiss to the back of his knuckles. Prescott royalty, me and Bohnes.
“You saved not only my life, but also Ash’s. Thank fuck for Prescott’s resident fixer.”
Bohnes’ lips twist into a strange smile before he leans in and presses a retaliatory kiss to my own forehead.
“Don’t forget about Alexei. He dove from the top of the bridge into the water.
” Bohnes points up at the broken railing as Alexei lifts his chin and huffs, like it’s no big thing at all for him to not only risk his life for us but also to face up to the same environment where he and Scarlett nearly died.
“It wasn’t a difficult decision,” he says, his voice wavering slightly.
“Maybe it wasn’t hard to say yes, but don’t act like it was cheap or easy.” I turn and press a kiss against his gloved knuckles, too. I notice that he doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t shudder. Instead, he pulls me into a hug that feels genuine and real and brotherly.
Feels like home.
“Come here, lover boy.” Bohnes hauls Ash off Scarlett, the pair of them clinging and grabbing desperately at each other. Kellin takes a pair of sweatpants from the bag and helps the naked, trembling boy into them as Ash’s dark eyes lock on mine.
Our stare is broken apart by Scarlett, falling to her knees in front of me.
First thing she does is slap me hard on the face.
Second thing she does is throw her arms around both me and Alexei, pressing her mouth to mine then his.
Mine then his. Mine. I shove my tongue between her lips and kiss her back like this is another rescue breath, delivered from the world of air to the world of the drowning.
The sound of an arriving vehicle breaks up our reverie.
It’s the Facel Vega, coming to a stop beside the small hill that leads from the road down to the edge of the river. The suicide doors are opened wide, revealing the bloodred interior along with our old friend and uncle, Burt fuckin’ Cramer.