SULLY
Eleven minutes to midnight, and all I can think about is kissing her.
It's a stupid, reckless thing to want in a room full of people who can't know, but I can't help it.
The countdown clock's up on the big screen behind the DJ, and the whole club is buzzing with anticipation.
Somewhere in the last hour I decided that when it hits zero, I'm going to find Ember in the crowd and kiss her, secret or not, and I'll figure out an excuse later.
New Year's kiss. Everyone kisses someone at midnight.
It's practically tradition. Nobody would think twice.
So, I've been keeping her in the corner of my eye the whole time, even though this puck bunny is annoying the hell out of me. I’ve been tracking her through the crowd, her gold dress moving through the dark, waiting for my moment. Which is the only reason I notice when something's wrong.
One second, she's near the booth, and the next she's not where she should be. I get pulled sideways into a photo with some guys who recognizes us from the game, and it takes me thirty seconds too long to get free of them, and when I look back, she’s gone.
I don't think anything of it at first. It's a big club, she's with the girls. They wouldn't let anything happen to her, plus, she's a grown woman. But a feeling I can't explain tells me to go find her, and I find myself scanning the floor for her.
“You seen Ember?” I ask Cassidy.
“Toilets, I think.” She frowns. “Why?”
I don't answer, because I've already spotted her.
Across the club, near the back, where the light drops off, there's a gray door marked with a fire exit sign.
And she's not walking to the toilets, she's barely walking at all.
There's a man with his arm around her, half holding her up, half steering her.
Her head lolls against his shoulder, and her feet are drag behind her, and he's moving her toward that door with a quick, purposeful walk of a man who does not want to be noticed.
Everything in me goes cold and then very, very still.
“Fuck,” I roar.
I go through that crowd like it isn't there, shoving people out of the way, my eyes locked on her, on the door, on his hand gripping her waist. The closer I get, the clearer it is that she's gone, completely gone, her eyes half shut, her mouth slack, and he's got her almost to the exit.
“Hey.” It comes out of me low and lethal. “Hey!”
He glances back, sees me coming, and speeds up. That's the last mistake he makes tonight. I hit him at a full run and take him clean off his feet and away from her. My free hand shoots out and catches Ember as she sags, easing her down against the wall so she doesn't hit the floor.
Then I'm on him. “You fucking piece of shit!” I roar, already swinging.
The first punch lands square on his jaw, the second opens his lip.
The third and fourth are pure rage. People start screaming, someone yells for security.
Hands grab at my shoulders, but I keep going until two big security guards finally haul me off him.
“Get off me! That asshole drugged her!” I shout, fighting their hold. “He fucking drugged her! Look at her!”
One of the guards looks at Ember slumped against the wall, Cassidy already on the floor beside her, crying and holding her up.
The other guard hesitates. “He's VIP,” the second guard says under his breath, some code word passing between them. “Let him go.”
They release me, and I drop straight to my knees next to Ember. Her eyes are half-open, but she's not seeing anything. Cassidy is sobbing, arms wrapped around her.
“Em, Em, look at me. Come on, baby. Stay with me.” My voice is shaking. I'm shaking. Everyone around us is frozen in shock. The girls, the boys who just arrived, the club staff who finally realize what happened.
I pull her into my arms carefully, pressing my forehead to hers. “I've got you. You're safe.”
Emmett shoves through the crowd, face thunderous. “Call the fucking police,” he barks at the nearest staff member. “Now, and get that piece of shit out of here before I do it myself. And call an ambulance.”
The guy on the floor is still half-conscious, blood on his mouth, security holding him up.
Emmett points straight at him. “If you don't have the cops and an ambulance here in the next two minutes, I will make it my personal mission to take this entire club down. Every investor, every license, every single name on the paperwork. Do you understand me?”
The staff scrambles, and someone is already on the phone. The second security guard radios for backup, and they drag the guy away toward a back exit.
I stay on the floor with Ember, one arm around her, the other smoothing her hair back from her face. Cassidy is crying so hard she's shaking. Collette is on the phone to someone, voice tight. The rest of the girls are white-faced and silent.
“Ambulance is on the way,” Fish says, crouching beside me. “Two minutes out.”
I nod, but I don't take my eyes off Ember.
“I've got you,” I keep telling her, even though I don't know if she can hear me. “You're safe. I'm never letting go.”
The ambulance arrives quickly, and two paramedics push through the crowd with a stretcher. I don't let go of Ember until they make me. Even then I stay right beside the stretcher as they load her in, answering every question they throw at me, even though I don't know the answers to half of them.
“I'm coming with her,” I tell them. It's not a request.
“Me too.” Cassidy climbs in on the other side, still crying, still holding Ember's hand.
Emmett stays behind to deal with the police and the club.
“I'm not leaving until that piece of shit is in cuffs and on his way to a cell,” he says, voice low and lethal.
“I want him charged. I want every second of footage.
And if this club tries to bury it, I will bury them.
Tell Ember I'll be at the hospital the second I'm done. Take care of her.” He squeezes my shoulder once, hard, then turns back to the officers who just arrived.
I climb into the ambulance with Cassidy. The doors slam shut, and the vehicle pulls away from the curb, lights flashing. I sit on the bench, one hand wrapped around Ember's, and I don't take my eyes off her face the entire ride.
She doesn't open her eyes once.
The hospital is bright, cold, and too slow.
They take her straight through. “Suspected drink spiking,” the triage nurse says, calm and unbothered, as if it's the most ordinary thing in the world.
That's the part that makes me want to put my fist through the wall, that it's ordinary, that there's a routine for it.
I can't sit down, so I pace in the corridor outside her curtain with blood drying on my knuckles.
Cassidy's beside me, gripping my arm so hard it'll bruise.
Emmett paces the length of the corridor and back, over and over, jaw locked while Jo tries to reassure him that everything is okay.
When the doctor finally comes out and says she's stable, that they got her early, and that she's going to be all right, she just needs fluids, monitoring, and time to sleep it off, my legs nearly go out from under me, and I have to put a hand flat on the wall to stay upright.
“Oh, thank God,” Cassidy breathes. “Thank God. She's okay.”
I don't say anything. I can't. My throat's closed up, my eyes are burning, and I stand there with my hand on the wall and my head down, trying to get one clean breath as tears stream down my cheeks.
When I lift my head, Cassidy is staring at me.
She looks at me like she's finally seeing the whole thing, every bit of what Ember means to me.
“Sully,” she says very quietly.
“Don't.” It comes out cracked. “Cass, don't. Not now.”
Emmett has stopped pacing, and he's looking at me too. I watch it move across his face, slow, the understanding landing, all the pieces coming together at once. I don't have it in me to hide it. Not tonight, not after what just happened.
“Please,” I say, and my voice is wrecked. “I can't do this right now. I just need her to be okay. That's the only thing I've got room for. Please.”
Cassidy squeezes my arm and doesn't push. Emmett looks at me for a long moment, something working behind his eyes, and then he nods once and lets it go. Jo hugs him, whispering in his ear.
They let us see her once she's settled. Cassidy goes in first with Emmett, and I stay out in the corridor as it can only be two people in there at a time.
Jo stays with me. She doesn't say anything for a minute, just sits on the hard chairs, but I can feel her eyes on me. “She's going to be okay, Sully.”
“I know.”
“You got her early.” She lets that sit. “If you hadn't seen her ...”
“Don't.” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I can't think about that.”
She wipes the tears from her eyes. “I'm glad you pummeled him.”
“Me too.”
Silence falls between us for a couple of moments before she speaks again. “You have feelings for her, don't you?”
My stomach drops. “Jo ...”
She shakes her head at me. “I'm not saying anything. I'm not going to say anything.” She looks up at me now. “I just want you to know that I'll handle Emmett.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Not really, but kind of,” she says, giving me a small smile. “It doesn't matter. Ember is okay, that's what’s important. Tonight has been a lot, and whatever's going through my fiancé's head right now, let me deal with him. You've had enough for one night.”
I don't know what to say to that. So, I just nod, and she squeezes my arm, and that's when Emmett comes out of the room.
He stops in front of me.
For a second, neither of us says anything until he does. “We need to talk,” he says. “Not tonight.”
“I know.”
He studies me quietly. “Sully, is it real?”
I could lie. I've been lying for months, for years, for my whole life, and it would be so easy to do it one more time. But I'm too tired to lie.
“Yeah,” I say. “It's real. It's always been real since we were kids.”
He shuts his eyes and shakes his head slowly, not in anger, just like it's a lot, like it's the last thing on top of a night that was already too much.
“Right,” he says. “Okay. We'll talk, properly, soon.”
“Okay.”
Jo slides under his arm and turns him gently toward the waiting room. “Come on, let's get you a coffee and catch up with the others. They are all a wreck.”
Cassidy's still in with Ember when I go in, and she takes one look at my face and gets up. “I'll give you a minute,” she says quietly, and slips out, pulling the curtain behind her.
And then it's just Ember and me.
She looks so small and fragile lying there.
There's a drip in the back of her hand and a monitor beeping somewhere.
She's pale, and her eyes are barely open, and the second I see her like that, everything I've been holding in since the club comes up at once, and I don't even try to stop it.
I sit down beside the bed, and I'm crying, properly crying, and I take her hand.
“Hey,” she slurs. Her eyes drift to me and she tries to focus. “Why're you ... crying.”
“I'm okay.” I wipe my face with my free hand. “I'm okay, I promise. You just scared me.”
“I don't believe you.” Her eyes are already closing again. “You saved me.”
“Em.” My voice breaks on it, and I don't care.
I press her hand to my mouth. “I can't lose you.
Do you understand me? I can't. I have never been that scared in my entire life, and I need you to know, I love you.
I'm in love with you. I have loved you like I've never loved anyone, and tonight I nearly ...” I can't finish it.
She's looking at me, or trying to, her eyes glassy and unfocused, and I don't even know how much of it is landing, if any, and it doesn't matter, because I needed to say it, once, out loud.
“Sully,” she murmurs. “I'm tired.”
“I know, baby, sleep.” I press one more kiss to the back of her hand, and I sit with her until her breathing goes slow and even, and I know she's under. She won't remember a word of this tomorrow.
Maybe that's for the best.
I walk out of Ember's hospital room, and Cass is waiting there for me, looking like shit. Neither of us says anything until we're through the doors and out into the warm Vegas night. The Strip is still lit up and roaring like nothing happened tonight, like the whole world isn't different now.
Then she stops on the pavement and turns to me. “Sully.”
“Yeah.”
“I heard you in there,” she confesses quietly.
Oh shit. “Yeah.”
“How long?” she says.
“Cass ...”
“How long, Connor?” she demands.
I look at my sister, standing on a Vegas footpath at whatever ungodly hour it is, and I'm too tired and too wrung out to hold any of it anymore.
“Always,” I say. “I've loved her always, since we were kids. It's always been her.”
Cassidy stares at me in surprise. “Always?” she repeats.
I nod. “Always.”
She's quiet for a long moment, then steps in and wraps her arms around me, hard, her face against my chest, and I hold onto my sister as she breaks down.