22. Ethan
Ethan
We swing by the hospital before we do anything else, because whatever's happening with Cassie, I can't ride out on a hunt without laying eyes on my father first, even for sixty seconds.
The waiting room's worse than the compound was.
Rosie's pacing a groove into the linoleum.
Meg's on the phone with somebody, her voice pitched low and careful.
And Cam is sitting in a plastic chair in the corner, knees pulled up to her chest, rocking slightly, and the sight of it stops me dead in the doorway.
I've never once seen Cam like this. Not during the standoff with Cassie's brothers, not during anything. Cam's the one who calms everybody else down. Cam's the steel this whole club leans on when things go sideways. Watching her come apart is somehow worse than the blood on our own porch steps.
"Cam." I crouch in front of her, and it takes her a second to focus on my face. "Hey. Look at me."
"I should have been faster." Her voice comes out cracked. "I saw them come over that fence and I froze, Ethan, I actually froze, and by the time I got my gun up Brick was already down. He's down because I froze."
"That's not on you." I take her hands, they’re ice cold despite the overheated waiting room. "Nobody could've moved fast enough. Nobody. You hear me? Not even Shadow, Brax or Piper."
She shakes her head, not believing a word of it, and Rosie crosses over to crouch beside me, wrapping an arm around Cam's shoulders. "Cam. Sweetheart. He loves you. He's a fighter, you know that better than anybody alive."
"He took two bullets that weren't his to take." Cam's whole body shakes with it. "For a woman he's known for a few weeks. That's who he is, that's exactly who he's always been, and I can't lose him, Rosie. I can't, not after everything it took us just to get here."
I didn't know, not really, not until this exact second watching her fall apart in a hospital chair, how much my father getting shot has cost the one person in this world who loves him the way I'm trying to love Cassie.
Cam's always been the calm one. The one who handles things.
Watching that crack wide open scares me worse than almost anything else tonight has.
Knuckles crouches down on Cam's other side, big and awkward in a way I've never seen him around anybody, and takes one of her hands in both of his.
"You didn't freeze, Cam. I was ten feet from you.
You had your gun up inside two seconds. Nobody on this earth moves faster than that against three men coming out of the dark. You hear me? Nobody."
Something in Cam's face cracks a little further at that, like his blunt certainty lands harder than Rosie's softer reassurance managed to, and she leans into his shoulder without a word, letting him hold some of the weight she's been carrying alone since the shots first rang out.
A doctor finds us twenty minutes later, tired-eyed, scrubs still marked from surgery.
"He's stable. It was close, I won't lie to you, he lost a lot of blood and one of those bullets came within a centimeter of doing damage we couldn't have fixed.
But he's stable, and he's strong, and if the next twelve hours go the way I'm hoping, I think he’s gonna pull through this. "
Cam makes a sound I've never heard a grown woman make, something between a sob and a laugh, and buries her face against Rosie's shoulder.
"Can we see him?" I ask.
"Family only, and only two at a time, for now." The doctor looks between us. "He's sedated. He won't know you're there yet. But you're welcome to sit with him."
"Go." Cam pushes me toward the doctor before I can offer her the spot instead. "Go see your father, Ethan. I'll be right behind you. I just need a minute."
I sit with him for five minutes, watching machines breathe for him, his hand limp and heavy in mine, and I tell him everything I can't say when he's awake to hear it and deflect it with a shrug.
That I love him. That I understand now, all the way down, exactly what it costs to earn something instead of being handed it.
That I need him to fight, because I can't do the rest of tonight without knowing he's still in the fight too.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Brax.
brAX:
Got something. Nerd's phone pinged a tower two hours out, in a town called Ashford, which sits right on the river. His cell went dark after that, but it's the only lead we've got. Shadow's already pulling up everything on properties out that way tied to Estrada money.
Ashford. A river town.
I press one more kiss to my father's forehead and head for the door. "Love you, Dad. Fight for me. I'm going to go fight for her."
Cam catches me in the hallway, eyes red but steadier now, some of the old iron creeping back into her spine.
"Bring her home, Ethan. And then you come back here and you sit with your father until he wakes up and tells you himself how proud he is.
Both things matter tonight. Don't let one cost you the other. "
"Yes, ma'am."
I find my brothers already saddled up in the parking lot, engines idling low, waiting on me.
Cash tosses me a fresh magazine for my gun without a word.
All business now, with no jokes left anywhere on his face.
Ramsay's already got the route pulled up on his phone, handing it wordlessly to Shadow, who nods once and tucks it away with no need to be told what to do with it.
This crew doesn't need speeches to move as one thing.
Knuckles me my helmet.
"Ashford," he says. "Let's go get your wife back."