Chapter 23
Grace
Blood seeped through my fingers at an unstoppable pace, the pressure doing nothing to staunch the flow. What if the bullet had hit an artery? Were there arteries near someone’s shoulder? I didn’t know enough about human anatomy to know what the fuck I was up against.
I stood on wobbly knees, trying to get him up off the floor. As if I could carry him. Even if he hadn’t been out cold, I couldn’t get enough leverage.
“Henley, come on, please,” I begged, tears pouring down my cheeks faster than the blood from his wound. I tried to drag him under his armpits, even knowing it likely hurt the injury more.
I didn’t know what to do. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“If you just wake up, I can get you out of here. I can get you to a hospital—”
“Grace?”
The familiar voice was nothing to me. All I cared about was Henley, all I could think about was Henley.
Henley bleeding. Henley passed out. Henley on the verge of death.
Never getting to kiss him again. Never getting to hold him or hug him or wake up to his body beneath mine.
I tried to grab his shirt, to do anything to move him. But I didn’t even have a car here—
A hand grabbed my wrist and I gasped, dropping my attempts to strike at whoever had touched me. No one could hurt us, I had to save him, to get him out—
Another hand grabbed my raised arm, halting my attack. I squirmed, shoving against them, doing everything I could to get them away from him.
“Grace, stop,” came that same voice, calm despite my rage.
“You can’t touch him!” I screamed, barely able to see through my watery eyes.
Large arms wrapped around me, pulling me into a hard, warm chest. Their hold was a vice, giving me no space to move. I squeezed my hands between my face and their body, trying to bang against them, to squeeze their skin, to do anything to get them to let me go. Henley was dying.
“He needs a hospital now,” another man’s voice announced, close behind me. Somewhere in the distant echoes of my mind, I knew that one too.
The arms around me tightened and a hand cupped the back of my head. My muscles felt weak, the fight seeping out of me almost instantly.
“It’s all my fault,” I sobbed, not realizing I was out of breath.
“You can tell us what happened later,” the man holding me said. “Right now, we need to help him.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to gather control of myself as I gripped his jacket.
Booker’s jacket.
“Do I need to carry you, or can you walk?” Booker asked, his voice a rumble in his chest.
“I-I can walk,” I told him. His arms slowly loosened, but I leaned on him for support a moment longer. When I finally turned around, I found Austin pulling Henley into his arms. He was pale and completely limp in Austin’s hold. The sight hurt, my heart squeezing in response.
“Is he going to die?” I whispered, unable to take my eyes off Henley.
Austin and Booker shared a look before Booker set a hand on my shoulder and led me toward the end of the hall. Austin followed close behind.
A series of turns later, we came upon a staircase. We climbed them quickly, coming out on the back side of the club. Rather than going through the chaos of bodies through the building, they steered me toward the back exit that led out to an alley.
The cold air barely registered as we left the alley and approached a truck parked beside the curb.
“How did you know where we were?” I asked as Austin slid Henley onto the back seat and Booker got in behind the wheel.
“Henley told us about this place after you showed up here without telling him. He thought it might become a problem one day,” Booker explained.
“And we tell each other everything,” Austin added. “Well, almost everything.”
“But it wasn’t simply a matter of guessing. We have the location on his phone,” Booker went on, starting the truck and blasting the heater. “We don’t watch it like hawks, but when something goes wrong, we check it.”
Austin left Henley lying on the back seat, allowing me space to climb in. He handed me his jacket, silently telling me to keep pressure on the wound. Henley's Carhartt was fisted in his other hand, soaked completely through with blood. Then he closed my door before getting in the passenger seat.
I gently lifted Henley’s head, laying him on my lap before pressing the jacket to the hole in his shoulder. “How did you know something was wrong?”
“Call it a hunch,” Booker muttered, shifting into drive. The wheels screeched along the asphalt as we took off.
Austin shifted in his seat, looking over the back at me. “Is there anything we need to be aware of?”
I glanced between the two of them, trying to figure out how the fuck I was going to explain everything to them. “Like what?”
“He’s asking if everyone we need to worry about is already dead, or if we need to be concerned about someone showing up at the hospital to finish the job,” Booker clarified.
“They’re all dead,” I confirmed quietly, turning my focus down to Henley. I ran my fingers through his hair, memorizing the feel of him. “No one will touch him again.”
I felt Booker’s eyes on me in the rearview mirror, and I wondered what he thought of me. They both barely knew me, aside from the facts of my job, and yet I sat in the back seat of his truck, covered in blood with their dying friend in my arms.
Silence filled the cab, aside from the roar of the truck’s exhaust, as Booker sped through the streets. My thumb ran over Henley’s brow, wiping away drops of drying blood on his skin.
Up close, I studied him. The tiny scar on his right cheekbone, the dusting of faint freckles over his nose and along his cheeks.
I ran my finger over his face, his lips, his hair and neck.
I needed him to know I was here, and I wouldn’t leave his side for a single second.
He only had to hold on a little while longer.
“Keep breathing, baby,” I whispered, one of my tears falling onto his cheek.
I brushed it away, but more fell. “We’re almost there.
Then we can live a full, happy life. No more killing.
No more blood. Just you and me.” I sniffled, not caring that his two best friends could hear every word I said.
“We’ll buy a cute house, not too big. We’ll make it cozy, and have fairy lights all over.
I’ll teach you how to take care of my plants, and you can teach me how to ride.
But you have to hang on, okay? I love you.
” My voice broke. I might never get to hear him say the words back to me, but that wasn’t what hurt the most. It was the idea of never hearing him laugh again.
Of never seeing him roll his eyes at me, or strive to push my buttons.
Words were simply that: words. But a life with him? That was all I wanted.
He just had to fight.