room to the door.
“Shake,” Shotgun called before the door was pulled shut. He kept his eyes on me, his hand still brushing gently at mine.
“Yeah.”
“Can you ask one of the girls to bring Gage in to visit?” My hand squeezed his a little tighter, and he let out a huff of laughter while shaking his head. “Think she wants to see him more than she wants to see me.”
“He’s cuter.”
“He still poops in his pants,” Shotgun challenged, his smirk growing wider.
“We all make sacrifices for the men we love.”
Shake’s laughter followed him down the hall. His announcement at the end of the hall that I was going to be just fine was one even I found myself letting out a thankful sigh too.
Shotgun pulled the hospital chair right up to the bedside without letting me go for a second. “He’s actually okay?”
“Actually…” he answered simply, his eyes falling to the bed for a second, “… I’m fucking done with this, Ave.”
Dread struck me in the chest, the weight of his words making it feel like someone had sat on me, making it hard to breathe, hard to focus.
This is where he leaves.
This is where he walks away like everyone else.
Maybe I could ask him why.
No one else really told me why.
Maybe if I knew, I could do something different next time.
“I’m fucking done trying to explain to people what we are. So, here it fucking is,” he announced, and I held my breath, waiting for that final blow, the final strike. “As far as I’m fucking concerned, you’re my old lady. And you have been for a long damn time. You wanna run. You wanna protest about shit? Go ahead. Fucking do it. If I have to prove to you that I’m not those people in your past, the ones who didn’t see how fucking beautiful and amazing you are, I will. If I have to chase you across the planet and show you just how far I’ll go to keep you in my life, and in Gage’s life, then I will.”
“That’s insane,” I whispered, not able to keep myself from smiling, though. He wasn’t looking up at me.
His eyes were focused on the bed like he’d rehearsed what he was going to say, and he was trying to remember if he’d forgotten anything. And it was fucking cute as hell.
“Well, baby, I’m a little fucking insane, and you knew that the night you showed up and never fucking left.”
“Okay.”
He blinked, his brow knotting between his eyes before they flicked up to meet mine. “Okay?”
I wanted this.
I wanted him.
I wanted Gage.
And the club.
And those thoughts that had plagued and taunted me for so long were right. I was in so fucking deep. But it wasn’t this deep, dark ocean I always imagined, where I was tossed in when the water got rocky. Where I just sunk into their depths and into the darkness, alone and not knowing whether someone would reach in and drag me back to the surface.
This was a different kind of deep.
One where I recognized that other people’s choices didn’t make my worth any less.
One where I recognized that the water was never going to always be smooth sailing, things were never going to be perfect, and occasionally we were going to end up in the water.
So maybe the deep is the same. The waters are still dark. They still get rough sometimes.
Maybe the thing that changed this time was that I learned how to swim.
“I don’t want to be anywhere else,” I admitted through a crashing wave of emotion. “I love you. And I fucking love Gage. And I love the club.”
“That’s everything I needed to hear,” he answered with a chuckle, shaking his head. “I wish I could fucking kiss you right now, but…”
“You can kiss my ass,” I answered, tugging on his hand.
“That’s it. I changed my mind.”
“No takebacks! You’re stuck with me.”
He groaned loudly and rolled his eyes. “The fuck have I done.”
“Come on now.”
I crinkled my nose, struggling to force my eyes to open. Was I really that tired? Why hadn’t it been this hard last time?
“Time to wake up.”
Shotgun?
No, it wasn’t Shotgun.
He’d gone to get Gage while I had a sleep.
Who was—
There was a sharp pinch in my arm, and I gasped, sucking in a long, deep breath like the last breath of life had suddenly been injected into my body. My heart began to race, that kind of feeling you got when you saw that boy you were crushing on,