Kings of Anarchy (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #3) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,179

to trace his thumb over my wedding ring. "High Rocks," he decided.

"The amusement park?" I questioned and he nodded.

"Pa never took me there. Said it was for kids. And apparently being eight years old meant I'd outgrown being a kid already. By the time I was a teenager I figured I was too old and too fucking cool for that shit. But I guess I was an idiot. Because now I never got to go."

"You will get to go." I leaned up, pressing my hands to the pillow either side of his head and gazing into his dark eyes. "We'll go together."

He smiled a little, but it was the saddest smile I'd ever seen. I leaned down and kissed him, tasting my own tears on his lips and the lasting flavour of the man who had claimed me as his and who I'd claimed right back. We were walking to the brink of death together in this room, me at his side, and I refused to let him slip away from me. I would pull him back when it counted most.

I slid back down his body to curl up with my leg hooked over his and my head on his chest, trying not to break. Kyan ran his fingers through my hair and my heart started to beat in time with his.

“Sleep with me,” he asked and I felt like he was asking so much more than that.

I nodded, squeezing his hand, giving him this, too afraid of refusing it if this was his last wish. But the pain that caused me was unimaginable.

My breathing grew shallow as we held each other, nothing but the hours between now and dawn seeming to exist. And I was sure they would determine everything. This was it for him, life or death. And all I could do was pray for life.

“I love you, Kyan,” I told him, meaning it from the depths of my soul.

“I didn’t earn that, but maybe I might’ve if I had a bit longer,” he breathed.

“You earned it,” I said firmly, squeezing my eyes shut. “Don’t ever say otherwise. You’re everything, Kyan.”

“Good to know, baby. At least I got to make you mine before the end. I can say I had one good thing,” he said contentedly, hugging me tight and he soon drifted off to sleep, leaving me with my heart breaking.

I lasted perhaps only another hour watching over him before exhaustion dragged me down into a dark and tortured sleep. One where Kyan's fingers slipped out of mine and I couldn't find him anywhere in an endless maze of eternal night.

I’ d been in Ash Chambers for most of the night, unable to cope with the silence from Kyan’s room as I waited on morning and an update on his progress. According to all of the studies this day was the most likely to be the one that decided his fate and from the ashen look on Tatum’s face the last time she’d come out to take some food into the room for the two of them, I was finding it hard to hope for the best.

He hadn’t eaten anything in two days and she’d had to start crushing his pills and giving them to him in water now that his throat was so swollen he was hardly able to swallow. I knew she hadn’t wanted to deliver that update to me, but she knew better than to lie and it wasn’t looking good. His decline had been swift and unrepentant and he’d been asleep for most of the last twenty four hours too, the fever sapping his energy as the virus plagued his body.

The doctors I was video calling daily had started to give me that condescending, patronising look. Their latest advice had been for me to prepare myself. Well, fuck them. They were the ones who needed to prepare themselves because I’d spent the evening doing everything I could to ruin their fucking lives for giving up on him and come tomorrow they’d find themselves out of their fucking jobs and under investigation for some pretty serious crimes which had been undeniably linked to their sorry asses. No one gave up on Kyan Roscoe and got away with it.

But despite that minor victory I’d claimed over them, I couldn’t deny the hopeless panic which had begun to creep along my limbs.

My life had been a series of unpredictable upheavals and I’d been a fool to fall into the trap of believing that this life I’d