I had sent the text letting him know I was outside the bar, and then I waited while I held my breath for him to answer me back. My big mouth had hurt the one person I never wanted to cause pain, and I needed to fix it. It didn’t matter if he ignored me. I would march right in that bar and make him talk to me. As it turned out, I was getting all worked up for no reason because it only took a minute until his unmistakable silhouette came out the door and he was making his way toward where I had parked. I was nervous, but more than that, I was filled with regret. I never should have held on to what Jimmy had done to me and used it as an excuse to keep my heart insulated from all the wonderful things Rome was trying to fill it up with.
I only made it past the hood of the Cooper when there was a sudden roar that sounded like it was right behind me. I went to turn my head to see what it was because it was so loud, but before I got my neck cranked all the way around, I was bulldozed to the ground and deafened by the repeated pop-pop that sounded like extra-loud fireworks. I hit the ground with a grunt and clung to Rome, because those blue eyes were huge in his face and a typhoon of panic and fear was working its way across the shimmering surface.
“Rome?” I said his name because he wasn’t moving and something warm and wet was seeping into his T-shirt where I was gripping it in my hands.
His mouth moved. He said my name on a gasp but no sound came out. Something coppery-smelling and hot landed on my cheek as it leaked out of his neck and splatted on my face. His eyes flickered like a flame going out, and the next thing I knew I was trapped completely under him as all his strength fled. His blood was covering both of us and starting to pool on the ground beneath us. I couldn’t get to my phone, couldn’t move, because even when he was unconscious, even when he was furious at me and hurt by my selfish and thoughtless words, he was still trying to keep me and our baby safe.
“Rome!” This time I screamed it and clutched at him. “You have to open your eyes. Come on, big guy.”
I was screaming his name over and over but he wouldn’t move, wouldn’t react. I’m sure we were only there for a minute, but it felt like an eternity until Asa’s blond head appeared over Rome’s prone form and he told me he had called the police and an ambulance was on the way. It took three of the regulars to move him off of me, in part because I refused to let him go. I was crying and had so much of his blood on my hands it made it hard for me to hold on to him as the regulars from the bar worked to separate us and put pressure on the gaping wounds that were spilling his life out onto the ground.
I think Asa put an arm around my quaking shoulders and tried to tell me everything would be all right, but I knew that was a lie. Through the tears and Rome’s blood smeared all across my face, I could see that his eyes were still closed and that his massive chest wasn’t moving up and down. He was going to die right in front of my eyes, and I was never going to get the chance to tell him that I loved him. I absolutely couldn’t let that happen.
I broke free of Asa’s grasp and ran to where people were trying desperately to stop him from bleeding. The entire side of his neck looked like raw hamburger, flayed open and gushing vital red onto the ground. I fell on my knees, not caring that the asphalt ripped my skin open, and put my hands on his cheeks.
“Rome, please open your eyes, please. I love you so much. I need you. Please, big guy.” I was sobbing and I doubted the words made any sense. Somewhere in the distance I finally heard the sounds of sirens screaming toward us. The ambulance was too far away to do him any good.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.” I just told him over and over again, trying to will him to breathe. Because it was true. Being scared of handing over my heart to him because I wasn’t sure what he would do with it had nothing on the choking fear that I would never get to tell him how I felt because he wasn’t going to make it. He had always been a hero, and right now I almost hated him as much as I loved him. If he hadn’t been so perfect, so honorable, so devoted to me and his child, he wouldn’t be lying in a puddle of blood. It was just wrong on so many different levels.
“Please don’t break my heart, Rome. I can’t do this without you.” Somewhere along the line, police and the ambulance crew arrived, and again I had hands trying to pull me away from him. I bent down and put my mouth to his. I cried even harder when I felt how cold his lips were.
I kissed him, tasting the salt of my tears and the iron burn of his blood, and whispered that I loved him again and again. I had to succumb to the impatient hands of the female paramedic that pulled me away from him. I couldn’t take my eyes off his deathly-still face and his unmoving chest.
“We got him, honey.”
I shot my gaze to hers. “He has to be okay.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to make that possible. The blond hottie said you’re pregnant and that you might be hurt. We need you to get checked out.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. Just worry about him.”
The medic opened her mouth to argue, when there was suddenly a gasp and Rome’s bright blue eyes shot open only to flutter immediately closed again.
“Cora …” My name was just a whisper of sound, but it was enough to have me screaming his name again and to have everyone moving twice as fast as they had before. The paramedics had him on a stretcher and in the back of the ambulance in no time flat.
They didn’t say a word when I scrambled in after them. I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight until I knew for sure he was going to be okay. There was just so much blood and it wouldn’t stop flowing out of the holes that decorated his entire right side.
The female paramedic was all business as she went about hooking an IV into him and started to cut his clothes off so that she could work on getting all that blood to stop pouring out of him. She kept talking to him, telling him over and over that he had to fight, that he couldn’t leave me and the baby. She was rattling off info about the shooter and the bikers, but all of it was a dull buzz. I just wanted him to open his eyes and look at me. She told me to hold his hand, to let him know I was there. Once again the thing I was best at, talking, using words, had fled. All I could do was stare at him and cry. He was my entire world, he was everything I ever wanted, and it was going to turn my heart to stone if I didn’t get the opportunity to tell him that.
Suddenly the paramedic swore and started moving around frantically. Her sharp tone cut through my haze of despair. She told me I had better convince Rome to stay with us because my stubborn soldier wasn’t listening to her. I squeezed his hand, leaned over him and kissed that scar on his forehead. I told him everything, begged him to open his eyes. I told him that he had done his job and fought for me and the baby; now it was time to fight for himself. I would pull him back from the brink of death over and over again if that was what it took to keep him with me. I didn’t think it was doing any good, but when the ambulance rolled to a stop outside the hospital, I saw his eyes flutter open again. He didn’t look good and it didn’t take a medical professional to see that he had lost way too much blood, but those eyes were bright and looking right at me, so I made sure that if it was the last time he saw me, the last thing I ever got to say to him, I would make it matter. There was no way Rome Archer was going to fade away again without me telling him I loved him and needed him.
CHAPTER 18
Rome
“There’s those pretty baby blues. Keep fighting, big man, we’re almost to the hospital.”
I didn’t recognize the voice or the girl who spoke them. She was hovering over my head and I was having a hard time tracking her. I hurt all over and I couldn’t breathe. I was trying to suck air in and out but it didn’t seem to be working. I vaguely heard the sirens overhead blaring and the radio in the ambulance squawking. I couldn’t feel anything other than the hot blaze of pain from the top of my head to wherever my toes were.
“You have some pretty powerful friends. The guy that pulled the trigger already got picked up. I guess he was so scared of what the Sons of Sorrow would do when they found out he shot you, he took his happy ass to the station and turned himself in. Idiot. I guess he doesn’t know how many Sons are doing time.”
She prattled on and on while moving all around me. I didn’t care about the guy that shot me, I cared about Cora. I didn’t know if one of the bullets had gone through me and hit her, didn’t know how hard I had taken her to the ground, didn’t know if the baby was okay … The thoughts ran around and around and I couldn’t hold on to any of it anymore. The pain was too much. I couldn’t get any air and I was tired. So tired, and I felt some of the fire licking across my skin start to dull.
“Hey now, soldier, none of that.” The girl’s voice rose and slapped across me. I thought I heard another sound, a whimper or something that sounded like a wounded animal, but I couldn’t turn my head or even move my eyes to track the noise. They wouldn’t even open when I commanded them to. Something clamped on my hands and squeezed. I was surprised I could feel it amid the living fire that was scorching me up from the inside out.
“You didn’t make it all the way home to have some punk take you out. You need to fight. You got too much riding on coming out of this battle a winner. Fight.”
This chick was good at her job. Had I not been on the brink of death, I would have admired her a lot more. I didn’t know how she knew what I had to lose—my girl, my baby, a future and a family that I was finally, at the worst possible time, starting to understand that I deserved. It was all beyond worth fighting for, but I was so tired and I needed air. It was so much easier to just close my eyes and let the pain and fire take me.
“Shit, he’s crashing.” The stranger’s voice rose and everything around me started to fade away once again. I could hear Remy screaming at me to stop being an idiot, could hear my heart starting to slow down, and felt the pain start to drag me under and the fire shift from hot to freezing cold. “Honey, you better convince your man to stay with us, because he isn’t listening to me.”
Something jabbed into my side and into my arm and the stranger’s voice vanished to be replaced with the one I think I had been searching for all along.
“Rome.” She sounded like she was crying but I couldn’t pry my eyes open to look at her. “Come on, Captain No-Fun, I need you to look at me.” She sounded so sad, so scared, and it pissed me off there was nothing I could do to make her feel any better. I wanted to look at her, but it was hard. My eyes were so heavy. I felt soft hands stroke along my jaw, across my forehead and trace the scar that was there. “I can’t tell you thank you for saving my life while you aren’t looking at me, big guy. You saved us, me and the baby. Now I need you to save yourself. Come on, Rome, you can’t leave us now. You need to wake up so I can tell you how much I love you.”
I never wanted to leave her, not even when I was mad at her and acting like an idiot. I wanted to apologize for flying off the handle like a hothead, wanted to make sure that if I didn’t make it, my last words to her were words of love, words that expressed how important she had been in bringing me back to myself. I wanted her to know that I thought she was as close to perfect as I was ever going to get. I just couldn’t do it. My eyes wouldn’t open. My limbs wouldn’t work and I still needed air and felt like I was in a vacuum where there was none.
Something wet and warm slid across my face. I thought it was just more blood, but then it dripped more, slow and steady, and I heard Cora’s soft sob. I didn’t want her to be sad about anything. I wanted her to be happy and safe, to know that I loved her. It took every ounce of strength I had left, every morsel of fight I possessed, to pry my eyes open to look at her, and when I did the pain slammed back into me full force, enough to make me gasp and to have moisture flooding my eyes. I had never felt anything like this. I was turned inside out and losing my grasp on reality fast. I was sinking in pain and suffocating on lack of air.
I only made it past the hood of the Cooper when there was a sudden roar that sounded like it was right behind me. I went to turn my head to see what it was because it was so loud, but before I got my neck cranked all the way around, I was bulldozed to the ground and deafened by the repeated pop-pop that sounded like extra-loud fireworks. I hit the ground with a grunt and clung to Rome, because those blue eyes were huge in his face and a typhoon of panic and fear was working its way across the shimmering surface.
“Rome?” I said his name because he wasn’t moving and something warm and wet was seeping into his T-shirt where I was gripping it in my hands.
His mouth moved. He said my name on a gasp but no sound came out. Something coppery-smelling and hot landed on my cheek as it leaked out of his neck and splatted on my face. His eyes flickered like a flame going out, and the next thing I knew I was trapped completely under him as all his strength fled. His blood was covering both of us and starting to pool on the ground beneath us. I couldn’t get to my phone, couldn’t move, because even when he was unconscious, even when he was furious at me and hurt by my selfish and thoughtless words, he was still trying to keep me and our baby safe.
“Rome!” This time I screamed it and clutched at him. “You have to open your eyes. Come on, big guy.”
I was screaming his name over and over but he wouldn’t move, wouldn’t react. I’m sure we were only there for a minute, but it felt like an eternity until Asa’s blond head appeared over Rome’s prone form and he told me he had called the police and an ambulance was on the way. It took three of the regulars to move him off of me, in part because I refused to let him go. I was crying and had so much of his blood on my hands it made it hard for me to hold on to him as the regulars from the bar worked to separate us and put pressure on the gaping wounds that were spilling his life out onto the ground.
I think Asa put an arm around my quaking shoulders and tried to tell me everything would be all right, but I knew that was a lie. Through the tears and Rome’s blood smeared all across my face, I could see that his eyes were still closed and that his massive chest wasn’t moving up and down. He was going to die right in front of my eyes, and I was never going to get the chance to tell him that I loved him. I absolutely couldn’t let that happen.
I broke free of Asa’s grasp and ran to where people were trying desperately to stop him from bleeding. The entire side of his neck looked like raw hamburger, flayed open and gushing vital red onto the ground. I fell on my knees, not caring that the asphalt ripped my skin open, and put my hands on his cheeks.
“Rome, please open your eyes, please. I love you so much. I need you. Please, big guy.” I was sobbing and I doubted the words made any sense. Somewhere in the distance I finally heard the sounds of sirens screaming toward us. The ambulance was too far away to do him any good.
“I love you, I love you, I love you.” I just told him over and over again, trying to will him to breathe. Because it was true. Being scared of handing over my heart to him because I wasn’t sure what he would do with it had nothing on the choking fear that I would never get to tell him how I felt because he wasn’t going to make it. He had always been a hero, and right now I almost hated him as much as I loved him. If he hadn’t been so perfect, so honorable, so devoted to me and his child, he wouldn’t be lying in a puddle of blood. It was just wrong on so many different levels.
“Please don’t break my heart, Rome. I can’t do this without you.” Somewhere along the line, police and the ambulance crew arrived, and again I had hands trying to pull me away from him. I bent down and put my mouth to his. I cried even harder when I felt how cold his lips were.
I kissed him, tasting the salt of my tears and the iron burn of his blood, and whispered that I loved him again and again. I had to succumb to the impatient hands of the female paramedic that pulled me away from him. I couldn’t take my eyes off his deathly-still face and his unmoving chest.
“We got him, honey.”
I shot my gaze to hers. “He has to be okay.”
“We’ll do everything in our power to make that possible. The blond hottie said you’re pregnant and that you might be hurt. We need you to get checked out.”
I shook my head vehemently. “No. Just worry about him.”
The medic opened her mouth to argue, when there was suddenly a gasp and Rome’s bright blue eyes shot open only to flutter immediately closed again.
“Cora …” My name was just a whisper of sound, but it was enough to have me screaming his name again and to have everyone moving twice as fast as they had before. The paramedics had him on a stretcher and in the back of the ambulance in no time flat.
They didn’t say a word when I scrambled in after them. I wasn’t going to let him out of my sight until I knew for sure he was going to be okay. There was just so much blood and it wouldn’t stop flowing out of the holes that decorated his entire right side.
The female paramedic was all business as she went about hooking an IV into him and started to cut his clothes off so that she could work on getting all that blood to stop pouring out of him. She kept talking to him, telling him over and over that he had to fight, that he couldn’t leave me and the baby. She was rattling off info about the shooter and the bikers, but all of it was a dull buzz. I just wanted him to open his eyes and look at me. She told me to hold his hand, to let him know I was there. Once again the thing I was best at, talking, using words, had fled. All I could do was stare at him and cry. He was my entire world, he was everything I ever wanted, and it was going to turn my heart to stone if I didn’t get the opportunity to tell him that.
Suddenly the paramedic swore and started moving around frantically. Her sharp tone cut through my haze of despair. She told me I had better convince Rome to stay with us because my stubborn soldier wasn’t listening to her. I squeezed his hand, leaned over him and kissed that scar on his forehead. I told him everything, begged him to open his eyes. I told him that he had done his job and fought for me and the baby; now it was time to fight for himself. I would pull him back from the brink of death over and over again if that was what it took to keep him with me. I didn’t think it was doing any good, but when the ambulance rolled to a stop outside the hospital, I saw his eyes flutter open again. He didn’t look good and it didn’t take a medical professional to see that he had lost way too much blood, but those eyes were bright and looking right at me, so I made sure that if it was the last time he saw me, the last thing I ever got to say to him, I would make it matter. There was no way Rome Archer was going to fade away again without me telling him I loved him and needed him.
CHAPTER 18
Rome
“There’s those pretty baby blues. Keep fighting, big man, we’re almost to the hospital.”
I didn’t recognize the voice or the girl who spoke them. She was hovering over my head and I was having a hard time tracking her. I hurt all over and I couldn’t breathe. I was trying to suck air in and out but it didn’t seem to be working. I vaguely heard the sirens overhead blaring and the radio in the ambulance squawking. I couldn’t feel anything other than the hot blaze of pain from the top of my head to wherever my toes were.
“You have some pretty powerful friends. The guy that pulled the trigger already got picked up. I guess he was so scared of what the Sons of Sorrow would do when they found out he shot you, he took his happy ass to the station and turned himself in. Idiot. I guess he doesn’t know how many Sons are doing time.”
She prattled on and on while moving all around me. I didn’t care about the guy that shot me, I cared about Cora. I didn’t know if one of the bullets had gone through me and hit her, didn’t know how hard I had taken her to the ground, didn’t know if the baby was okay … The thoughts ran around and around and I couldn’t hold on to any of it anymore. The pain was too much. I couldn’t get any air and I was tired. So tired, and I felt some of the fire licking across my skin start to dull.
“Hey now, soldier, none of that.” The girl’s voice rose and slapped across me. I thought I heard another sound, a whimper or something that sounded like a wounded animal, but I couldn’t turn my head or even move my eyes to track the noise. They wouldn’t even open when I commanded them to. Something clamped on my hands and squeezed. I was surprised I could feel it amid the living fire that was scorching me up from the inside out.
“You didn’t make it all the way home to have some punk take you out. You need to fight. You got too much riding on coming out of this battle a winner. Fight.”
This chick was good at her job. Had I not been on the brink of death, I would have admired her a lot more. I didn’t know how she knew what I had to lose—my girl, my baby, a future and a family that I was finally, at the worst possible time, starting to understand that I deserved. It was all beyond worth fighting for, but I was so tired and I needed air. It was so much easier to just close my eyes and let the pain and fire take me.
“Shit, he’s crashing.” The stranger’s voice rose and everything around me started to fade away once again. I could hear Remy screaming at me to stop being an idiot, could hear my heart starting to slow down, and felt the pain start to drag me under and the fire shift from hot to freezing cold. “Honey, you better convince your man to stay with us, because he isn’t listening to me.”
Something jabbed into my side and into my arm and the stranger’s voice vanished to be replaced with the one I think I had been searching for all along.
“Rome.” She sounded like she was crying but I couldn’t pry my eyes open to look at her. “Come on, Captain No-Fun, I need you to look at me.” She sounded so sad, so scared, and it pissed me off there was nothing I could do to make her feel any better. I wanted to look at her, but it was hard. My eyes were so heavy. I felt soft hands stroke along my jaw, across my forehead and trace the scar that was there. “I can’t tell you thank you for saving my life while you aren’t looking at me, big guy. You saved us, me and the baby. Now I need you to save yourself. Come on, Rome, you can’t leave us now. You need to wake up so I can tell you how much I love you.”
I never wanted to leave her, not even when I was mad at her and acting like an idiot. I wanted to apologize for flying off the handle like a hothead, wanted to make sure that if I didn’t make it, my last words to her were words of love, words that expressed how important she had been in bringing me back to myself. I wanted her to know that I thought she was as close to perfect as I was ever going to get. I just couldn’t do it. My eyes wouldn’t open. My limbs wouldn’t work and I still needed air and felt like I was in a vacuum where there was none.
Something wet and warm slid across my face. I thought it was just more blood, but then it dripped more, slow and steady, and I heard Cora’s soft sob. I didn’t want her to be sad about anything. I wanted her to be happy and safe, to know that I loved her. It took every ounce of strength I had left, every morsel of fight I possessed, to pry my eyes open to look at her, and when I did the pain slammed back into me full force, enough to make me gasp and to have moisture flooding my eyes. I had never felt anything like this. I was turned inside out and losing my grasp on reality fast. I was sinking in pain and suffocating on lack of air.
