His tone is flippant, as usual, but I can hear the tension under it.
“Understatement,” Priest bites out. I can’t see him where he sits in the front passenger seat, but he has that same tension and anger in his voice as well. “I don’t think it could have gone worse.”
Gage glances over at him, and Priest nods at something unspoken that passes between them. At a different time, I might have tried to figure out what they were saying to each other with that look, but now I can’t even be bothered.
“Do you think we got them all?” Ash asks. “I took out a couple of those fuckers, but there were a lot of them.”
“There’s no way to know,” Gage replies, and I can tell he’s grinding his teeth in irritation while he drives. He glances in the rearview mirror, and his green eyes are bright with fury. His strong features look even harsher and more sharp than usual. “That was fucking chaos. There could be more of them that didn’t show up to the church or some that got away. We won’t know until…”
He trails off, and no one really needs him to finish that sentence.
Until they either try again, or they don’t.
“Let them fucking try,” Knox says, cracking his knuckles. “If they come after us a second time, they’ll wish they’d stayed in whatever hole they crawled out of.”
“We have to tighten things up,” Gage fires back. “We have no way of knowing what they’ll do, and we didn’t see their first attack coming. That was a mistake we can’t afford to repeat. We can’t let our goddamn guard down again.”
That raises the tension in the car even more, and Priest lets out a controlled breath that seems loud in the sudden quiet.
I can hear everything they’re saying, and I’m aware of the danger and the tension and how pissed they all are that this happened in the first fucking place. But I can’t feel any of those emotions with them.
It’s like my whole body is numb, and the shit with the cartel might as well have happened to someone else for how distant it seems in this moment. I stare blankly ahead, watching the city of Detroit pass us by through the windshield, but I don’t really see much of it. The buildings and headlights and exit signs are all a blur, and I don’t know if it takes us fifteen minutes or fifteen days to get back to the guys’ house. Time slides by like molasses, and none of it makes a difference.
Someone touches my arm at some point, sliding a warm, sure hand down from my shoulder to my bicep, and I barely feel it until suddenly pain explodes through the haze I’m floating in. I wince, cursing under my breath.
Ash frowns and pulls my jacket back enough to expose my arm. Blood has soaked into the sleeve, and I didn’t even notice. It didn’t even hurt before Ash touched it, but now there’s a dull, throbbing ache, but even that isn’t as sharp as it should be.
“What happened?” he asks, frowning.
I shake my head. I don’t know. I don’t remember. So much was happening in the church, and everything before Hannah—
Everything before the alley just feels like a blur.
“Shit,” Ash mutters. He presses gently at the edges of the wound. “Just tagged, I think. But you’re losing too much blood.”
Maybe that’s why I feel so hazy. Maybe it’s the blood loss and not the growing realization of just how badly this all went down.
Ash puts pressure on the wound, trying to keep it from bleeding more, but I can’t really feel that either.
Gage hits the gas, weaving in and out of traffic to get us back to the house. No one calls him out on it or comments on his wild driving at all, and we make it to the driveway in what’s probably record time.
“Inside,” Gage bites out, and the four of them move like a well-oiled machine. Ash and Knox cover me, flanking me on either side. Dimly, I realize they’re making sure that if someone is waiting to leap out of the bushes and take me down, whoever it is will have to go through them first.
Gage and Priest get to the door before us and unlock it, and we all make it inside without incident. I just let them guide me along. Their hands feel warm and comforting and safe, and they take me up the stairs to my bedroom.
Without them, I’d probably still be standing outside, staring blankly into the middle distance, not knowing what to do next.
But the four of them leap into action so I don’t even have to think about it.
Hands start undressing me, helping me out of my outfit from the wedding. I let them do it, lifting my arms when they urge me to and stepping out of my shoes and pants. They touch me like I’m something precious, running their fingers over my face and down my good arm.
They all look tired. Gage and Knox and Priest all have the same grime and blood smeared on them that Ash did. Their suits are dirty and rumpled, and there’s none of the confident poise from before the wedding.
Someone puts their hand at the small of my back, and I go where they guide me.
We end up crammed inside the bathroom, all five of us. I can hear the guys murmuring to each other, talking in low voices, but I can’t focus on what they’re saying.
“Hey.” The deep rumble of Knox’s voice cuts through the haze for just a bit. “Sit here, okay? Let me look at your arm.”
He pushes down the lid on the toilet, and I sit on it obediently. I can’t really feel the blood on my arm, but I can see it, stark and red against my skin and the white of the bathroom tiles where it drips down my arm to the floor.
Knox moves with the precision that always seems so surprising for someone his size. He cleans the blood away and disinfects the wound, his inked hands dextrous and efficient. Part of my brain thinks to brace for the sting of the antiseptic, but I barely even feel it, so I don’t flinch.
I also barely feel the needle when Knox threads it through my skin, stitching up the wound on my arm. There’s more blood on the floor and on my arm, and I stare at it with no real feeling. It’s almost like it belongs to someone else.
“River.”
I hear my name again, and I blink, trying to look to see which one of them is calling me. Ash leans in, squatting down in front of me.
“Are you with us?” he asks.
Am I? It’s a good question. I don’t even really know.
“Are you okay?” he tries again.
I open my mouth, but at first, nothing comes out. My throat feels dry and tight, and the words feel locked down deep, somewhere I can’t access them. I swallow hard and try again.
“I’m fine.”
It comes out thick and raspy, and probably not convincing at all, but it’s all I’ve got.
Clenching my jaw, I take a deep breath and then another one, trying to force back the cloud in my brain. I can’t let this drag me under. All my life, I’ve been able to shake off the pain and the hopelessness and keep going, powering through by sheer force of will.
I don’t want to have to think about that alley and what happened there.
I don’t want it to be real.
If I give in to these feelings, let them consume me, then I won’t be able to hide from it anymore. I’ll have to face it.