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I push myself through the battered glass, and my heartbeat syncs with my harried breaths. My shoulder gets stuck, and I wrench my upper body, tearing my shirt and skin. My palms slice in a hundred different places as I climb across the glass-littered hood and I barely feel it.
As I fight to escape with my life, I think about how pissed Cash will be if this is how I get myself killed. How stoic Finn will be until some poor fucker breathes on him wrong and he blows their brains out. And Roan? That dude’s heart has been broken so many fucking times, I can’t break it again.
Sparks from the friction of the train’s brakes fly into the air like a flare gun. They erupt in my peripheral as I scramble across the hood. I manage to dive onto the road next to the tracks just before the barreling train collides with my truck.
The ear-splitting sound of crunching metal rips through the air as I lie on my back on the pavement. My lungs fill fully with disbelief that I’m alive. The violent sounds continue, the train blazing past while its brakes still screech, fighting to slow down.
Chaos surrounds me while calm strikes my soul.
I laugh into the night at the sheer absurdity of it all.
I knew this was no way for a Fox to go.
After walking for twenty minutes, I feel a lot less like laughing. The pain that adrenaline masked at first is beginning to take root all over my body. What seemed like a crazy twist of fate was just me being an idiot and almost paying for it with my life.
I find myself a few blocks away from Stella’s place. My feet wandered their way to her without me ever consciously deciding to. My mind drifts to a memory of Stella’s warm smiles and laugh from earlier in the night. It’s one of a million similar ones, but suddenly I’m stricken with such an overwhelming need to make more of them that it’s hard to breathe.
I clutch my chest, gulping for air. When none comes, I run the rest of the way, taking the steps of her stoop two at a time. I ring the doorbell, somehow knowing that I won’t be able to breathe again until I see her face.
As I wait, I am smacked with a realization stronger than the train hitting my truck.
I didn’t survive the crash because I’m a lucky bastard. It’s because my time on this earth isn’t over. I can see the reason I was given a second chance so clear and pure.
I inhale gratitude and exhale a promise: I won’t allow death to claim me until I can call Stella Mae Wright mine.
Stella
I’m about to get into bed when my doorbell rings. Confused as to who would be here at this hour, I cross to the window overlooking my stoop. I’d recognize that mop of blond hair anywhere. Throwing a sweater over my sheer sleeping cami, I hurry downstairs.
I open the door. “Loch, what are—”
“I just needed to see your face.” His blue eyes lift from my feet to my face. His eyes are bruised and swollen, cuts and burns on his face and arms.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“You should see the other guy.” He chuckles weakly, wiping a trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand.
“Alright, get inside.” I step aside and hold the door open. I learned to stop asking questions years ago, when he first showed up bloody on my doorstep in the middle of the night.
Sometimes, he comes with pizza and a six-pack, insisting he just wants to hang out, but I can tell there’s something more. Gunpowder might be clinging to his clothes and his hands shake, or he smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes, distant and morose.
Other times, he would be drunk and tired and just want a place to crash without having to deal with Cash when he still lived with him.
“Let me look at you.” I pull out a stool from the kitchen counter and usher him to sit. He doesn’t wince when I tilt his chin side to side to assess his injuries. There are shards of glass in the sticky, drying blood on his cheek and temples. I pick up his hands at the wrists, turning them over to look at his palms.
I wince seeing the cut-up skin embedded with more glass. “Did you get thrown through a window?”
“I guess you could say that.” He shrugs. I set his hands in his lap then go to grab my first-aid kit and a bowl of warm water.
It doesn’t happen often, but it happens enough that I have a routine when it comes to cleaning up the boys. Gather my supplies. Don’t ask questions. But be ready to listen if they decide to share.
I return and notice the slump of his broad shoulders and bounce of his knee as he waits for me. He’s a man now, but it’s so hard not to see the reckless yet scared boy I once knew.
After losing both his parents so young, he was raised by a pack of wolves—no, foxes. He was thrown into the life at nine years old. He didn’t get a childhood, but at the same time, he never had to grow up. He’s lived in this perpetual state of the wild, youngest brother.
I take his hand and begin to pick out the glass with tweezers. It’s tedious, but he makes it easy, never flinching or asking for a break. Once everything is out, I clean his bloody palms, my bowl of water turning red as I rinse the towel.
I work in silence until I start to wrap his palms in bandages, and he says softly, “I love you, Stella.” There’s a sorrowful note to his tone, and it hurts a little to hear him say those words.
