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He practically dragged Nicco back outside, down the stairs, far enough from the house that none of their crew would hear.
“You’re not coming,” Ash said.
Nicco’s eyes darkened. “Last I checked, I am still the captain.”
Ash ground his teeth. “That’s exactly my point. You’re not coming until you stop asking me to take over the club.”
Nicco sighed. “Ash.”
Ash cut him off. “No. I’m fucking tired of this, Nic. I’m tired of worrying that every time you go out on a ride or, hell, into another room, it’s going to be the last time I ever see you. My heart has been breaking for the last fucking year, and I’ve been trying to take care, to be gentle, to understand, but I’m done. I’m not going to let you disappear off the edge of the earth, not without doing every goddamned thing I can to stop you.”
Nicco took in a dark, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry for making you worry,” he whispered. It was quiet and sad and so fucking final that Ash felt like screaming, damn who heard.
“Don’t apologize,” Ash gritted out. “Just don’t give up.”
“It feels more like…letting go,” Nicco admitted. “Ash, you’ve always been stronger than me, from the very first day you knocked on my door, so I get why it doesn’t make sense. But there’s…relief.”
Ash shook his head. “I know exactly how strong you’ve been this past year, Nic. I know exactly how hard you’ve been holding on. I’m telling you right now, you don’t have to do it alone.”
“We don’t have time for this, Ash,” Nicco muttered. “We have to help Hanna.”
Ash gritted his teeth. “No, Nic. I have to help Hanna. You have to help yourself. Hanna will understand.”
He slammed his phone into Nicco’s hand. “I already have the doctor dialed. You want me to be a leader, here I go leading. You call right now and make an appointment with her, and I will let you come with me to save Hanna. That’s my line.”
Nicco stared at the screen in his hand. His heart was pounding, beating an uneven rhythm in the suddenly cavernous hall of his chest, like some grand church left empty except for a chapel bell ringing out of tune. “I’m…scared.”
Ash closed his eyes and swallowed hard. When he opened his eyes, they were glassy and so blue, blue as the sea, as the sky above. Blue as the freedom of an early morning. Perhaps freedom, perhaps relief, could take on many forms. Perhaps it didn’t have to be blackness and shadow that felt like finally putting down his load. “Then we’ll be scared together. All three of us.”
That was the reminder Nicco needed that they truly didn’t have time. Not if Hanna was alone in the dark at the top of a mountain throwing a lit flame at a gasoline factory. “Ash, you have to go. I can’t… I can’t let you lose her. You…deserve a life.”
“I can’t lose you either.” Ash’s voice was rough and angry. “Don’t you get it, Nic? You’re part of that life. This isn’t a goddamned game to me. It never was. And it’s sure as shit not some way for me to pass the time before my real life begins. I know Hanna feels the exact same way, so I’m telling you now because I think it’s the only way to get it through your thick head—you don’t get to save us if you’re not saving yourself.”
Nicco sighed. “You don’t know what you’re asking of me, Ash.”
Ash raised his hand to Nicco’s jaw, and the touch was so gentle from a man in his leather jacket, fingers covered in ink, the rough shadow of stubble growing in along his throat, that it was nearly Nicco’s undoing. “I know exactly what I’m asking, Nic,” Ash said quietly. “I’m going inside. Leave you alone with your thoughts. Come find me when you’ve decided what you want to do.”
“Wait.” Nicco grabbed Ash’s wrist. He’d grabbed Ash’s wrist so many times in the last few days, Hanna’s too, when they had been tangled together, skin and sweat and hot, aching need, giving and taking and connecting and…
It had never been just sex. They had all known that from the start. It had never been a distraction or a way station to any of the other things he’d told himself while stealing a taste of the thing he wanted most in the world. From the moment he had kissed Hanna at the gala, to the shower he’d shared with Ash, to the way it felt to kiss them both at the same time, it had been the quiet touches that had said all they couldn’t. For days, they had been communicating with their bodies, with their shared connections, touches in the darkness that promised a life in the light.
And for a few days, Nicco realized, his heart hadn’t felt quite so heavy. Because he hadn’t been carrying the weight entirely on his own, because he hadn’t been alone in the darkness, because there had been something he had wanted to focus on instead.
Love couldn’t save a life all on its own. Good, strong, beloved people lost their battles each and every day. He knew that. But he also knew, in this moment, with absolutely everything on the line, that love could give him the tools he needed to save himself. Ash had been watching his back for years, but it had also been Ash taking long shifts and carrying the extra weight so Nicco was never truly alone. It had been Hanna who had told him that being afraid couldn’t stop him, Hanna who had reminded him exactly why he fought so hard for the people who couldn’t fight for themselves.
They each seemed to fill a space within him, one that Nicco hadn’t realized was empty until both Ash and Hanna were thrumming through his blood, as if they had always been there.
It would be easier to slip off into the night. That only took one step, one choice, and then…nothing. The other path would be so very much harder, a thousand choices, so many fears, so many challenges, so very, very many setbacks. The decision had seemed completely obvious until they had come back to Montana that Nicco hadn’t even seen it as a decision, but an inevitably. Truly, it hadn’t been any choice at all.
Except now, for the first time since his own father had put him in the hospital and Nicco had put him in the ground, he felt a sense of…curiosity about what might come next. It wasn’t entirely good curiosity. Like any open road, it bent at awkward angles, and would most certainly require him to hold on tight, to know when to speed up and when to slow down, but it was, to Nicco’s great surprise, enough.
He wanted to know what happened next. He wanted to learn how to love two people in the light of day, two fiery, independent, passionate people who drove him and each other to the edge in all the best and worst ways.
He wanted to know Dante as a man, to get to know Saint, to stand at Dante’s side the day he finally made an honest woman of her, to hold their kids in the hospital room.
To maybe, one day, even hold his own.
He wanted to help just one more person, and then another, to keep the club alive, to feel that sense of achievement and, dare he even think it, hope, when they got someone settled into a new life. It had once been the most important thing in his life, and he had forgotten that. Perhaps, The Princes was no longer the most important, but the color was slowly beginning to return around the edges, and Nicco was remembering exactly why it had all started in the first place, exactly who he had been doing it all for.
