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“Mouse,” Christian warned.
She knew he was trying to protect her, but she needed to know. For days now everything that had happened to her had been completely outside her control. Now she needed the only control she had left, which was knowing exactly how many seconds she had left to live.
“Please, Mouse,” she whispered.
After a brief hesitation, he replied, “Two minutes.”
One hundred and twenty seconds.
It was time.
“You guys have to go. I appreciate everything you’ve tried to do for me, I really do, but I don’t want to make your wives widows, and your children grow up without their fathers. Leave. Please,” the last was a broken plea she prayed convinced them.
The men stood stiffly.
Unmoving.
But Christian nodded at them.
“Go. Neither of us wants to break your family’s hearts,” he said.
“You too,” she told Christian as the others reluctantly moved away.
“No way in hell, mama bear. We either both walk out of this room alive or neither of us do.”
There was determination on his face. The steely kind that said arguing was futile.
She loved him so much it hurt.
Hurt knowing that love was going to get him killed.
“Please,” she begged.
Instead of answering, he crushed his mouth to hers in a kiss that started fiery and passionate but morphed into something deeper. The fire and passion were still there, but there was also tenderness, sweetness, and love.
An entire lifetime in one moment.
“Never leaving you, sweetheart, because you’re the other half of my heart. I don’t want to live in a world without you in it.”
His words cracked the shell of her control and tears began to roll down her cheeks as she nodded. If they couldn’t be together in life, they would be together in death.
Nodding as though understanding that she had accepted he wouldn’t leave her, Christian kept his gaze locked on hers as he spoke to his friend. “Mouse?”
“Sixty seconds.”
“You need to go, man.”
“Almost got it,” Mouse responded.
“Don’t want you dying in here. Phoebe and Lolly need you.”
“Got no intention of leaving my girls any time soon.”
“Christian, I love you,” Lila murmured. She wanted so badly to touch him, hold him, wrap her arms around him, rest her head against his chest, and take her last breath wrapped in his embrace. But chained as she was, she couldn’t do anything but use her words and eyes to express how much he meant to her.
“Love you back, mama bear, more than anything.”
“You would have been an amazing father to our baby bear.”
