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One of the doctors looks up at me, his eyes cold as they stare back into mine. “We’ll do everything we can to save her, but it’s probably best you’re not here for this.”
The other doctor drags the paddles toward her, and for a long second, I can’t breathe. We’re so close to losing her.
“Fight for us, angel,” Wyatt’s quiet words aren’t meant for me, or for any of the men in this room. They’re for our girl. They’re a plea for her to fight for the life we could have if she can just pull through. If she can just fight a little while longer, she’ll never have to fight another day in her life because we’ll give her everything.
CHAPTERSIXTY-NINE
WYATT
It feels like they’ve been operating on her for hours, but when I look at the clock across the hallway, I see it’s only been forty-three minutes since Crew led us from the room.
Every muscle in my body screamed for me to stay, to not let her out of my sight, but Leighton wouldn’t want us to see her like that, and I know we’d just be in the way. Every beep of the machines they were hooking her up to would have made us rush to her side and get in the way of the doctors trying to save her life, and that’s the last thing they need.
“What are we going to do about the warehouse?” Elias asks. I’m not totally surprised he’s gone into work mode. It’s his coping mechanism when things get hard. He needs the distraction, and obviously the silence has gotten the better of him.
“We have men there now. We have enough evidence to prove they were planning on trafficking in the city, and that the commissioner was willing to sell his daughter in order to make that happen. We’re releasing it all to the press in the morning. All the photos, the timestamps, everything. The scandal will overshadow their deaths, but our men are staging it to look like it was a police standoff against the three of them because of the evidence that was uncovered.” Crew runs a hand down his face, the first sign of the exhaustion we’re all feeling. “We’ve planted some evidence at the precinct of one of the sergeants that was there tonight.”
“So it’ll look like a sting gone wrong.” Elias nods along. He and Crew have strategized a million times, but even he’s impressed by how quickly this plan has been thrown into motion. “How do we explain Leighton’s disappearance?”
“She’ll need to make a statement to say her father kidnapped her and that she managed to escape before the sting went down. We also believe we’ve uncovered the reason they were able to force Leighton into the marriage to Jason. It seems there was a death at a party Leighton attended in high school. The boy had his pants around his ankles and a rock had been used to hit him in the head. It must have landed in just the right spot so it killed him. But they were never able to figure out who the girl was that did it.”
“Leighton,” I whisper.
Crew nods. “We believe so. We think that when she makes the statement, if it was in fact her, that she should come clean. Say she was young and didn’t know what else to do and that she allowed her father and the governor to cover it up. Which further invalidates the two of them for forcing a fifteen-year-old girl into a marriage because she defended herself against some overzealous kid who tried to assault her.”
“That’ll work.” His eyes flick to the door again like he thinks the doctors will be out anytime soon, but from the last update we got after they first evaluated her, it’ll be hours yet.
But she’s going to be okay. She has to be.
Shehasto be okay.
CHAPTERSEVENTY
LEIGHTON
Whoever said death is peaceful was a liar.
Nothing about the pain raging through my entire body can be considered peaceful, quite the opposite in fact.
I thought the pain would have stopped by now.
The white light was kind of underwhelming, too. Instead of my life flashing before my eyes as I approached it, it just seemed to lurk in the distance, taunting me until it eventually disappeared. No matter how hard I tried to get to it, it floated away before I could reach it. But maybe everyone’s experience with the light is different, and mine is just a maddening game of cat and mouse with the damn thing.
A faint beeping sound catches my attention as I search for what feels like the hundredth time, making me pause my pursuit for peace. Am I in Hell? Because surely that’s the only place a sound like that belongs.
But I don’t belong in Hell…do I? I was a good person. What happened with Jack was an accident. It was self-defense, surely God wouldn’t hold that against me.
Or maybe it was my relationship with Wyatt and Elias. I don’t think the Bible says anything about loving two men in one committed relationship, but perhaps I missed that Sunday of church.
If that’s what landed me here, it was worth it. Every second I spent with them was worth a lifetime of eternal damnation.
“I think she’s waking up,” a voice in the distance says. Probably some demon come to welcome me to whatever version of hell they have concocted for me.
“Come on, angel, open those pretty eyes for us.” Another voice drags my attention from the first.
There’s something warm in my hands, but perhaps it’s the hellfire that waits for me. Nonetheless I allow myself to imagine it’s my men. The ones who showed me how to love and to be loved. Who made the first twenty-two miserable years of my life worth it. The ones who gave me everything I always wanted, even if it was for such a short time.
“Pretty girl,” the first voice coaxes.
