We get two days to chill out after that shitshow and spend it wrapped up together, listening to music and enjoying each other’s bodies, making up for lost time.
The night before graduation comes all too soon, and the guys are all called away for Black Knight business. It leaves my stomach in knots, as they don’t know if they’re being summoned to deal with a competitor or just some more training.
“It’ll be alright, sweetheart,” Kai assures me, pulling me close as the others head out the door after kissing me goodbye.
“I hate this,” I whisper into his chest, gripping his T-shirt in my fingers. “I hate that you have to keep doing this.”
“I know, my love,” he murmurs into my hair. “But it won’t be for long. The summer hunting trip is coming up, and after that things will be different.”
His words don’t reassure me though, knowing that the plan to deal with their parents and Kai’s uncle will be bloody and potentially dangerous. I pull back, my forehead creased, and stare deeply into his warm, amber eyes.
“Just, stay safe tonight. Keep each other safe.”
“Always, love,” he replies, placing a soft, parting kiss on my lips before leaving and locking up behind him. I’m reminded of Ash’s stern words to not open the door for anyone as I stare after them, feeling a little bereft.
Trying to shake off my trepidation for the guys, I head into the bathroom and start to run myself a bubble bath. I’ll grab my kindle and continue reading about those poor souls who are trapped in an insane asylum, loving each other despite all of the fuckery going on around them.
Surprisingly, the evening passes by quickly, mostly due to getting absorbed by my current read. I get up from the sofa where I was snuggled in one of Jax’s huge T-shirts, intending to head to bed when a knock at the door to the dorm sounds, and I freeze, my heart pounding as I glare at it. My phone dings with an incoming message at that moment, making me jump out of my fucking skin, and I look to see a message from Ryan, Mum’s old boyfriend and the closest thing to a father I had growing up.
Ryan: Surprise!
I look to the door again, and then back at the message. Hesitantly, I step towards the front door, peeking through the peephole, and then squeal in delight at what awaits me on the other side.
Unlocking the bolts, I throw the door open, a wide grin on my face.
“Ryan!” I shriek, throwing my arms around him and eliciting an oomph sound from his chest.
“Hello, Little One,” he chuckles, steering us back into the dorm and softly closing the door behind us. I pull back to look up into his smiling face, noting a slight tension in the lines around his eyes. He lets out a sigh, his smile faltering before saying, “Apparently, I’ve come to kill you.”
ASH
Fucking bastards keeping us out all night and then making us attend a debrief so that we have to head straight to the graduation ceremony. I guess we should count ourselves lucky that it wasn’t a mark this time, just some intel gathering and boring-ass surveillance.
I look at my phone again as we wait in our seats for the ceremony to start, biting my lip when I see that Lilly still hasn’t replied to the message I’d sent this morning letting her know that we would meet her here.
“Still no reply?” Loki asks from my left, and I turn to see his tired eyes full of the same concern that I have, his cap and gown an artful mess. Douche.
“No,” I reply curtly, glancing back down at the blank screen that’s taunting me, like the empty space to my right where my wife should be sitting. I don’t fucking like this, and my stomach churns with a feeling of unease.
The principal starts to speak, some shit about us being the best and brightest, but only half my attention is on him, my mind wondering where the fuck Lilly is and if something is wrong. He’s halfway through his speech when my phone buzzes in my hand, and I look down with a small smile on my lips which freezes as I see it’s a picture message from my cunt of a father. I glance back to find him in the rows reserved for parents behind us, and he looks at me with a cruel smirk on his lips that leaves me sick.
I look down at my phone, opening the message, and at first, my eyes don’t make sense of the image before them, the color red causing me to blink a few times to try and focus. When I do, I wish that I hadn’t, as my whole body goes ice-cold and a buzzing sounds in my ears.
It’s Lilly, my beautiful Lilly, sprawled out on the floor and covered in so much crimson I can’t tell where the wounds are. I can see her glassy eyes, sightless, her body in a pool of blood that surrounds her.
“No—” a strangled whisper escapes my lips before I can clamp them shut. My vision blurs, and for the first time, I understand why Luc found solace in the choice to no longer live. For there can be no life without her. Pain unlike any I’ve ever experienced wracks my body and threatens to double me over, only sheer determination and years of training hold me upright in my seat as I continue to stare at my worst nightmare come to life.
“Ash?” Loki whispers next to me, and I clutch my phone to my chest as I turn to face him, my movements sluggish as if my body is underwater. “Was that from Lilly?”
“N–no,” I instantly reply, my mind racing as I try to work out how to tell him, how to tell them all that we’ve just lost our light. Lost our soul and reason for living. Before I can utter another word, our names are being called for us to go up and collect our diplomas.
Taking the reprieve, I practically leap to my feet, earning a curious look from Loki as I follow behind him to the stage. I have no recollection of what happens next, and I’m suddenly striding from the area outside where the ceremony is being held, rolled up diploma in one hand and my phone in the other as I round the corner of the building and lean against it, breathing hard.
Footsteps pound after me, and I look up through a haze of tears to see the concerned faces of my brothers by choice surrounding me.
“Ash, what’s happened?” Kai demands, his voice unusually hard as his eyes take me in.
I open my mouth to speak, then close it, shaking my head as the tears fall from my eyes, scalding a path down my cheeks, and I close my eyes, willing the devil to strike me down so that I no longer have to breathe the air that she doesn’t.
“Ash?” Loki asks, his voice trembling. “Ash, man, you’re scaring us.”
Opening my eyes, tears glistening on my lashes, I look at each of them and prepare to break their hearts and rip out their souls.
“Lilly’s—” I start, my chin wobbling, and I have to pause to take a deep inhale, unable to look any of them in the eye when I voice the truth that is breaking me apart. “Lilly’s dead.”
Silence.
“That’s not fucking funny!” I hear Loki yell, and I turn to watch him shaking as he clenches his fists.
“Fuck, I wish it was—” I start, feeling sick as I drop the diploma and bring up my phone, unlocking the screen to be faced with that fucking picture again. I don’t say anything else, just turn the phone around and show them.
Silence.
Then I watch them all shatter, and I’m too broken myself to help them.
Loki drops to his knees, his face deathly white as tears stream down his cheeks and he shakes his head. “No, no, no, no,” he whispers over and over again.
Kai shuts down, his whole face blank as he studies the image on the screen with an air of detachment that would piss me off if I didn’t know that he’s retreated inside himself.
Jax explodes, turning his back and walking over to a huge stone urn full of plants. With the pained roar of a wounded animal, he lifts it up and throws it onto the stones lining the path, the urn cracking and spilling soil and brightly-coloured blooms all over the path.
I watch them all, my brothers in arms, and I don’t know how to fix this. Even the great Asher Vanderbilt can’t fight death once the grim reaper has taken a soul, and I fucking hate myself for it.
My phone buzzes once more, and it’s pure instinct that makes me turn the device so that I can see the screen. My eyes narrow as I see it’s a message from Enzo this time, and I unlock the phone to read it properly.
Enzo: Need you all at the gym. Now.
I look up to see Kai has his phone out too, presumably reading the same message from Enzo as he sent it to us all. He glances up a moment later and catches my eye. A glint of something enters his gaze, pushing through the deadened look that has taken over his features.
Looking down at Loki, I see that he, too, has his phone out, and I flinch when he raises his head and his agony-filled eyes find mine.
“We need to go,” I tell him, reaching out my free hand to help pull him to his feet. It’s a testament to his loyalty to me that he places his hand in mine and lets me help him to stand. I give his hand a squeeze, then look up to see Jax panting and staring at us with dark eyes. “Enzo needs us,” I tell him, and although his brow dips slightly, he knows like I do that Enzo wouldn’t call us if it weren’t an emergency. Doesn’t mean that I’m not torn between answering his summons, or going over to my father and stabbing him in the fucking eye where he sits back at the ceremony.
We head to the parking lot, stripping out of our gowns and caps just as we hear cheers from where the rest of our class is celebrating graduation. We leave our caps and gowns on the path, graduation doesn’t matter, nothing does anymore. Silently, we all climb into Jax’s truck, Jax having wordlessly handed over his keys to me when I held out my hand. He’s in even less of a position to drive than I am.
The drive to Enzo’s gym is also silent, just the sound of Jax’s heaving breaths and Loki’s occasional sniffle accompanying us as we weave through the mountain road towards town. My mind races, and I can hear Kai tapping away at his tablet, likely trying to discover the origins of the photo, desperate for anything to tell us that it’s fake. That it’s not real. That she is still alive.
It should worry me that I don’t remember how we got here as we pull up outside the gym, the inside unusually dark for the middle of the day, but I just can’t find it in me to give a fuck, so we get out and make our way up the steps to the front doors. A memory of bringing Lilly here hits me with such force that I actually stagger, Kai reaching out to steady me as Jax goes to push the doors open.
They don’t budge, but a moment later they open a sliver as Tom, our driver and Enzo’s brother-in-law, peeks out, and upon seeing it’s us, opens the door further.
“Hurry,” he instructs in a low voice, shutting and locking the door as soon as we step inside. His strange behaviour breaks through the fog of my grief, and I step forward to ask him what the fuck is going on when someone throws themself at me.
My body starts to react before my mind has a chance to catch up, my fist lifting, but before I can do my attacker any harm, I catch a voice that forty-five minutes ago I thought I’d never hear again.
“I’m so fucking sorry, Ash,” Lilly says through her sobs, her slender arms wrapped around me so tightly I can hardly breathe. “It was the only way, but, fuck… I’m so, so sorry.”
I grab hold of her biceps and yank her back, staring into her beautiful fucking face and watching the life shining in those stunning, hazel eyes. I can’t speak, just drink her in as tears track down her cheeks.
“Fuck, Princess,” I choke out, pulling her in close again and crushing her lips to mine in a desperate kiss. She kisses me back just as fiercely, my fingers digging into her arms as I try to inhale her into me.
She’s suddenly torn away from me, and I snarl at whoever thought they could take her, only to come up short when I see that it’s Loki, and he has fresh tears falling down his cheeks.
“You’re not dead?” he asks, his voice full of wonder as he drinks her in just as I did moments ago.
“No, Loki,” she replies with a sob. “I’m not dead.”
“Thank fuck,” he exhales, pulling her in for a kiss of his own. I watch them, enraptured and unable to take my eyes off her as I assure myself that this is no dream. That we didn’t crash on the way over and this is not heaven.
She pulls away when Kai touches her shoulder, his own face full of so much emotion that it’s hard to look at.
“I’m so sorry, Kai, my love,” she whispers, turning to face him and stepping into his open arms. He brings her in close, wrapping his arms around her and taking in a deep inhale as his eyes close in ecstasy. I know that fucking feeling.
Pulling away just enough so that he can lower his lips to hers, they kiss, more tears falling down her cheeks as they embrace. The sweet kiss comes to an end as Kai places his forehead to hers.
“Shit, sweetheart,” he murmurs, still holding her to him.
“I know,” she replies, glancing away, and I see the moment she finds Jax, her whole body stiffening.
Stepping away from Kai, who reluctantly lets her go, she steps towards our silent brother who stands glaring with his arms crossed over his huge chest.
“Jax?” she questions, reaching out a hand and laying it on his forearm. “I’m so sorry, I can explain, love.”
He grunts, opening his arms so suddenly that even I flinch. I take a step towards him, but stop when he just pulls her to him and encases her in his massive arms.
“It better be a good fucking explaination, Baby Girl,” he grumbles. “My soul was broken when I saw that picture,” he confesses, and I realise then just how much she’s changed us all. Before she came into our lives, we could barely get Jax to talk to us, let alone tell us his darkest feelings.
“It is, I swear,” she answers, looking up into his eyes. As if her lips are a magnet and he can’t resist, he lowers his own and kisses her roughly, all of the worry and anger for what we have just been through spilling out into her mouth.
As the queen that she is, she takes it, every last drop. Her kiss is an apology, an assurance that she’s still here, and I can see it calm the beast within him until he almost slumps in her arms, his muscles relaxing as their kiss comes to a close.
“Come,” she says, taking his hand as she steps out of his arms and looks at each of us, settling on me last. “Ryan is here and can explain everything.”
