The Rover’s tail lights vanished from view, carrying Ava Jade and Becca away from Nomansland. Away from us.
Numbly, I watched them go, only half aware of Diesel exiting the warehouse behind us, grunting as the others helped him walk.
“Get in the fucking car,” Rook growled, stalking back toward the stolen Civic still idling with three doors open wide to the night air. “We need to go after her.”
“No,” Corvus called, his voice a deadened monotone.
When Rook spun to glare at Corvus, nostrils flaring, I cringed at the mosaic of pain and fury in his black eyes. There wasn’t much that affected him like that, mostly because he didn’t give two shits about anything in this world except for us.
Us and her.
“No?” Rook demanded, his body heaving as heavy breaths flooded his lungs and a muscle twitched in his upper lip. “What do you mean ‘no’?”
Corvus’ hurt gaze dragged to me, but I wouldn’t help him. I couldn’t.
Didn’t know what to do.
She left.
She left.
Becca betrayed her, betrayed us, and she saved her anyway. Saved her and left us behind.
“Boys,” Diesel called, his voice tight.
Blinking, I looked away from Rook’s seething anger and Corvus’ cold eyes, finding my feet as I turned to face our father.
Neither Corvus nor I stopped Rook as he stormed back, his face pinched as he strode straight to Diesel, making our father stand straighter, shucking off the help of Pinkie and Axel helping him stand.
My stomach turned as Rook stopped no more than a few inches from Diesel, his entire body shuddering with barely controlled rage. “Why?” he hissed in Diesel’s face.
“You know why, Son,” Diesel replied calmly.
“Becca is a girl who made a foolish mistake,” Rook snarled, his fists turning to claws at his sides. “She was manipulated. Played. She—”
“Is a girl who could’ve gotten you all killed,” Diesel finished, snapping back at Rook.
My brother scoffed, bringing up a hand to rub over the stubble coating his jaw as he stepped back, purposefully putting distance between himself and Diesel, not trusting his control.
“Boss, here,” Pinkie said, setting a chair in the middle of the abandoned road for Diesel to sit on, a first aid kit hanging from his pinkie. “Sit down, let’s patch that up—”
“No,” Diesel replied. “I’ll do it. Leave the kit. Get the others to the Vet before they bleed out. We’ll come back for Garrett’s body.”
Ice water filtered into my veins, and I closed my eyes against a wave of stomach-churning vertigo.
I knew Garrett. He was a good man. But I couldn’t fault AJ for doing what she felt she needed to survive. This was as much Diesel’s fault as it was hers.
“Boss…”
“Go. I need to talk to my sons.”
Pinkie hesitated, eyeing us all in turn before doing as he was bid, piling the other injured Saints into a van before taking off.
Diesel kept a wary eye on a pacing Rook as he sank onto the chair and opened the first aid kit with sloppy fingers. He was pale, I realized. Far too pale. The hollows beneath his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them.
I wanted to be angry with him like Rook. I wanted to hate him. To run after Ava Jade and put my arms around her. Keep her safe. Take her far away from here.
But also…
This man was my father. The only father I’d ever known. A man who would do anything to protect his sons. Anything.
I could never run if it meant betraying him. If it meant betraying this family.
Teeth clenched, I went to him as the van sped past us, bumping from the gravel at the side of the road onto the pavement. I bent to my knee and took the kit from him, unzipping it the rest of the way to lay it out on the road next to us. I didn’t ask what happened, only gripped the edge of his jeans and tore them all the way up to his knee, exposing a gnarly injury to his Achilles and a puddle of blood forming around the sole of his boot.
My hands stilled for a moment, and I grimaced. It was beyond my skill to mend. It would be a miracle if Ava Jade hadn’t severed the tendon and nerve endings. I could patch it for now, stop the bleeding, but it needed seeing to by a professional if he expected to walk properly on it ever again.
I glanced up at him, conveying that I was out of my depth here. He nodded. “Do what you can.”
“You should see a surgeon.”
“This is more important.”
I didn’t argue, and the smell of tobacco drifted to me on the cool breeze as I did my best to sterilize and suture the wound, winding it tight with gauze and tape. It was a hack job if I’d ever done one, but it would do for now.
Rook hardly finished his first cigarette before stomping on its ashes and lighting another, gaze fixed to the pavement as he paced.
Diesel gave me a nod as I finished and put away the gauze, flipping the first aid kit closed as I pushed back to standing.
“This is fucked.” Rook growled to himself, halting his pacing to stand near Corvus, who for once, seemed to have absolutely nothing to say. “You should’ve told us what was going on, Dies. We could’ve handled it.”
“You might not like the way I decided to handle things,” Diesel challenged him. “But I wasn’t wrong about her. I’m not wrong about her.”
His phone chimed in his pocket, and he drew it out, the edges of his mouth turning down as he read whatever message waited for him there.
“You are,” Rook argued, and this time, I had to agree with him.
“He’s right,” I told Diesel, speaking for the first time since she left. My voice hoarse and raw. “What Becca did was stupid. She shouldn’t have gotten herself mixed up with an Ace in the first place, but from the sounds of it, she was played hard. AJ is a lot of things, but she isn’t stupid. She wouldn’t let her friend die for making a mistake.”
It took everything I had in me to hold Diesel’s accusing stare. It was obvious he thought I—out of all of us—would agree with him. And I did, to a certain extent.
When I didn’t buckle, Diesel sighed, leaning back heavily in the old wooden chair, looking for all the world like the king of anarchy he was, amid the scattered debris and abandoned buildings around us. “Perhaps I may have taken things a little too far, but I promise you boys, I am not wrong about the girl. And I can prove it.”
He had our attention now. Even Corvus seemed to come back to himself, gaunt face lifting to peer over at Diesel. “What do you mean?”
“There’s something I need you all to see, and once you see it, you can decide for yourselves what is to be done with your Sparrow.”
Corvus winced.
“And if we decide she’s worthy after seeing whatever it is you intend to show us?” I hedged, needing to be clear.
Diesel locked his cool blue eyes on me, analyzing the meaning behind my words before replying. You won’t, his eyes said, but his mouth said something different. “Then I won’t fight you. I will welcome her as a Saint.”
Hope bloomed in my chest, but it couldn’t grow past the iron cage of my ribs, making the doubt seep back into my bloodstream and coat my thoughts like poison.
There was another unknown variable in all this, and it hurt to even allow the thought to take root.
We might’ve already lost her anyway.
What if it were too late?
After this, would she even want anything to do with us? With the Saints?
Rook began pacing again, two steps to the right, turn, three steps left, and back again, a knot between his brows. “This isn’t right. I don’t fucking like it.”
He stopped, his back to us as he stared down the road as though he could make her come back with the force of his will alone.
He whirled on Diesel. “What is it that you know?”
“I need you to think rationally, son. I understand your anger. It isn’t entirely misplaced. But right now, I need you to trust me. There’s someplace we need to be.”
He looked between the three of us, holding each of our gazes before speaking again. “Are you with me?”
The dual meaning of the question wasn’t lost on any of us and my teeth locked, making it impossible for me to answer him.
“Grey, help him up,” Corvus decided for the three of us. “We’ll take the Civic.”
The stiffness in Diesel’s shoulders abated, but the hardness creasing the skin around his mouth and eyes never ceased.
Corvus’ reply told him all he needed to know. We would go with him, but that didn’t mean we were with him, not when it came to Ava Jade. I wished I could reassure him. Wanted to. But it felt like a betrayal.
The same emotion was mirrored on both my brothers’ faces.
If faced with a choice between Ava Jade and Diesel, we wouldn’t choose.
We couldn’t choose.
Would whatever Diesel intended to show us change our minds?
My stomach soured as my mind filled with a million possibilities—the ways in which she could be permanently expunged from my heart and mind. There weren’t many, and I doubted any of them would ever fully do the job of erasing her from the empty places inside of me she’d filled but…
What if Diesel were right?
What if there were a way?
Could I bring myself to do what needed to be done?
Hollow, I pulled Diesel’s arm over my shoulders and hauled him to his feet, taking the bulk of his weight. We followed Rook and Corvus to the Civic, each footfall feeling as though it was taking me one step closer to my destruction.
