by C. L. Stacey
I cry out, bringing a hand up to stifle my sobs when my fear gets the better of me.
Jackson nearly loses it right there in the middle of the open elevator, but makes the smarter choice instead, and he tries to reason with him. “Brad, for fuck’s sake—please, you’re scaring her! Point the fucking thing at me. You’re mad at me. Point it at me.”
“Tell them to catch the next one,” Brad orders Jackson, nodding toward the approaching group of people.
Jackson blows out a shaky breath, lifting his free hand midair before shaking his head.
They take one look at me and figure we are in the middle of some argument, give a knowing nod, and hang back.
The door closes to separate us from them, and as soon as it does, Jackson pulls on my waist, tucking me behind him, and I get a clear view of our gunman.
I know him.
“Tommy?” I whisper.
Brad laughs humorlessly at me. “You really gotta be more careful about trusting just anyone, sweetheart. My name is Brad Davis. I used to be your boy’s,”—he waves the gun toward Jackson, and my hand immediately shoots up to protect his heart—“lawyer. Until he fired me, that is.”
“Brad, put the gun down,” Jackson speaks calmly, “We can talk about this, what do you want?”
The bells chime overhead, and the doors slide open to Jackson’s foyer.
“Step off.” Brad nods into the home.
I keep my hand exactly where it is over Jackson’s heart, and his arm reaches back to wrap around my midsection while we take the few steps necessary to get off the lift.
“What do you want, Brad?” Jackson asks again.
“What do I want?” Brad waves his gun again, silently ordering us to walk further. We do. “I want my life back, Jackson. Can you make that happen?” He doesn’t give Jackson a chance to respond before immediately following with, “Carrie left. She took the kids to her mother’s. Who, by the way, lives in Chicago! Yea, she did some digging of her own and found out about my little problem when word spread about you firing me. Then my other big-name clients drop me, and when I go looking for more, they don’t want to have anything to do with me.”
For every step Brad takes, we take two back, until we are eventually standing in the middle of Jackson’s room.
I jump when Brad suddenly shouts to Jackson, “YOU BLACKBALLED ME!” while his gun trembles violently in his hand. “I have no family. I have no clients. Now, you will pay for everything you’ve taken from me.” He aims the gun toward me, and Jackson moves to shield me completely.
“Bradley!” Jackson shouts so loud it startles me. “I understand that you’re upset, but do not take it out on her. Like you said, I took those things from you. Shoot me.”
“Oh, I’ll get to you,” Brad assures him. “But first, I want you to watch as I shoot your pretty little thing right between the eyes.”
“Brad,” Jackson whispers on a shaky breath. “You’re not a killer. You wouldn’t shoot anyone. What are you doing?”
“Why not? I mean, I have absolutely nothing else to lose.” He shrugs. “Carrie wants a divorce. She will fight for full custody, and she will win, so I won’t be able to see my kids. So, really, what do I stand to lose?”
“No, that’s just the anger talking. Carrie wouldn’t keep you from your own kids. But if you choose to pull that trigger, you’ll land yourself behind bars for life, and you will most definitely end up losing them. Don’t make that choice, Brad. I’ll help you.” Jackson holds out a steady hand. “Just give me the gun.”
Brad doesn’t hand it over, his eyes narrowing with skepticism. “Why should I trust you?”
“Because you are threatening the life of the woman I love. I will do anything you ask if you just lower the gun,” Jackson repeats, his plea comes out more desperately now than before.
The flitting look in Brad’s eyes tells me everything. He’s a man that has just lost everything, or he thinks he has. He’s out for blood. There’s no getting through to him. He already made up his mind when leaving his house today.
He’s going to shoot him.
I can’t watch him shoot Jackson. I can’t.
The moment I hear him cock the gun, I step around Jackson just in time.
A loud, ear-rattling bang goes off when Brad pulls the trigger.
The pain starts in my shoulder. Slow, at first, then when I’m finally able to comprehend that I’ve been shot, it spreads rapidly throughout my chest.
Tears spill down my cheeks almost as soon as they form, and everything comes to a standstill as I stare into Jackson’s eyes, wide with shock and horror.
“Lexi?” Jackson’s hand immediately jumps to cover the bullet hole, using his other arm to catch me when I collapse into him. “Lexi? Oh, God…” Tears well in his eyes as he continues to apply pressure against my chest.
“Jackson?” I whisper.
“Lexi, no… Oh, God!” Jackson’s face screws in pain as he stares down into my face, his arm tightening around me to hold me up. “No, hold on. Don’t say anything, just hold on.”
“Well, it isn’t between the eyes, but I guess that’ll do just fine,” Brad taunts Jackson from somewhere behind me.
Jackson lifts his gaze from mine, eyes full with rage. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” Jackson threatens him in a voice so deep and guttural I hardly recognize it. “Whether she lives or dies, you are dead!” he roars.
I make a fist around Jackson’s shirt when he takes his first step toward Brad, dragging me along with him. “No!” I beg, but we’re still moving. “Jackson, don’t!”
“Lexi!”
Jackson halts.
“Caleb?” I breathe my friend’s name when I notice his voice right away.
“You son of a bitch!” Caleb growls at Brad, and I hear a loud commotion behind me.
Jackson returns his attention to me. Keeping a firm hand over my bleeding chest, he eases us to the floor before laying me across his lap. “Hang in there, baby. Hold on.”
The noise of a struggle continues behind me, and my eyes squeeze shut when I hear the gun go off again.
“No!” I gasp deeply, crying out when the pain spreads in my chest, but I don’t open my eyes right away.
Please, no…
Please, please, please…
No. Jackson, no…
I’m afraid to open my eyes, of what I may see when I do.
“Lexi?” Caleb’s voice comes from above me, and I open my eyes to look up. “Lexi—Oh, fucking Christ!” His fingers sink in his hair before he comes to kneel by my head. “Jackson, what the hell happened?”
Jackson.
I lower my gaze again, and I’m overcome with relief when my eyes verify that Jackson is still very much alive.
So is Caleb.
That leaves Brad. Brad is dead. Or at least bleeding from a gunshot wound from somewhere behind me.
Oh, thank God…
“How did you…?” I begin to ask.
“You forgot your phone in the backseat of my car,” he answers my half-spoken question. “I wouldn’t have known it was there if Harper hadn’t called it.”
“Has someone called 911?” Jackson interrupts our moment to ask Caleb.
“I told one of the guys downstairs to call everyone as soon as I saw Brad forcing you two into the elevator. I didn’t know he had a gun, but I had a feeling he’d be leaving here in a body bag.” Caleb’s hand comes up to cradle the back of my head. “Lexi, hang in there, okay? Help is coming.”
My eyes roll up to look at Caleb when I ask, “Is… is he dead?”
“That motherfucker is on his way down to shake the devil’s hand right now, don’t you fucking worry,” Caleb assures me. Then his eyes flash to Jackson. “I’m going to go see about what’s taking them so fucking long. Are you going to be okay here by yourself?” Jackson nods.
“Wait.” I halt Caleb with that order, and he stops to look at me. “You didn’t kill him, did you?” I start to cry. “Caleb, you didn’t kill him, please
tell me you didn’t kill him.”
Caleb’s jaw tenses when lowering a hand gently over my head. “He took the coward’s way out, Lexi. I didn’t kill him.”
I blow out a breath of relief. “Oh, thank God!”
“I’ll be right back.” Caleb’s gaze lifts to Jackson’s again. “Don’t you fucking dare let her die,” he commands him. Then he gets up and walks out of my line of vision.
Tears roll down the side of my head as I stare into my favorite pair of grey eyes. They’re crying for me, silently begging me to hold on. It’s a look I’m all too familiar with, and it hurts so much to witness all the emotions he’s keeping bottled up for my sake.
Whatever adrenaline my body is running on will soon expire; I’m losing too much blood. I don’t waste any more time crying, trying my best to organize my thoughts. “I’m going to pass out in a few minutes on account of the pain and blood loss…” I shake my head when Jackson opens his mouth. “Shut up and listen.” He does. “I’m fine.”
He drops his forehead to mine. “You are so damn stubborn, why couldn’t you just stay behind me?”
“What, and let you take credit for this one, too?” I breathe a laugh. “No, thanks.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Does this make me Wonder Woman?”
“Stop.”
None of this is funny. Getting shot hurts. Seeing Jackson in the exact position I was in five years ago hurts.
“You realize Caleb will need a character bump, right? He deserves one.” Jackson’s brows pinch together in confusion. “From the Joker to Superman,” I elaborate. Jackson doesn’t even crack a smile. “Quit treating my friend like he’s the villain in our story. He just saved us both.”
“I realize that,” he says, mouth still unsmiling. “But, forgive me, you’ve just been shot, so I’m not really in the mood to laugh.”
My eyelids begin to droop, and I lose the strength to hold my own smile. “We stay and we fight…” I remind him. His brows pinch together. “We never leave the other behind. We stay and we fight.”
Jackson shakes his head. “Don’t do that. Just hang on.”
The room starts to dim, or maybe it’s just me. I blink again, but focusing on Jackson’s face becomes harder to do.
So it’s just me, then.
“I’m tired,” I slur.
Jackson presses a kiss against my forehead. “I love you,” he says, keeping his lips exactly where they are.
My lids feel too heavy; I’ve kept them open as long as I could. “Wait…” for me to wake up to tell you, I fail to finish.
“No, wait. No. Lexi?” Jackson slaps my face lightly in between, trying to keep me awake, but I just can’t keep my eyes open anymore.
“Lexi, no!”
My world goes dark.
A religious man, I am not.
I don’t remember the last time I actually prayed for something, anything.
When you’re born into a life of privilege, you want for nothing. Whatever you need is already yours.
Lexi was the first thing I truly worked for, and she’s the only thing I’ve ever fought like hell to keep.
No matter what Lexi says, what happened with Ellie was my fault. We fought. She walked out. And I let her.
It was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. And when you make one, big or small, you learn from it so you know not to make it a second time.
I was given a second chance when I fell in love with Lexi, and I swore to myself that no matter what happened, I wouldn’t let myself fuck it up.
Now I sit here with her in my arms, hand pressed to her chest to keep any more blood from spilling through a fucking bullet hole put there by a man I once thought I could trust.
I fucked up.
This is my fault.
It should have been me. But she saved my life because she’s got it in her head that I’ve been doing the saving all this time, but she’s so fucking wrong.
Lexi saved my life, in more ways than one.
The person I was before our lives literally collided was not someone worth saving. Then the person I became after the accident—that wasn’t a person at all. I was a soulless bastard who’d lost his way during his pathetic search for redemption.
I was guilty of life, so I didn’t bother living it. She was the one to breathe it back into me.
Too guilty to believe that I deserved to be anything but broken, I let my heart bleed out until there was nothing left. She was the one to restore me.
Slowly, she was the one to put me back together.
She had no obligation to stay. But she did.
She had no obligation to love me. But she did.
She shouldn’t have been the one to take this bullet. But she did.
She saved my life.
Now she’s unconscious and bleeding in my arms.
I’m not a religious man. But what else can I do but pray?
Don’t take her away from me. The words of my prayer loop silently in my head as I sit there and wait for Caleb, for the paramedics, for any-fucking-one really.
My eyes jump to the doorway when I hear the sound of someone’s footsteps hurriedly crossing the living room to get to us, and I drop my head back on a relieved sigh when Caleb shows up with a medical team trailing behind him.
Caleb’s eyes fall to Lexi’s face. “What happened?”
“She passed out,” I tell him, keeping my hand exactly where it is.
One of the men comes to kneel by me. “Sir…” He begins to lift my hand from Lexi, but I force it back down, afraid to take any pressure off her wound.
I lock the young man’s gaze in mine, my eyes heavy with their threat. “She has lost a lot of blood already…”
“Sir, I understand. But the sooner we get her to California Hope the better.” When I don’t say anything right away, he provides me with another reassuring statement. “We will take good care of her, I promise.”
It’s not easy for me to be the one to hand over control to another, but I have to trust this man to do his job and save my girlfriend, so without saying anything more, I lift my hand slowly and watch as he and his partner go to work.
Both sets of hands work steadily and surely as if they’ve done it a thousand times over. Sterile pads. Mask. Tubes. Monitor.
Caleb plants a firm hand over my shoulder and gives it an encouraging squeeze. “She’s going to be okay, Jackson. Don’t worry.”
I actually believe that she will be.
“I’m not worried,” I say, keeping my eyes dead ahead. “All she did, up until the moment she passed out, was make sure that I wouldn’t worry. So I’m not going to. She’s going to wake up after she receives proper medical care, and then everything will be fine.” Hope fills my chest, and I don’t know if that makes me overly optimistic, but right now, that’s all I have. Hope. “She even tried to be funny,” I add.
He chuckles. “Sounds a lot like the stubborn girl I know.”
Stubborn. It’s the perfect word to describe Lexi.
The corner of my mouth tilts into a weak smile. “She referred to you as Superman…”
Caleb snorts. “No. That guy and I have nothing in common.”
“She cares about you,” I offer him.
“I care about her, too, Jackson. I’ve told you this a thousand times.”
I turn to look at him. “Why?”
It is an honest question, and it doesn’t come from a place of jealousy. I just want to know why being her friend means so much to him.
In all the time I’ve known Caleb Carlisle, I’ve witnessed many things. Things that led me to despise the philandering man-child he was.
Today was the first time I got to witness some actual, honest-to-God emotion on that face. He was smiling, but his eyes were sad. I’d mastered that look over the years, so I know when to catch it.
“She just…” Caleb plays casual with a shrug. “She reminds me of someone I used to know.”
I arch a brow pointedly at him. “Used to? You guys
don’t talk anymore?”
“You know me. You know the shitty guy I am.” He grimaces.
I look over to where the paramedics were almost done prepping Lexi for transport. “You’re wrong,” I say. “My life was spared twice tonight. I saw Brad raise that gun, he was half a second away from firing again… until you came flying in out of nowhere and wrestled him to the ground. Shitty guys don’t do that. Shitty guys don’t risk getting shot for their friends.”
The men count off together before lifting her onto the transporting cot. The one I spoke with earlier turns to me. “Unfortunately, it’s family only on the rig…” he states regretfully.
I give a single nod in understanding. “That’s okay. My friend will take me.”
The police arrived just as we were leaving the building. I refused to stop for them, telling them to meet me at the hospital if they wanted, that there was no way I was going to hang back while my girlfriend was being transported to the hospital.
They reluctantly agreed to meet me there.
We stayed with the ambulance the entire time. Caleb’s crazy-ass driving made sure of that. He was very handy in emergency situations, and I’d never tell him this myself, but I’m glad I’m not alone in this right now.
When the ambulance pulls up to California Hope’s Emergency Center, Caleb swings the car into a spot I’m sure he’ll get a ticket for parking in, but I’m in too much of a rush to comment on it.
We hop out of the car, both moving quickly toward the building and through the sliding glass doors the paramedics had already wheeled her through.
My eyes begin their search for my sister, hoping to find her somewhere with Lexi. I called her on the way here to fill her in, so she knew where to be for when they arrived with her.
“Who are you looking for?” Caleb asks impatiently.
“My sister,” I answer, my eyes darting back and forth across the busy room. Then I find her and a couple of other doctors wheeling Lexi into a trauma room. “Jessica!” I shout across the space.
No one but my sister looks up. The rest are too busy tending to their own patients to care.
Caleb and I cross the space, and Jessica throws an arm around me. “Jackson, thank God!” She squeezes me. “Were you hurt?” she asks, taking a step back to get a better look at me.
