“Hold on, Princess,” I plead.
Her arms slide up and wrap slowly around my neck as I absorb the steady beat of her heart against my chest.
Reassured, I take one step, then another, each one slow and unsteady. Each one bringing me closer to the big, open doorway. Her hands loosen their grip when I step outside into the warm air and hot morning sun. Then they fall slack. Mac is unconscious in my arms. I blink as best I can, adjusting to the brightness. Evie, Quinn, Grace, and Henry, are all huddled together behind a police line.
“Stay with me, Princess,” I say softly.
Evie presses a shaky hand to her mouth, her face ashen when she sees us. Quinn grabs her and they hold each other. Tears stream down Grace’s face. She takes Henry’s hand in hers and squeezes as I shuffle forward, step by step, determined to carry Mac out of this hellhole and into the light.
The police cart Eli out from behind us, his hands cuffed behind his back. His face appears heavily injured from my strike, but they’re showing him no mercy. He’s roughly shoved ahead of us and our eyes meet before he looks away.
Elijah Rossiter killed Gabriella Valdez, a police detective no less, and the love of his supposed best friend’s life. The judge will throw the book at him. Eli is going away for a very, very long time. That knowledge gives me a very small measure of satisfaction. If Mitch survives, it will give him none at all.
I had no idea he was the real leader of the King Street Boys, but from what I overhead from the Rossiter brothers during my abduction, he was more a figurehead the way a silent partner invests in a business but has no running of the day-to-day operations. It makes sense, considering the King Street Boys were always one step ahead of the police. The gang leader was their inside man on the force. A high-ranking, recently promoted official!
Eli also knows I was Jonah. He knew all along. He and Ross were simply biding their time to use me, knowing how close I am with the Valentine family. I was their ‘ace in the hole’ and a way for them to get rid of the Valentine’s once and for all.
They knew about Operation Strike too. Those cases on the table in the back room? Eight of them were filled with drugs. Two were bombs. After drawing the Valentine’s inside, they were going to blow that warehouse sky high.
Only no one figured on Mac. Her unexpected arrival, along with the Sentinals following in her wake, put a kink in their plan and instead of us all being blown to smithereens, we got the jump on them.
Mac somehow managed to start a war and finish it all at the same time. There is no weighing the size of the balls this woman carries. Let’s just say they’re really bloody heavy.
Two paramedics come around the corner as I step outside with my unconscious rescuer. They’re jogging toward us, wheeling a stretcher along the cracked pavement. I take a relieved breath and stop, swaying on my feet. They reach us and I lower Mac onto the makeshift bed with infinite care, hesitant to let go of her completely. I withdraw my arms but rather than let go completely, I take her hand in mine.
“She has a gunshot wound to the right upper thigh,” I rasp, “and a head injury. She … She …” I choke, unable to get any more out. She has a wrenched shoulder. And she’s lost a lot of blood. She also has a big heart, but she killed a man in there. And now she has a mark on her soul that mirrors mine. She took that. For me. So fix that too, I want to tell them, but my mouth won’t form the words. Take that away so she doesn’t have to live with it the way I do.
“Romero.”
Kelly is standing beside me, his clothes and hands steeped in dried blood. “Your woman …” he nods at Mac. One of the paramedics is checking her injuries and vitals, the other is prepping her for transport. “She’s having your baby, mate.”
The ground dips beneath my feet. “She’s what?”
Kelly’s hand grips my shoulder and squeezes. The action keeps me upright while his words reverberate around in my head. “She’s pregnant. The paramedics will need to know.”
“How do you know?”
“Last night at the end of the party you took off thinking she was doing something with me when she wasn’t. I was just some big douche who came on to her not realising what the two of you had. Later that night I found her in the bathroom, sick. I held her hair back while she puked in the toilet. The test was on the bathroom counter, and I saw it. I asked her and she told me it was yours. And that’s when she found out you were leaving and came here. For you.”
I stare down at Mac. She came here because I abandoned her the first time she fell pregnant with my baby. History was repeating itself and in typical Mac fashion, she was having none of it. She chose to fight for me. She chose to fight. For me.
“I didn’t know,” I mumble, trying to process Kelly’s revelation. My heart aches with shame for leaving, yet hope unfurls in my chest amidst the pain because I’m going to be a father. Because Mac knew I was leaving and risked her life to stop me. She made a choice, and she chose us.
My eyes prickle and hot tears spill down, mixing with the blood and sweat and dirt. After everything we’ve been through, we’ve been given a second chance to do this. To get it right. To have a family.
I grasp the wrist of the female paramedic as they begin wheeling her away. She halts. Impatient.
“My girl is pregnant. You need to take care of them both,” I plead, my tone urgent. My entire world is bleeding out on that stretcher right now and panic is burning inside me. I feel it rising, hotter than fire. Overtaking me. “Please.”
MAC
My eyes blink open and the glare from the open window hits. I quickly shut them and turn my head on the pillow of my hospital bed. My body hurts but my heart is in agony.
“Mitch?” I ask, my eyes still closed and my voice rusty from disuse.
Someone will answer. In the seventy-two hours since I’ve been in hospital, there’s always been at least one person by my bedside. Jake has barely left at all. I wish they would all go. Him too. I need … I don’t know what I need. Space to reflect on what I did? Time? A rewind so I can go back and change the past? How far would I go back if I could do that? A few days? A year? Two? Or would I go back to the very start, before I met Jake?
Someone answers, but I’m so lost in thought I don’t hear it. “What?”
My hand is squeezed. “He’s still in a coma.”
The voice comes from Jared, but further away. He’s not the one holding my hand. I nod to indicate I heard. The gentle motion causes my head to throb, and I wince. My eldest brother hasn’t woken. The loss of blood and a stroke brought on by the injury put his body in distress. And if he knows, deep down inside his soul that Gabriella is gone, I fear he’ll never wake. “I want to see him.”
Now. Not so I can beg for forgiveness. Asking for that is too much. I just want to apologise while he’s still alive. I need him to hear me say I’m sorry.
“No.” That was Jake, his refusal spoken in a firm tone. He’s close. Right by my bed. My hand is squeezed again and his voice gentles. “You’re not well enough.”
“I want to see him,” I repeat, stubborn.
“Mac—”
“Don’t.” My eyes flare open, hardening on Jake. Half his face is red and purple, the skin tender and swollen. There’s a stitched cut above his brow and a split lip he keeps busting open. It’s bleeding again. His eye socket didn’t require surgery but it’s bandaged and the doctors are keeping a close watch on it. I know this because Evie told me. When I asked Jake he simply said he was ‘fine.’
“Maybe later in the week,” he says softly.
I close my eyes again and turn my head away. I hate looking at him. There’s too much kindness. Too much empathy and compassion. Too much goddamn heart.
I don’t deserve any of it.
“Please go away,” I whisper.
“I can’t do that,” Jake replies. He untangles his hand from mine. The action gives me relief. I don’t want to be soothed. Except it shifts further down; his warm palm comes to rest on my belly and spreads love through
the warmth of his touch. Our baby is in there and she’s thriving. Yes it’s a girl, which is not an official verdict because I’m only fourteen weeks along, but I just know. It’s mother’s instinct.
“Of course she’s thriving,” my dad had muttered in his big old gruff voice when I told him. “She’s a Valentine.”
Can you believe it? My dad was taking credit for my little girl’s kickass determination to survive. Bullshit. Her grit is all me and Jake. “She’s a Romero,” I retorted stubbornly.
Dad paled but he put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Yeah. She’s that too.”
To say my parents were thrilled with the baby announcement (inadvertently finding out thanks to my mouthy doctor who thought everyone knew) was to say the earth is round. If Mum had been a gymnast, she would have done a few celebratory backward tumbles with an added somersault for extra effect. Instead, her eyes turned glassy and her hands clutched mine.
“My baby is having a baby,” she blubbered while Dad rubbed her back and made gruff, soothing noises to both of us.
“Mum,” I muttered, embarrassed at the emotional display and warmed by it at the same time. The best part about my mother is that she would have reacted the same way when I was seventeen.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out.
“For what?” she asked.
“For running away.”
Mum shook her head and looked to Dad. They shared a glance that spoke a thousand words, but only to each other. Then she turned to me. “It was a long time ago. And we weren’t fair. We—”
Dad put his hand on Mum’s shoulder and squeezed. She stopped talking.
“There’s something you need to know,” he said. “But right now isn’t the time.”
“How’s our baby doing?” Jake’s question interrupts my memory.
“She’s fine.” My voice is croaky. I clear my throat. “She’s better than fine.”
“I’ll be back later,” Jared says in a low voice with a heavy sigh.
My hospital room door opens and shuts and silence returns. It’s painful. I feel like I don’t know how to be myself anymore. Everything has changed.
“Talk to me, Princess. Please.”
There’s nothing to talk about. The adrenaline that fuelled my anger over him leaving is gone. Now there’s so much pain, and I don’t like it. It feels irreparable. My eyes prickle. I squeeze them closed more tightly but a tear breaks free. It drops to my pillow with a plop. Jake doesn’t see because my face is turned away from him. “Please go,” I whisper.
“Can I get you a drink?”
Goddamn dogged bastard. I turn back his way. Leaning up on one elbow, I reach for the plastic cup of water from my hospital side table and crunch it in my hand. Then I toss it at the wall. It makes a minimal impact before dropping to the linoleum with a pathetic crackle. “No. I don’t want a fucking drink.”
I slouch back down on the bed and face the other way. That was uncalled for. I’m being a bitch but toning it down feels impossible right now. “Why don’t you just leave like you tried to do before.”
“You don’t want me to go. You came after me.”
“Only so I could rip your head off for leaving and throw it to the sharks in Sydney Harbour,” I mutter bitterly.
Jake huffs with slight amusement. It’s a relieved sound.
I turn my head. “That makes you happy?”
“To hear you sounding more like yourself? Yes. I’d rather you mad at me than feel nothing at all.”
But I’m more mad at myself. And I don’t know how to get him to leave. “I’m tired.”
“Sleep, then,” he replies. “I’ll be here.”
My lips pinch.
“I’m not going anywhere, Princess. Not ever again.”
I ignore the burgeoning sense of peace his words bring me and turn my head to look at the stubborn man. “Fine. Then I’m hungry.”
“Lunch will be served soon.”
“I don’t want to wait,” I retort. “I’m hungry now.”
“Mac—”
I bring out my ace in the hole. “It’s not good for the baby if I don’t eat.”
Jake swipes at the side of his face that isn’t swollen, uncertainty in his expression. “Okay,” he says slowly. “How about I go and get you something from the cafeteria?”
“Perfect.” I force my lips to curve slightly. It feels off, but he takes it in and nods his head.
He rises to his feet and moves his hand from my belly, leaving coldness in its wake. “I’ll be back, okay?”
Jake leans down and presses a warm kiss to my lips. Flutters fill my stomach, and I find myself responding. He draws back and runs his hand over my hair in an affectionate parting gesture before he walks to the door. He opens it with a backward glance before leaving. The door closes with a soft click.
Finally.
I’m alone.
I grab for the buzzer by the side of my bed. My thumb hits the button incessantly. I don’t stop until the door flings open, and my worst nightmare enters the room.
Oh fuck.
Houlihan strides in. Soundless nursing shoes somehow manage to slap against the linoleum floor. Her eyebrows are drawn on extra squiggly today, indicating a harried and annoyed appearance. She’s having a bad day, and she’s clearly prepared for me to make it worse.
I don’t disappoint. “I need a wheelchair. STAT.”
“You think I’m your errand girl?” Her voice is gravel like a pack a day chain smoker. Houlihan moves to the front end of my bed, where my chart rests in a plastic pocket fixed on the wall. She picks it up in her meaty hands and examines it with pinched lips. She returns the chart to its little slot and her eyes narrow on mine. “You’re not going anywhere.”
My nostrils flare wide. Bitch. “I have a brother in a coma. On fucking life support. You can bet your ass I’m going to get a wheelchair so I can see him or I’ll pitch a tantrum so big and loud you’ll hear it from the International Space Station.”
Her lips pinch harder, but I see her brain ticking over. “Mitchell Valentine?”
My hand snaps out and grabs her wrist, a reflexive action that halts her in place. “You know him?”
After a pause where Houlihan looks at my hand (it’s digging into her skin, but I can’t seem to let go) and then looks at me, she speaks. “He’s on level nine, ward six B, room nine oh two.”
My eyes literally tear up with gratitude. For Houlihan no less. I blame it on baby hormones. I clear my throat and peel my hand from her wrist, finger by finger. “Thank you.”
She leaves and moments later returns with a wheelchair. My eyes round with surprise. “Threaten me again and I’ll tear you a new one,” she says in her crotchety voice, belying the kindness of her actions. There’s no time to respond. Jake will return at any moment. At least with Houlihan seemingly in my corner I now have a fighting chance.
After parking the contraption by the side of my bed, she helps me out. I hiss when I put pressure on my right thigh where the wound is stitched and healing. That sonofabitch Ross. Poor Jake is busy worrying about my soul for shooting him. I’m just trying to work out how I can get my hands on his cold, lifeless corpse so I can shoot him all over again. Sorry, Jake, but my soul is doing cartwheels over the death of that asshole.
“Don’t put pressure on it,” Houlihan snaps.
“I’m not,” I bark back at her and reach across for my phone.
We bicker the entire trip from my room up to level nine. I’m almost grateful. Almost. Because it distracts me from what I have to do. She wheels me through ward six B and toward room nine oh two. My hands white-knuckle the arm rests. I’m pushed through the door and toward Mitch’s bed.
Houlihan sets the brake. “I’ll find someone else to bring you back down. Some of us have real work to do.”
I ignore her parting jibe as I stare at my eldest brother. His skin blends in with the white bed sheets he lies in, and thick bandages wrap around his neck, extending to underneath his right armpit. Dee
p, dark bruises rest under his eyes, and a ventilator helps him breathe. He’s deathly still, not even a twitch to provide the slightest hope.
My eyes prickle and I bring a hand to my mouth, emotion hitting me hard enough to steal my breath. Mitch has always been there for me. Always.
I reach across and take his hand. It feels so lifeless in mine. I close my eyes and see him glaring across the dinner table at me. “You can’t wear that dress. Ever.”
He was the one who orchestrated my return from Melbourne, his eyes burning with the wrath of a thousand suns after I ran away. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“You should have, Stitch,” I whisper, swallowing the ache as my eyes crack open, alighting on his prone form. “Because look what I did.”
Then there was that time he promised to buy me a new dress after spilling wine on the one I wore to our family dinner. “You can’t buy forgiveness,” I told him, lashing out.
A sob escapes my throat.
“I’m sorry I interfered in your life,” he’d told me. “We all did. You’re our little sister. No matter how strong or capable you may be, it’s our instinct to protect you.”
“And look where that got you, you great big asshead!” I rail at him, my voice rising along with my anger. I want to stand up and punch him for doing what he did. For using Jake as bait and not telling me. For coming in after me. For being the best brother a sister could ever ask for.
Instead, I push up out of my wheelchair, putting pressure on my good leg, and I lean across and hug him. My cheek rests on his chest as tears pour down my face. “I’m sorry.” My voice cracks. “I’m so sorry.”
After taking a deep breath, I hobble backward and stumble into my chair. I’m exhausted and drained, and I need to get out of here. Not just this room. The whole hospital. I can’t breathe.
I get on my phone and summon an Uber.
JAKE
It pains me to return holding nothing but a dried-out looking ham and cheese sandwich. Mac eats a lot of rubbish. A shitload, really. There’s not an hour of the day that goes by when she’s not jamming something in her mouth. A burger, fries, Evie’s lemon slice, Quinn’s peanut butter and white chocolate chip cookies, and those damn redskin lollies that get stuck in her teeth and will likely cause cavities.