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“Callie!”
Someone is shaking me.
My eyes flutter open and my vision is blurred. I’m trying to focus, trying to pay attention, but the pain in my body is far too great. As I come to, it comes back with it. The scorching agony that is slowly consuming my body, little by little. I open my mouth and scream, my body arching backward, trying to thrash its way out of the fiery pits it feels like it’s being drowned in.
“Callie!”
Tanner’s voice seems distant. Like he’s not even close by.
Yet I can feel his hands against my face.
“Pull her up a little, Tanner, she’s goin’ to bleed out.”
Tatum?
Ethan?
I don’t know.
“Gotta get her to a hospital, now!”
Someone again.
I don’t know who.
“Callie, need you stay with me. Do you hear me? Stay with me. Don’t close your eyes again. Don’t disappear. Please. Fuck.”
I look up through the pain and see Tanner looking down at me. I can feel his arms around me now, a gentle comfort in this agonizing time of need.
“There you are,” he says, his voice thick, scared, horrified. “Keep lookin’ at me. We’re goin’ to get you help.”
“Tanner,” I croak. “You’re okay.”
“You saved me,” he murmurs, cupping my face. I can’t feel if his skin is warm or cold. “You saved my life. Don’t you fuckin’ die on me. Do you hear me? Don’t you die. I need you.”
That’s kind of nice.
He needs me.
“Celia,” I murmur, my eyes rolling.
My head feels funny, almost like I’m really drunk and I want to go to sleep. Sleep. That would be nice, right now.
“Callie!”
I close my eyes, and I can see her face again. This time, it’s like she’s standing right in front of me. Her blue eyes lock onto mine, and I gasp, reaching my fingertips out, but no matter how close we are, I can’t seem to touch her.
“Celia?” I say, my voice cracking as I try to take a step towards her, but I can’t. She looks afraid, like she wants someone to help her, only nobody is there.
“Help,” she whispers, her voice soft and singsong like. Almost as if an angel is in the room. “Help me, Callie.”
“I’m trying to,” I cry out, trying to reach for her again, but my fingers just can’t seem to find her. “I’m trying to help you.”
“Help me.”
“Just turn around,” I cry to her as she gives me the same smile she gave me the night her life was so cruelly wiped out. That smile that tells me she’s sorry, that she wishes it could be different. “Turn around and go home. Tell your family what happened. They’ll help you. They can fix this! It’s not too late, Celia.”
“Help,” she croaks.
“I’m trying,” I scream, thrashing my head from side to side. “I’m trying to help you, Celia. Please, just listen to me. Please.”
“Callie,” she whispers, her voice fading off. “Callie!”
“Celia!” I yell wildly.
“Callie!”
My eyes pop open and someone is holding onto me, big arms wrapped around my body. I can feel the bumps and hear the sound of a truck moving, and I realize we’re not in the bushland anymore, we’re driving. I try to focus on what’s happening around me, but all I can hear is Tanner’s voice saying “Callie,” over and over again.
I’m finally able to focus, and I can see him looking down at me, his eyes concerned. I’m lying with my head on his lap, Jo sitting on the other side holding the other half of my body close. I glance over and see Tatum is driving, and Ethan is sitting in the front passenger seat, Garrett no doubt following behind in his truck.
How did we get into the truck? I remember nothing of it.
The pain in my shoulder is still intense, a low thud that is constant, radiating through my body without ease. I whine in pain and look up at Tanner, who is stroking the damp hair from my forehead.
“It hurts,” I croak.
“I know, baby. I know it does. We’re nearly at the hospital.”
The hospital?
What about the plan?
All this for nothing?
“What about Chase?” I whisper, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath through my nose as the pain makes me dizzy.
“Don’t worry about Chase,” Jo says, stroking my leg. “You just worry about staying with us, do you understand me?”
I reach a hand out, crying out in pain, and curl it around hers. She squeezes, and I hear a soft sob come from her. She’s scared. Of course she’s scared. She just watched her best friend get shot. I’d be a damned mess.
“I’m okay,” I manage, my voice tight. “I’m in pain but I’m okay. You have to get Chase out.”
“Your life is worth more,” Tanner says, his voice hard as he glances over at Tatum, who is saying nothing.
“No,” I whisper, looking up at him. “No, it isn’t. Please, you have to go and get him out. I need you to do that, please, Tanner. He doesn’t deserve to die because of me. Please, go and get him out.”
“I’m not leavin’ you,” Tanner murmurs, his eyes so full of emotion it cuts me to my core. “I won’t fuckin’ leave you.”
“This is important to me,” I whisper, moaning in pain and trying to shift away from it. “It’s important. Please.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Ethan says from the front. “Every second until you return. I’ll make sure she gets the medical care she needs.”
I can’t see his face, but my eyes burn with unshed tears at my friend, a friend I haven’t been kind enough to in the last week. A friend that has shown his loyalty to me, throughout everything. He hasn’t given up, not once, even when giving up would have been easier.
“Jo, please,” I beg my friend. “Do this, finish this. Get Chase out. Let’s close this door once and for all.”
Jo must look over to Tatum, because she asks, “Do we still have time?”
“Yes,” Tatum says, his voice more emotional than I would have guessed. This means something to him. Of course it does, it’s his family. Chase might have a lot of answering to do, and owe everyone a lot, but it’s still his brother. I’d do the same for Jo. Even if she screwed up, even if she made a huge mistake, I’d do the same.
“Tanner?” I whisper again, meeting his eyes.
“I don’t want to fuckin’ leave you, I’ll stay with you and Ethan can go.”
“No,” I croak, grabbing his head. “No, you have to be the one to go. You deserve this as much as anyone. You need to do this, for yourself, but also for Celia. I know you need it.”
“What I fuckin’ need is you,” he says, his voice tight. “Do you understand me?”
“Then come back to me.” I smile weakly. “But first, you go and you make them wish they never laid hands on her. Give her the rest she deserves. Give your heart the healing it so desperately seeks. Give me a reason to breathe again. Please.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, taking a deep shaky breath, then looks to Ethan. “You don’t leave her side, no matter what.”
“I haven’t left it yet,” Ethan says.
My beautiful friend.
“Okay,” Tanner agrees. “Okay, we’ll do it.”
Thank god.
They’re going to do it.
For Celia.
She deserves that much.
~*~*~*~
“YOU’RE AFRAID,” ETHAN says, his voice soft and low.
I glance over at him from my hospital bed. It has been three hours. Three long hours since they dropped us off at the emergency department and went to finish things once and for all. The doctors put me under for just over an hour and removed the bullet, which was still lodged in my shoulder. They said I was lucky not to have any more damage. They also said I had to speak to the police about how I got shot.
I told them a friend of mine had gone missing and the drug runners had him. I went to try and get him back and got shot. It worked out well for us, mostly because it looks even worse for the guys in the house because not only are they going to be done for kidnapping and running drugs and guns, but for shooting an innocent woman. Ethan gave them the address, and they are going to be raiding the house where Chase is being held in a matter of minutes.
I’m nervous and afraid.
I’m still in recovery; I have to be in here to be monitored for another hour or so. They were worried about the blood loss and wanted to make sure I was on the up and up. Ethan is sitting with me, after a long argument from me about how I didn’t want him to leave my side. They agreed and he has been by my side ever since, just like he promised Tanner.
I can’t take my mind off Tanner.
I can’t stop thinking about him.
“Callie?” Ethan says when I don’t answer.
“Do you think they’re going to be okay, Ethan?” I croak, my voice shaking.
I’m on some seriously good pain medication, and it has been hard for me to keep my eyes open, but the idea of going to sleep and missing a single thing isn’t something I’m willing to do right now.
“Hey,” Ethan says, reaching over and taking my hand. I look over at him, studying his handsome face, and it only makes me feel even more hurt inside. “It’s going to be okay, do you hear me? Tanner is tough, so is Jo and the other two. They know what they’re doing.”
“What if it goes wrong? What if something happens and they don’t make it back? I can’t live with that. I can’t let that be how this story ends.”
“It’s not goin’ to be how this story ends, I promise you that.”
I swallow and glance up at the ceiling.
“Ethan?” I whisper.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I’ve treated you so badly in the last few weeks. You didn’t deserve that. I was just so hurt, and so angry. You really were my shining light when I was away, and I couldn’t have done it without you. The thought of that not being real, it really bothered me.”
Ethan is silent for a moment; he’s still holding my hand and his thumb strokes over my skin. “You know,” he says, his voice low and gentle, “it was real. I should have told you what Tanner and the others had planned when you got out, but I was torn. My loyalty was torn. I didn’t think they’d hurt you, and if they had, I would have made it stop. The thing was, the rest of it was real. I did protect you. Our friendship was real. I used to look forward to coming to work so I could hang out with you, Callie.”
I close my eyes and take a deep, shaky breath.
“I fucked up,” he goes on. “I know that. I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I should have been honest, and I wasn’t. I look back now and it seems so obvious what the right thing was, but at the time I was truly torn. Tanner and his family, they saved my ass so many times. I owed them so much ...”
“What happened to you, Ethan?” I ask, opening my eyes and looking over at him.
He smiles, but it’s weak and a little broken. “I was raised in foster homes. I lost my parents when I was only young. My mother died of cancer and my father killed himself. It left me ... broken. I went from home to home and eventually I was put with a family that lived just by the Yates family. I befriended them right away, Tanner mostly, of course, but they all took me in. Tanner’s mom used to make me school lunches when my foster family forgot and send them to school so I didn’t get hungry. After school, she would always make sure I was fed before I went home.”
I swallow the thick lump in my throat and keep listening.
“My foster family was messed up. You know, I’ve wondered so many times over the years how people like that can even pass in the system. How they can be considered capable of looking after a child that has no family. Half of them are bigger monsters than the families they are taking the kids from. It’s a cruel system, unfair and weak. Those kids need someone to be there for them, not someone to make it worse.”
“Your foster family was cruel?” I ask.
“My foster mother, Tayce, was a drunk, and my foster father, Frederick, was high on every drug you could imagine. They were abusive. I had a foster sister, Bay, and she suffered bad, too.”
“What happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” Ethan shrugs, frowning. “She got moved after I left home. I was going to let her come live with me, but when I went back to get her, she had been relocated. They wouldn’t tell me where. As I said, the system is misguided and poor.”
“Did Tayce and Frederick ever ... hurt you?”
Ethan nods. “More than once. Which is why I loved going to the Yates’ place. They always cleaned my wounds, and fed me, and helped me with my homework. They were my family. They still are. Which is why it was so hard for me to turn my back on them. But then I had you and ...”
“I get it,” I say, and I mean it, I really do. “I would kill for a family like that, and if I had one, I’d probably have done the same thing.”
“As soon as I knew who you really were and the kind of person you were, I stopped, Callie. I told Tanner I wouldn’t do it, and we had a falling out.”
I squeeze his hand. “Do you miss him?”
“Tanner?”
“Yeah.”
Ethan goes quiet, and then says, “Every fuckin’ day.”
“You should fix things with him,” I say.
“It’s too late for that. He hates me for not having his back. Hates me for not being on his side.”
“That was when he didn’t know the truth. He does now. You should try and piece your family back together.”
“You and him are a thing now?”
I purse my lips and then shrug. “I think so. It’s hard to tell, with everything the way it is. I know I care about him. I know that even after everything, he matters to me.”
“You matter to him, too. I’ve seen Tanner with people a lot, but I’ve never seen him the way he was with you today. He was scared, I could see the love in his eyes. You changed something in him, something he lost when Celia died. You’re healing him. He deserves that.”
“Did he have a hard time growing up, too?” I ask.
Ethan shakes his head. “No, they were the perfect family. Loving mom, strong father. They used to play games and laugh. Which is why I think it hit them so hard when his father had an affair. It changed everything in that house. Gone was the laughter and fun. Their mom was down, sad, and angry. Their father was distant. Tanner was angry and got into a lot of fights and a lot of trouble, Andrea moved out, and Celia was left alone. She lived with the most of it, the stuff they didn’t see, and I guess it was worse than we all knew because she didn’t tell anyone what happened to her.”
“Were you and she close?”
Ethan smiles, remembering his friend. “She was the little sister everyone liked. She never got into trouble, she was always happy and smiling. She was sunshine. She really was. She could make the darkest days bright. Which is why it was so hard when we were told you had said she killed herself. Nobody believed it, because Celia was always the light. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, we were all in our own world just before she died, and we didn’t pay enough attention to her. If we had, we might have seen how much she had changed.”
“She was living through hell alone,” I whisper.
“Yeah,” Ethan says softly. “She was.”
I look over at him, and give him a weak smile before saying, “Ethan?”
“Mmm?”
“For whatever it’s all worth, I’m glad I had you. I’m happy you’re my friend. I hope you know that you made my life so much easier in there.”
He stands, leaning over and pressing a kiss to my forehead. “You’re welcome. Now get some rest.”
“I don’t think I can sleep. If Tanner ...”
“If Tanner comes back, I’ll wake you. Get some rest, you’ve been through a lot.”
“Okay,” I whisper, yawning. I’m exhausted. No doubt about it.
“Sleep tight, Callie.”
Ethan holds my hand until I fall asleep, his warm fingers curled around mine.
Everything is nearly perfect finally.
Nearly.
We just have to get through this.
One more thing.