Page 80 of Falcon’s Forever

By evening the compound's repaired enough to function, not enough to forget what happened, and it never fully will, not with an empty bike in the back of the garage and a mother somewhere who doesn't know yet that her son isn't coming home. I stand at the edge of the path to the women's house, close enough to see the boarded window and the bullet damage still visible through the kitchen glass, and there's nothing for me to do there tonight, and nothing that says I've earned the right to try.

I turn around instead, and head back toward the clubhouse, where my brothers are waiting. I'm not VP there anymore. I'm just one more man doing the work, which is exactly where I need to be for as long as it takes.

Chapter 12

Cara

Emily's still asleep when I finally let myself sit down properly, and I know because I've checked through the small window in her door often enough that one of the nurses has started giving me the look reserved for anxious relatives and people who don't understand visiting hours.

Technically I'm neither. I'm also not leaving.

The surgeon told us forty minutes ago that the bullet passed through soft tissue and missed everything that would have made tonight unsurvivable. Emily lost a frightening amount of blood, needed surgery, and will probably swear at every one of us when she wakes up and finds out how long recovery's going to take, but she's alive. Alive should feel bigger than it does. Relief keeps arriving in slow waves instead of all at once, like my body's still waiting for someone to walk in and tell us they were wrong.

Frankie sits beside me with one leg tucked under her and a paper cup of coffee she's reheated twice without drinking. Sarah's curled into the chair on my other side, still in the clothes we left the compound in.

Ice Pick's been standing at the end of the corridor since we got here. Every time I look up he's doing something slightly different, checking his phone, talking to hospital security, walking to the vending machines, but he never goes far enough that we can't see him.

Protection without hovering. Apparently the Saint’s Outlaws are capable of learning.

Falcon comes into my head before I can stop him, and I push him straight back out, because I've spent too much of today thinking about him when Emily's the one lying in a hospital bed because a bullet came through a wall.

Frankie notices the exact moment my expression goes blank.

“You’re doing that thing again,” she says.

I glance at her. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“The thing where your face empties because whatever you’re thinking is horrible, and you don’t want us to know,” Frankie explains.

Sarah lifts her head from my shoulder. “She does do that.”

“Wonderful,” I mutter. “I’ve developed an entire team of observers.”

“You created us,” Sarah points out.

I narrow my eyes at her. “That sounds threatening.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be,” she says quietly.

Frankie shifts in her chair to face me properly. “What are you blaming yourself for?”

“Nothing,” I answer too quickly.

Both women stare at me.

“Fine,” I surrender. “Emily.”

Frankie’s forehead creases. “What about her?”

“If we’d moved everyone into the office instead of using the zones, Emily wouldn’t have been near that wall,” I explain.

“We designed the plan together,” Frankie reminds me.

“I told everyone they could choose where they felt safest,” I say.

“Yes,” Frankie confirms.

“And Emily chose the living room,” I continue.