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Numbly, I lifted my head, trying to see through the burning saltwater coating my eyes.
I let this happen.
My fault.
My fault.
Something inside of me snapped.
“Why?”
Sparrow turned her horrified gaze to me, her lower lip quivering as tears streaked twin paths through the blood and dirt on her face.
“Why couldn’t you fucking listen to me?”
She crumpled. Something in her eyes cracking. Breaking. Shattering.
Ava Jade was shaking her head, muttering something I couldn’t hear to herself over and over again as Rook continued his assault of Grey’s chest.
His still body lurched from the movements and bile rose up the back of my throat at the snap of his rib bones.
“Fuck you!” Rook was screaming at Grey’s lifeless face. “Wake. The. Fuck. Up.”
He stopped pumping Grey’s chest and slapped him instead, first with one palm and then the other, leaving red on both his cheeks. “You don’t get to fucking die. Not tonight.”
He slapped him again and I couldn’t watch anymore. “Rook, stop,” I said, my voice laced with warning.
But then a choking cough spluttered from Grey’s lips and Rook hefted him onto his side as Grey choked up blood, spattering the floor with it as he racked his lungs, his one eye opening wide, bloodshot, and strained from the pain.
I didn’t know how I got there, but there I was, rolling him back to his back, prying his one eye open, checking his pupil dilation. Jabbing two fingers below his chin to take his pulse, the feel of it hard and strong against the pads of my fingers better than anything I’d ever felt in my whole miserable fucking existence.
I fell back onto my ass, a broken breath falling from my lips, my head spinning.
He was okay. He was going to live.
Ava Jade crawled to his side, reaching for him, and I saw red.
I checked her advance, cutting her off from getting any closer as he came slowly back to full consciousness. “Don’t fucking touch him.”
She recoiled from my words, falling backward onto her elbows, her eyes filled with hurt.
Rook was asking Grey if he could count the number of fingers he was holding up. Behind Ava Jade, I saw the stern face of my father leaving a trail of corpses in his wake as he burrowed a path through flesh and bone to get to us.
Ava Jade got shakily to her feet, dropping the useless gun still in her hand to the ground. “I’m s-sorry,” she said, her watery stare fixed on Grey, who had lifted a hand as though he might be trying to touch her.
“He’ll be okay, right?” Rook asked me, still crouched beside Grey’s head, his bloody fingers brushing debris from the garish wound to his brother’s eye. “He’s going to live?”
Diesel brushed past Ava Jade, assessing the situation, rushing to Grey.
“Hey, where the fuck does she think she’s going?” Rook said, and when I looked back up, Ava Jade was already halfway down the dock, jumping over corpses, ignoring the Saints calling out to her as she passed them. Running away.
“Ghost!” Rook called out to her, his voice hoarse. He tried to stand, but his leg was fucked, and he fell back to one knee, baring his teeth before trying again. “Ghost!”
I bowed my head. Fuck.
“What the fuck did you say to her?” Rook demanded, taking a shaky step forward, his left boot glinting crimson.
What had I said to her?
