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Kingston was the first to see him. He yelled up at us, “There! At the bottom, he looks bad.”
We all rushed after that. Not enough to put ourselves in danger, but enough that we made it to him as quickly as possible.
The bottom of the service shaft opened up on a metal floor. There was enough room for all of us to stand around Ryker and assess what we could in the terrible lighting.
Ryker groaned when I knelt next to his head, and he gasped when I touched the dark trickle of blood coming from his lips.
I couldn’t tell if it was an internal injury or if he’d hit something on the way down, but my stomach lurched at the thought of either scenario.
“Ryker,” I said softly. “We need you to wake up, babe. We need you here with us so we can escape.”
His head rolled towards me, and his eyes fluttered. Kingston’s phone flashlight lit up the spot, and Ryker’s eyes responded to the light.
“Fuck, dude, turn it off,” he grumbled and held his hand in front of his face. He always hated being woken up in the morning, so this was a good sign. “What’s going on?”
“We’re at the bottom of the service shaft,” I said gently. “You fell. I don’t know what happened. One minute you were there, and the next, you were gone.”
“Oh shit, I’m sorry, princess,” he groaned. “I don’t exactly remember what I was doing. I think I passed out.”
“Why?” I asked and held my hand to his forehead. “You don’t feel hot. Do you have a fever? Are you ill?”
“I was hurt at Ilya’s,” he said. “Maybe harder than I wanted to admit. Fuck, much harder than I wanted to admit.”
He struggled to sit up, and Kingston dropped to his knees on the other side and helped him.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell the doctor?” Kingston asked, lifting Ryker in his arms.
“I don’t want to bring the group down,” he said, his eyes closing in pain as he moved his legs and sat up straight. “I know I’m a liability right now, and I didn’t want to make it harder on you all.”
“Fuck the liability part,” I said. “We’ve all got some weakness, but we have to communicate it, or the group suffers. The whole point of all this is to make all of us stronger.”
I pointed to him and each of the Kings, letting him know I meant the relationship.
“We’re in this group here to make life better for each of us. We all benefit from it, and that’s a good thing,” I kept going. “You guys always say it’s about me, but it’s not. It’s about all of us. We all matter because we all love each other.”
The other three Kings made sounds of agreement all around us.
“I’m the only one who brings nothing to the table,” he said quietly in the darkness, and that’s when it struck me. Ryker was always trying to be the alpha dog in our little pack because he was the main one with something to prove. He didn’t feel like he was adequate enough unless he was hyper-vigilant and protecting us all the time. My heart broke for the little boy who had been abused and raised in such a violent environment that he didn’t think he deserved love.
“You deserve this,” I told him and put my arms around him. “You deserve to be loved, and I love you. We all love you. You bring enough to the table by just being you.”
“She’s right, you know,” Archer said. “You’re good enough for us, just how you are.”
“Definitely,” Valen joined in. “I didn’t know you felt like that, man. I feel like shit that I didn’t notice.”
“You could have gotten yourself killed,” Kingston said sternly. He and Ryker always mentally wrestled with being the leader, but now I saw we didn’t need a group leader. We were all equal, all loved and accepted, no matter what. We were all enough, and we should all be loved for it.
“We have to go,” Archer said, looking around for the exit from this space. “I want to hang out here and talk about it, but we’re gonna all wind up dead if we stay here.”
“We need to find a way to help him out,” I said and watched as Valen and Kingston hooked their hands under Ryker’s arms and lifted him to his feet. He swayed and blinked, and his eyes seemed unfocused at that moment.
I didn’t know if he’d suffered a head injury at Ilya’s or if the fall had knocked him around, but I did know that we had to keep him awake to keep him safe.
“Come on, babe,” I said, snapping my fingers as his eyes closed slowly. “Stay with us here.”
“I am. I just feel tired,” Ryker said, and I wanted to let him curl up and snooze until he felt better, but with Ilya’s people close by and his possible concussion, that would be a dangerous thing to do.
“You can’t,” I said, my voice growing louder and more demanding. “We need you here to help us escape. This is your plan, remember?”
