Day 182 with Briar

Lucas

William thought she didn’t know. He thought Briar would look at me with the betrayal he had felt when he’d found out about my true identity. And I knew he was counting on that look—counting on the hurt to register on Briar’s face once I confirmed my name—before the man standing behind her stabbed her with that needle and injected her with whatever poison was waiting inside.

I’d wanted to keep my name from her until this was all over, until this world had been brought down and I could finally give her me. But William wasn’t going to wait forever, and I was running out of time before he snapped and did something rash.

I looked from her flat stomach to the tears building in my blackbird’s eyes, then said on a breath, “Forever.”

She nodded quickly. The resignation and devastation on her face threatened to destroy me. But I wouldn’t go down without a fight—I never had before, and I wouldn’t now. Not when her life was being held in the hands of another. Not when I was so sure she was keeping something from me—had planned on keeping it from me until we were through with this night so I wouldn’t hide her away like I’d wanted to.

I swallowed past the thickness in my throat and chanced one last glimpse down at the gun aimed at me before I was looking at her again.

Finger off the trigger. Loose hold.

In the space of one second, I already knew exactly what I would do, and I was ready.

I took in a deep, ragged breath, and held it as I studied those green eyes for what I hoped wasn’t the last time.

I love you, Briar. I’m going to get us out of this, I vowed, then released the breath I’d been holding, and let the name I’d kept secret for the last four years fall from my lips. “Trent Cruz.”

I vaguely registered the sound of screaming coming from behind me—from the front of the hall where the celebration was being held—but didn’t turn to look as I grabbed for the gun aimed at my stomach.

The man holding it had glanced up at the screams but jerked and fought against me when I tried to wrench the gun from him.

I forced his arms up so the gun was aimed above Briar’s head and struggled to reach the trigger.

Briar cried out a split second before I fired at the man holding her, but my arms suddenly felt like dead weights, and my heart dropped when his head snapped back and he sagged to the ground. Because instead of falling with him, the needle was still there, sticking out of Briar’s arm. Her face was pale and emotionless, and she swayed as she stared blankly ahead.

“Bri—”

The man I’d been wrestling for the gun slammed me into the ground, sending the gun sliding away from us toward the girl I’d failed, just as Briar fell to the floor.

I’d promised to protect her. To keep her safe. To get her out of there alive . . .

I’d fucking failed.

I pushed up from the floor and lunged for her, her name ripping from my chest and ending in a roar as something pierced my shoulder and was roughly ripped back out. I turned toward the man who’d just tackled me and caught his wrist as he brought his hand back down in a sweeping arc, the knife in his hand covered in my blood.

Keeping his wrist tight in my grasp, I yanked his arm toward me—straightening it—then slammed the open palm of my free hand into his locked elbow, forcing it to blow out in the opposite direction, and savoring the sound of his scream as the knife clattered to the floor between us.

Throwing him down onto his back, I gripped his tie in my hand and brought his head a couple inches off the floor so it would snap back against the hard surface as I drove my fist into his face again and again.

I could only feel rage and my suffocating agony as I hit him. He needed to feel a fraction of the pain I was in. I hadn’t been able to make the other man suffer for taking my blackbird from me, and I needed someone to.

My fist halted mid-air when a gun pressed to the top of my head. I exhaled a strained, “Fuck.”

“I will admit that even with what I knew of you, I did not see this one coming,” William said through clenched teeth, and it was then that I focused on the screams that were being drowned out by deep, commanding yells for everyone to get on the floor.

The raid had begun.

William’s finger moved toward the trigger, and I locked my eyes with his.

I tightened my grip on the tie of the man I’d beaten into unconsciousness as I prepared for what was coming and curled my lip into a sneer. “I’ll be waiting for you in hell.”

Two shots sounded, and I flinched as I stupidly, involuntarily, braced myself to die.

But then a second passed, and then another, and I forced my eyes open to see William sitting slack in his wheelchair, with blood rapidly pooling onto his white button-down shirt.

I turned my head to the side and saw the most beautiful angel on her knees with a gun still aimed at William.

“Briar,” I said numbly, and her head whipped around to face me.

Wide-eyed and terrified, her chest moving roughly from her too-fast breaths.

“Briar,” I repeated, trying to get my mind to realize she was alive.

“Do I—do I do it again?” she asked shakily, and she started sobbing the second I pulled her into my arms. “Do I have to—?”

“It’s okay,” I crooned as I pressed a rough kiss to her forehead and then her lips. “Shh, Blackbird. It’s okay.”

She dropped her arms and let the gun slip from her fingers, and then she was gripping me with one of her arms as tightly as I was gripping her. Her other hand slipped to her stomach protectively, and the same thoughts and fears from earlier built inside me, but before I could ask, her entire body began shaking so hard. She was going to go into shock.

“You said—you said to do it again. To be sure. You said—”

I cupped her face in one of my hands, pressed my forehead to hers, and tried to speak as gently as possible when all I wanted to do was beg her to forgive me for not being fast enough, to beg her to assure me she was really here in my arms. “He’s gone, Blackbird. He’s gone; it’s okay. You’re okay,” I whispered, then brushed my lips against hers. “You’re okay.”

“Everybody on the ground,” a deep voice boomed from above me, and Briar recoiled from the sound, but I didn’t release her and I didn’t move.

I looked up at the man in the bulletproof vest, and demanded, “Take us to David Criley.”

“I said ever—”

“Take us to David Criley,” I ground out, and when it looked like he would argue, I said low enough that my voice wouldn’t carry, “You’re only here because I made this possible. She’s going into shock. Tell Criley that Trent Cruz is demanding to leave. Now.”

He stared at me with confusion and apprehension, but something registered when I said my name, and he hurried to speak into the mic clipped to him. After a few moments of silence, he jerked his head toward the front of the hall, and I stood with Briar in my arms to follow him—not once looking back at William, or the two men we’d left bleeding on the floor.

As soon as we were outside, my handler came jogging over to us, already talking about whatever was happening inside the hall, but I wasn’t listening, and I didn’t wait for him as I took off for an ambulance at the end of a long line of police and SWAT vehicles.

David caught up to us, his tone warning me that he wasn’t happy. “What happened?”

“He was stabbed,” Briar said immediately.

“I’m fine,” I growled as I caught the EMT’s attention and waited until they were surrounding us. “She needs to be checked out. She’s been blacking out and close to fainting all night. Someone put a needle in her arm about five minutes ago, I don’t know what it was filled with.”

I stepped up into the back of the ambulance and reluctantly placed Briar onto the gurney.

“Lucas, please!” she said frantically and sat up, reaching for me when I stepped back.

I pressed my mouth roughly to hers, leaving it there when I said, “Let them make sure you’re okay. I’m not going anywhere; I’ll be right here.”

Once she released me, I stepped out of the ambulance and watched her. Again, one of her hands fell protectively to her stomach, and I felt anxious and fucking terrified as I waited for something that I wasn’t even positive was happening.

“You were stabbed?” David asked once the EMTs were looking her over.

“Right shoulder. I’ll get it checked later.”

I thought he was going to argue, but after a moment, he sighed and said, “Someone reported as soon as we entered. Were you near there? Do you—?”

“That was us,” I mumbled. Without taking my eyes off Briar, I told him everything that had happened with William at the end.

“He didn’t push it in,” Briar said weakly from where she was now sitting up. “He put the needle in, but he wasn’t able to push whatever was in it into me before you shot him.”

My eyes shut, and the crushing weight I’d been feeling since I’d seen the needle sticking out of her arm vanished. “I saw you fall to the floor,” I whispered, the ache in my voice revealing how gravely it had affected me.

“They were yelling at everyone to get on the floor,” she explained. “I pulled out the needle and dropped to the floor.”

A weighted breath rushed from me, and I opened my eyes to look at my blackbird. “I thought you were—”

“Briar!”

I stilled at the same time my blackbird did, and I watched as her face fell into horror and confusion when the deep voice shouted her name again, this time closer. “Oh my God,” she whispered, and tears immediately fell down her cheeks. “Kyle?”

David and I were pushed out of the way as the man I had come to hate over the last six months rushed into the ambulance and took my entire world up into his arms, despite the protests from the EMTs, and kissed her like a man dying.

Thoughts I hadn’t had in months reared inside me, dark and ugly.

Not the same, I thought on instinct.

But as the girl in front of me clung to her fiancé’s arms instead of pushing him away, I wondered when I would finally comprehend that it was.

I’d always known I would lose her. Always known she would go back to him—choose him over me. And I had no one to blame but myself, because I’d been the one to bring them back together.

I stumbled back a couple steps and then another. My eyes dropped to her flat stomach as wonder and grief slammed into me.

David was saying something, but I wasn’t hearing him. He put his hand on my uninjured shoulder, but I shoved it off as I turned and staggered away.