I followed after Charm only to leave when he and Blade shook hands. I couldn’t stomach the sight of the man I loved, making friends with the man who’d destroyed everything.

I was sitting and staring aimlessly through the window in my hospital room when Axel came back.

He’d popped up when I was in the stairwell, scaring the crap out of me with, “So, I just tried to get us some snacks out of the vending machine, but it didn’t work. My hand went right in, but the damn snacks didn’t come back out. What’d I miss?” He’d whispered the words and I’d patted him absently on the arm before replying, “Can you give us a minute? Isn’t there someone you could go haunt for a little while?”

He’d shrugged. “I guess I could see Amber again.”

I hadn’t broken eye contact with Charm as I answered, “Yeah, go do that.”

When he reappeared, Joker and PD were dozing in the small chairs. Rooster hadn’t made an appearance since he went for a drink. As I had no concept of time, it was hard to speculate how long ago that was.

“Hey…” He came over and sat down in the small window seat next to me. In this weird limbo between life and death that we found ourselves in, space wasn’t really a concern.

“Hey.” Since witnessing Charm and Blade in the stairwell, I’d been trying to find a way to come back and had even gone as far as laying down on my body in the hopes it would reconnect with whatever it was I’d become.

Obviously, it hadn’t worked.

“Somethin’ happen with her?” He gestured toward the bed and I shook my head. “No, but Blade’s pushing to sit with me…alone. There has to be a way to let the guys know that he’s the one they’re looking for. How’d your latest round of haunting go?”

He sighed and rested his forehead against the glass. “Amber’s pregnant. This whole time I thought she was blowing me off because we aren’t the same people we were in high school and it was because she didn’t know how to tell me that she was carrying my kid. Did you know?”

I shook my head and pulled him in closer, resting my chin against his shoulder. “No. I didn’t even know you’d asked her to move in. I’m so sorry.” Blade had already taken so much—and stealing the life of a man who was not only my friend, but a soon-to-be father, only made me despise him even more.

“How long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”

His question surprised me and I paused to look beyond the window toward the stars. “I don’t know—maybe until Blade is stopped?”

He nodded. “That’s what I’ve been thinking too. We need to find a way to wake you up. Have you tried poking your body?”

“I’ve poked, prodded, and tickled—nothing. I just don’t know what else to do.”

Axel stood up. “I’m going to see if I can get back to the clubhouse. Maybe someone there finally figured out what happened to you. Do you think any of the guys saw Blade that day?”

I thought of Twitch and my eyes filled with tears. “Well, I know Joker didn’t and Twitch—I don’t think he made it.”

Axel looked around the room. “Then why hasn’t his ass joined us in purgatory?”

I had been trapped inside this hospital for one hundred years. It was only a slight exaggeration; I’d been comatose for what felt like an exceptionally long time, making my prognosis bleak.

With the exception of Doc and Twitch, all of the bikers had taken turns sitting with me. And even when he wasn’t in my room, Charm was always nearby, on his phone or pacing.

Axel had disappeared on me again, but by this point, I was growing used to it. He’d be talking to me one minute and gone the next. I just hoped that he was finding a way to stop Blade. I’d tried leaving the hospital, but had only gotten as far as the lobby. There appeared to be some barrier preventing me from going any further. I was still tethered to my body, even if it didn’t feel like it.

So, I sat with the guys and waited for a miracle, tensing up anytime Blade appeared. It felt like I’d been in a coma for far too long, yet the doctors had yet to try and wean me off the vent.

“I’m gonna grab some food,” Rooster announced, as he pulled his long body from the chair and stretched. Once he’d recovered from his bender, he’d shown back up and refused to leave my side. He questioned everyone who came in, demanding credentials and explanations like he worked for the CIA.

Charm’s head popped up almost immediately, as if he’d been woken from a deep sleep. “Okay. I’ll just stay with her—you heard anything from Doc?”

Rooster checked his phone. “I got nothin’. I’ll check in with him though when I get downstairs, there’s better cell service—Gunner and the crew are still out, right?”

“Yeah, they should be back in a few hours. Once they get up here, we’ll know more. See if we can’t put some motherfuckers in the ground.”

The door opened before Rooster could reach it and Blade slipped in. “Hey, any changes?”

Rooster eyed him skeptically before shoulder checking him on the way out.

Blade turned back to Charm. “What the fuck is wrong with him—he on his period or some shit like that?”

Something strange happened in that moment. Just as Charm began to answer, there was a high-pitched buzzing sound that drowned everything else out. I could see his body tense up as his mouth moved, but I couldn’t hear anything they were saying.

The two continued talking and then Charm’s shoulders relaxed again. He began nodding and stood up, causing my pulse to skyrocket.

Was he leaving me?

Didn’t he know what would happen?

Charm reached into his vest and pulled a sprig of greenery out, placing it in my hand. He leaned in and whispered something in my ear, but it was drowned out by the roaring in my ears.

As I moved closer, I realized what he’d left me with.

Mistletoe.

I reached out to grab him just as I caught movement near the edge of the bed. The fingers on my right hand were twitching.

That had to be a good sign. My body was in sync with—well, whatever I was. I pointed directly at Blade and my body mimicked the movement. I could show him who did this, if only he would look at me again.

Axel reappeared, looking completely out of sorts. He began gesturing wildly at me and shouting, but I couldn’t hear a word of it. He also didn’t look the same as before; it was like looking at a mirage.

When Charm put his hand on the door, it only confirmed what he’d agreed to. He was going to let Blade sit with me—the man who was responsible for not only the deaths of my parents, but my friends as well. He had taken the people I loved from me, and now he was going to do the same to Charm.

First, his sister.

Then, his girlfriend.

He’d get away with it too. The bastard was sneaky and Charm would forever think that I willingly threw away everything I’d built at the clubhouse with them—all for a high.

Tears cascaded down my cheeks and I roared in anguish. How could I fight something when I was medically sedated? How could I defend myself against this monster when the only person who could help me was walking out the door?

My body was wracked with sobs and, as if to punish me further, time seemed to slow. I could hear each click of the track as the sliding door opened.

“You can’t leave me here with him, Charm. He did this to me! He’s responsible for it all!”

The door stopped and he turned around, staring in my direction as if he could see me.

“Don’t leave…please.” My voice was softer, but whatever hold I’d had on him was broken.

He tucked his lower lip between his teeth and turned back toward the door, stepping out and sliding it shut behind him. The final click was like a prison cell door locking.

Sentencing me to death.

Axel made a move to reach for me, but I managed to slip past him and out into the hallway. I caught the back of Charm’s head as he walked away from me.

“Kane!” I screamed his real name until my throat was raw, yet he never once looked back. His phone rang from his pocket, but the buzzing drowned out his voice, leaving me with moving lips and overwhelming dread that this was all going to end soon.

I was going to die before I got a chance to tell him that I loved him.

“Neve…let’s go.” Axel held my arm in a death grip, but I fought him, trying to get back to Charm. I wouldn’t let myself dwell on the fact that I could hear his voice again.

Only the dead had voices…

I weakened and Axel easily moved me back toward my hospital room. It was over. I was nothing more than a star that had run out of hydrogen. I could feel it—the walls were closing in on me and it was only a matter of time before I burned up.

As Axel dragged me back into the room to face my killer, I thought about what happened to stars when they died. A star without hydrogen would contract in on itself, yet burn hotter. The upper layers of the star would then expand, even as the rest collapsed—leaving a red giant in its place.

Helium inside the star would fuse with carbon. Once the helium was demolished, the star would cool down into a white dwarf and then finally, a red dwarf.

Blade stared down at me before moving over to the door and looking out. Satisfied that no one was coming, he pulled the curtain closed and turned back toward the hospital bed.

The death of a normal star didn’t cause a huge disruption in the solar system. It burned up and things went back to business as usual. In the case of a larger star, however; things were a little more complicated. A large star had more mass. More mass meant the star still had enough carbon after the helium was consumed to fuse with a heavy element, like iron. Once the core turned to iron, the star would no longer burn. The gravity within would force it to collapse in on itself before exploding into a supernova. The remaining core was even capable of becoming a black hole.

Blade pulled a syringe from his pocket and said something indiscernible before laughing to himself. The reality was that I’d been nothing more than an average-sized star in my life. Well, up until I met my bikers.

Axel had been wrong when he said I’d changed them. It was the other way around. They’d transformed me into something bigger and better.

If this was it, then I was going to have to implode with enough force to take this asshole biker down to the depths of Hell with me.

Axel shoved me from behind and I fell onto the bed. I turned around to protest, but he continued to hold me down—even lying on top of my body to keep me there.

“Fight, Goddammit! Wake up and fight him, Neve! It’s the only way!” A single tear ran down his face, but his grip didn’t falter.

Another set of hands held me down and I looked up in shock. It was her. She looked just as she had in that picture in Charm’s room.

Rae.

“Wake up!” She shouted.

“Neve—open your eyes, sweet girl. You need to fight!” My mother’s voice had me straining to find her. She stood near the foot of the bed, her hand on Axel’s shoulder. My father stood near her, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

Axel nodded at them and then smiled back at me. “You were always worth saving, Neve. Don’t forget that.”

My mother and father stepped forward and each pressed a soft kiss to the top of my head before the room dimmed and their faces shifted out of focus. Pain hit me and I closed my eyes as everything spun out of control.

When I reopened them, I was on the back of Charm’s bike—the sunlight bathing my face in yellow warmth before dipping back behind the trees, like a game of hide and seek. I gripped his body tightly as we moved around the curves in the road. Neither one of us wore helmets, so our hair was at the mercy of the wind. He kept one hand on the handle while the other moved down to cover my own.

When I blinked, we were suddenly at the cliffs and I stepped up to the edge and jumped, without fear this time. The icy cold water took my breath away, but none of it mattered when I saw his face as I surfaced. Then, I was sitting on the ledge, watching the sunrise with all of them—we were crammed onto the small rock, but we were happy.

We’d been happy, hadn’t we?

Like family.

My mind kept taking me somewhere different; forcing me to relive every memory of my life. I went back to lying on the forest floor, to feeling Blade sink the knife into my side. Like my parent’s old VCR, I was being rewound on high speed. I traveled through my past; watching in horror as my childhood home burned to the ground with my parents inside. When I saw myself use for the first time, I prayed that death would come swiftly.

Things began to slow and then I saw my mom in a hospital bed, her hair drenched in sweat, but with a huge smile on her face. There was a newborn cradled in her arms—me.

“What do you think, little miss? You think Neve would suit you?”

I stared up at her with wide eyes and she laughed. The sound was like a warm blanket, fresh out of the dryer, being wrapped around my shoulders. It was a sound that I’d missed terribly.

“I know it’s silly—being named after snow when we live in a place where it never happens, but it just seems right for you,” She placed her thumb in my tiny hand and I held on tightly. Her lower lip trembled when she spoke. “I love you, darling girl. And I would give my dying breath to keep you safe. Unconditionally—even if you turn out to be a bratty teenager.” She smiled through her tears and brought me up to her chest in a tight embrace.

I blinked through my own flood and then I was back in my hospital room. Everyone else was gone—it was just me.

And Blade.

The rumble of bikes sounded in the distance, like thunder announcing an impending storm. I didn’t know how she’d done it, but I was certain that my mom had kept her promise and somehow brought me back from the brink of death.

I lifted my arm and realized it was attached to my body again—the mistletoe clenched tightly in my hand. I was also painfully aware of the tubing that ran down my throat and I began clawing at it desperately, while silently gagging. My mouth was frozen open, but nothing would come out. I continued gagging until tears ran down my cheeks, certain that my face was turning purple from my body’s efforts to free the tube.

Blade noticed the movement and froze with his body over mine. “Holy shit,” he gasped before jumping back.

Everything still had a surreal feel to it, no doubt residual effects of the sedation. The tubing was taped down on both of my cheeks and it didn’t matter how hard I pulled, everything remained where it was.

Panic set in when I realized that I couldn’t swallow and memories of being drugged came back to me. Alarms began going off on the monitor as my heart beat wildly in my chest.

Blade used his body weight to lean across me again and I reluctantly gave up on my efforts to pull the tube free as I scratched and clawed at his face.

With a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I dug my thumb into the corner of Blade’s eye as he grabbed my IV line. “Stop fighting me,” he hissed. “It’s over.”

The curtain flew back and my bikers burst into the room with their guns drawn, just as Blade pressed the tip of the syringe into the line. They had Blade on the floor and away from me by the time the nurses swarmed in.

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Charm wrestled Blade up and turned him over to Gunner before grabbing my hand. He didn’t say a word, but I nodded anyway, my eyes tearing from both the vent and the look of devastation on his face. Horror and guilt blended into one seamless expression as he squeezed my hand desperately while doctors and nurses frantically moved around us.

I saw the war in his eyes—he was torn between his need to stay with me and his desire to wipe Blade from the face of the earth. I gave another small nod and looked to the door.

Once he was certain that I was going to be okay on my own and after many reassurances from the medical staff that he was just in the way, he pressed a rough kiss against my forehead and took off after the other bikers. Joker and Guardrail stayed behind, with the former signing faster than I could read.

I shakily held up my hand as if I was going to do a ‘peace’ sign, before crossing my middle finger over my index finger.

R.

Then I made a fist, keeping my thumb pressed against my index finger.

A.

Finally, I rested all but my pinky finger on top of my thumb.

E.

Joker’s eyes widened and he looked back toward the door, questioningly.

I nodded as much as I could with everything I was hooked up to and he patted my foot through the blankets before taking off after them.

I stared up at the bright fluorescent lights above my head as they worked on me, tears steadily coursing down my cheeks. The tube protruding from my mouth rose and fell rhythmically.

Guardrail stayed by my side, his calloused hands brushing my hair back. “We got you, Neve. You’re gonna be okay, doll. Just a few more minutes and you’ll be breathing on your own again.”

He grabbed one of my hands and clasped it tightly in his as the nurse suctioned my mouth. I gagged again when they began suctioning the tube, but Guardrail continued to talk in that quiet voice of his, calming me down.

“One more and they’re gonna get this shit out of you so you can breathe. You can be strong for just a few more minutes, can’t you?”

I nodded and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out everything but the sound of his voice.

“There we go, doll. Just relax. I’m not going anywhere. You feel my hand? If it hurts too much, squeeze my hand—hell, break the damned thing off if it makes you feel better.”

I held his hand in a death grip and gagged in silence as the nurse continued suctioning me. “You’re a real fighter, Mrs. Ryan. I can definitely say in all my years of nursing, I’ve never seen anyone wean themselves off of the vent while sedated.”

Guardrail placed his other hand against my forehead, preventing me from arching up as I gagged. “That’s because our girl’s a badass.” He said the words with pride as they suctioned me one last time.

The tube came up and out with a small gurgle and I began coughing almost immediately; my lungs working to expel any remnants from being on the vent.

“We’re going to give you a little bit of oxygen to keep your levels nice and even. You can relax.” The nurse secured the tubing around my nose while Guardrail kept his death grip on me.

I knew Charm was dealing with Blade, but I suddenly wished that I hadn’t sent him away. I glanced down at the mistletoe, still in my palm.

What had he said when he placed it in my hands?

It wasn’t possible, yet I knew it wasn’t just some dream conjured up by a brain deprived of oxygen.

There was still so much that needed to be said—so many questions that still needed to be answered, but without Charm, I was going to have to put the pieces together on my own.