She was so still. Like a statue or a doll. Her sunshine hair crusted with blood, her sleeve torn. He’d ripped the material to see the extent of the wound that was causing all the blood.

So much freaking blood, some of it on him. It wasn’t his. At least he didn’t think so. Didn’t matter right now. He was on his feet and moving. Still breathing.

Still alive.

Mal didn’t even know what had happened for sure. There had been so much noise and confusion. The screams, the rending metal. Then the sparks as the beam overhead came down…

He hadn’t thought. Hadn’t processed. There had been no time for choice. She was in the path of that fucking beam.

Except she wasn’t alone.

So he had made a choice, but not consciously. It wasn’t a matter of picking her but being incapable of even registering anyone else when she was in danger. From the first goddamned time he laid eyes on her, that had been his reality. Nothing had changed.

Especially not his single-minded focus on Richelle Crandall.

Ricki.

Elle.

Now she was so quiet, so unnaturally still, her lips motionless, her eyes closed. No color in her cheeks.

Almost as if she was dead.

He watched her be wheeled away to the waiting ambulance and pushed aside the restraining arms that tried to keep him back. “She’s my aunt,” he said without thinking. “I have to go with her.”

The EMT who’d just tried to force him back stopped long enough to raise an eyebrow. “That young girl is your aunt? Oh really.”

Mal never wavered. “Yes.”

The saddest thing was it wasn’t exactly untrue. They weren’t related in the strictest sense, but Lila had been his stepmother for years and Lila was Ricki’s sister-in-law. So what if she was a couple years younger than him? If one stretched the boundaries of their fucked-up family relationship, it was sterling truth.

And made his ridiculous obsession with her even more insane. Not that she would ever know.

“I’m going,” Mal said.

The EMT hesitated. He clearly didn’t believe him, but Mal would’ve been willing to lay out his messy as hell family tree for this dude if it allowed him to go with her in that ambulance. She couldn’t be alone. Not now.

“All right, fine. Whatever.” The guy moved back and Mal jumped in back of the ambulance with Ricki. The others were…fuck, he didn’t know where the others were. If the others needed an ambulance or worse. He hadn’t had time to check on everyone. His brother was okay. That was all he had time to see before Ricki had consumed his attention.

As freaking usual. At least this time it was for a reason other than simply existing.

He crouched down beside her in the back and gripped her hand. For this moment, only one EMT was focused on her, the others occupied with the chaos inside. She wasn’t critical. Even without knowing the extent of her injuries, he knew that much. Her wound might be worse than it seemed, but she wasn’t going to die. Her heartbeat under his fingers had been steady and strong, her breathing even.

She was a fighter, and he’d been there in time. Not fast enough to prevent her from being injured entirely, but it hadn’t been a fatal blow.

“You’re probably not going to remember this,” he said, speaking close to her ear. He knew the bustling EMT could probably hear him, and he hated that. These words weren’t for anyone but her. Would never even be hers while she was conscious. But now, in this space where she wasn’t fully with him, he could speak freely. It wouldn’t matter later.

Just as it hadn’t before.

“But you’re not getting a free pass to sleep. You’re going to be fine. You have to be. Too many people need you.”

I need you.

He didn’t say the last bit aloud. At least he hoped he didn’t. Who even knew anymore?

He shut his eyes to block out the curious stare from the EMT as she worked to check Ricki’s vitals. He hoped like hell she wasn’t a fan. There were professional agreements not to disclose information gleaned in situations like this, but he trusted no one. From his past, he couldn’t. Not even those tasked to help.

Anyone could be bought and paid for. Even him.

“You don’t have to worry. You’re going to be okay. You’ll get through this just fine.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. She wore a lot of rings. Cheap ones with gaudy stones and silver that probably rubbed off.

No one would guess she had money now, a lot of it. She lived as if she was still struggling to get by. She drove a shitbox car, probably lived in a rundown apartment. No one could get her to upgrade her standard of living. The girls tried now and then, making jokes and chiding her to buy a new car in particular after it broke down without warning on the side of the road. She defended her crappy piece of shit and laughed them off. She was fine.

Just as she was fine with the asshole men who paraded in and out of her life. Staying just long enough to mooch off her and break her heart. It was too goddamned fragile. Too easily wounded.

She was still bleeding, staining the makeshift bandage the EMT had applied.

He swallowed. Fuck. He couldn’t do this. She was screwed if he was the guy who was meant to be by her side.

And he wasn’t. He was just a temporary stand-in because there was no one else. The others all had someone in their lives. Someone to love, and who loved them. His brother’s wife was home in California, but still, Michael would be with his true brother—West, his best friend. Sharing DNA with Mal had just been an accident of birth.

Ricki wasn’t the same as he was. People loved her. She was so open and honest and caring that she attracted friends easily. And men. They fucking swarmed around her, all wanting to stand in her light for as long as she’d gift them with her glow.

He was the exact opposite. He was darkness and humor at others’ expense and isolation. By choice. All by choice.

She was looking for love anywhere she could find it. He didn’t know how to love anymore. But right now, he was the one with her. And that was by choice too.

“You’re going to wake up and you’re going to feel guilty. But don’t. Don’t.” His voice rasped out of his chest, rough and deep. Jagged at the edges.

He was amazed words still existed inside him after what he’d seen. There was a black hole in his gut, in his heart, just waiting to suck down everything that had happened tonight and churn it up as another reason to be bitter. To hate and mistrust.

Until then, he was too raw, and her hand was trembling in his, and he wasn’t strong enough to keep her out.

“It was me. I only saw you. Maybe if I’d moved faster, if I’d been a little closer to him too…” He trailed off and squeezed his eyes shut at the image of Randy moving forward, his gaze on the lights when the beam was coming down, swinging wildly, manically, its targets so clear.

Mal had gone for Ricki. She hadn’t seen the beam. But if he’d shifted just a little to the left, perhaps he could’ve brought them both out of the way. An extra second or two, a moment where he wasn’t transfixed by Ricki and keeping her safe—

“It was me,” he repeated, gripping her hand tighter. “I told you to run before. Tonight I was the one who ran.”

Straight to her. Incapable of seeing anyone else, though he was the only hope Randy had.

Mal let out an unsteady laugh. Fuck, he wasn’t meant to be a hero. Hadn’t he proven that tonight? It was his fault someone’s life was ruined.

His fault he’d made a choice no matter how many times he told himself he hadn’t.

She was his choice. Always. She was the reason he was even on that stage. Lila believed it was because of her and the strings she’d pulled. But the truest answer was the woman stretched out in front of him, bleeding and still.

So still. The exact opposite to all the madness just outside the ambulance. Vehicles coming and going, sirens blaring, tires shrieking. Wailing. Not crying. Sobbing.

He didn’t want to hear any of it. Couldn’t.

Ricki’s lips parted and for a second, he thought she was waking, but no. That halfhearted moan was from pain. He was harming her even now, squeezing her delicate flesh until she bruised.

Forcing himself to lessen his grip, he exhaled a ragged breath and lifted her pale hand to his cheek. She was so cold. “She needs a blanket or something,” he barked to the EMT, not looking to see if the order was followed. Because her lashes were fluttering, and her lips were forming something he couldn’t make out.

Then the words escaped on a huff of breath, and he was sure she was dreaming.

“Nightmare,” she whispered, and he knew she didn’t just mean tonight. Though it was. It so fucking was. “Nightmare,” she repeated, and he shut his eyes, knowing what would come next.

“Beautiful nightmare.”