Leila

 

 

Hurts. Everything hurts when I open my eyes, the sting of soft light making me blink rapidly when I turn my head to see the murky light of a grey overcast day out the window.

I’m awake. Not the way I was before but honest to gosh awake, and I don’t want to be, because it feels like someone ripped me open and shoved hot coals in the flesh beneath my belly button.

I’m not quite right as I blink and try to clear my head. I feel all cotton woolly and heavy, as if my body is filled with lead, but I am awake, and as I’ve always said, pain is just a frame of mind.

Wrong! I don’t like pain. It’s worse than just being sick, and right now, I feel sick and sore all over, and it’s wrong. All wrong.

Looking over to my right, I blink and blink again, not quite believing my eyes when they see the same image with every blink and reopening of my eyes.

Lyon, Hawk, and Lynx are contorted in chairs beside the bed, their huge bodies bent at odd angles with heads cricked and their mouths hanging open.

The three of them are identical, and despite the lapse of years, they still look so good I can’t do anything but stare at them all. Lyon’s still the hottest one, I think, but that could just be because I’ve always had a thing for the man’s hot body that I once knew intimately.

Hawk’s next, and I know it’s him because even in his sleep he’s scowling and grumbling. Lynx just looks dead, but I already knew that he looks strangely still when he sleeps, with his mouth hanging to his chest, not a muscle twitching.

So cute. They look so cute I feel a sharp stab of nostalgic affection pierce me. Once upon a time, all three of them were my family, at a time when my real family were so torn apart I felt alone.

Lyon was mine, my protector, and the one person who wouldn’t fail me. Hawk was the rock, the one I could turn to if I needed hard, cold facts to make a decision, even if the facts weren’t what I wanted to hear.

Lynx, the joker, the one who always found the silver lining, was my ray of sunshine. I could always count on him to perk me up, even when I felt like the world was crushing down on me.

I loved them all in my own way, Lyon my man while the others were the brothers I didn’t have. Seeing them here now, after the long stretch of reliving my memories, is painful, and yet I manage a watery smile anyway because it’s good to see them.

God, I didn’t realize how much I still missed them.

“You’re back.”

I hear the raspy whisper and turn my head to find Hawk sitting forward, his eyes drilling into me.

“Hey,” I mumble, wincing when I try to shift and something down south screams in protest. “Oh, owie.”

My wince has him leaning by me, his big hands gentle as he pushes me back down with a frown.

“Don’t, you’ll hurt yourself, Leila.”

“I want to sit up. I feel like my ass is melting into the mattress,” I huff, keeping my voice just above a whisper because I don’t want to wake the others.

I could be all denial and say it’s because they look tired and need rest, but the truth is that I don’t want Lyon awake yet. I’m not strong enough to look into his eyes right now, and even weaker knowing that if he’s been here as long as I think he has, he’s not just leaving with a ‘hope you feel better soon’ tossed over his shoulder.

Hawk grunts out a ‘stubborn female’ but slowly eases me up before resting a hip beside mine and smiling down at me.

“Long time no see, sweetheart.”

His growl is familiar and heartbreakingly sweet, and I tear up as I smile up at him, taking in every change I see on his face. His eyes are a little harder than I remember. He has a few faint lines beside his eyes, which I know are not from smiling, and there’s a scar beneath his right jaw that looks like he fell into a knife fight.

“What happened?”

Hawk looks away and breathes deeply, narrowing his eyes on some distant point outside the window. I know this guy. He’s harsh and gruff, but inside, he can be a real teddy bear. If he’s having trouble talking about this, then I am not sure I want to know.

The last thing I remember was being in the freezer, so cold I thought I would never be warm again. I was curled in so tight I could have been a pretzel.

And then I heard Tiffany’s and Mika’s voices, and I was terrified. Because I couldn’t move to go to them, and besides, I was not gonna make it. I knew it, and I didn’t want Mika sitting in there with me, crying while I faded away.

So, I stayed huddled in my little corner and listened to them cry while I slowly faded and stopped feeling the cold. When a blanket of warmth hit me, I was certain that was it.

But now…

“Wolf’s girl, Lori, was taken as well. She’s a smart one though, and with Wolf being such a paranoid SOB about security, she grabbed a tracker he was trying to force on her before they took her. She was in that freezer too, and when they came for her, she dragged you out and kicked some major ass. Lyon found you with Mika and Tiffany when he found Lori.”

“Wolf has a girl?” I ask, making Hawk grin ruefully.

I never met Wolf or Bear or any of the others, actually, but Lyon talked about them the whole time, and according to them, Wolf was an unrepentant man whore with no intention of settling down soon.

He was all about his military career and spreading his wild oats while he was still young.

“Yeah, he has a girl, and she’s great. Bear too. Danny’s her name, and they’re going to have a baby in a few months.”

“Aaah, the Wylder curse,” I muse, snorting a soft laugh because I remember all about it.

Lyon would insist that it hit him like a bolt when he saw me, and he’d thank his lucky stars that a witch ‘cursed’ one of his descendants centuries ago.

I wanted to believe it, but it was just too farfetched to be true, but I recall Hawk and Lynx shuddering and saying it was all bull while looking spooked as hell.

“Yep, seems that crap is true. But no more small talk, okay, Leila, even if I want to let you avoid the issue. How are you feeling?”

“Like a truck ran me over and flung me into a ditch where a bear mauled me and left my chewed insides on a bed of hot coals,” I grunt.

“Makes sense, since you just got out of surgery a few hours ago,” he muses, taking my hand in a gentle grip.

“Surgery?”

He stills and looks outside again before meeting my eyes. He looks so tired and somehow faded when he meets my eyes that I swallow and tighten my hand on his.

“You almost bled out internally, Leila. You’ve been in the hospital for about five days now, in a coma. The earlier tests didn’t show internal damage until you crashed last night. They rushed you into the OR after resuscitating you. You almost died, babe.”

I think I remember that. Not the whole crashing part, but I recall feeling out of it even in my unconscious state, and then I was being pulled down no matter how I fought to push back up.

It wasn’t bad though. I remember that. As with the freezer, I felt cocooned by warmth and this comfort, like I was wrapped in someone’s arms. Fanciful, I know, but that’s the way I remember it, so…

“I’m okay though.”

I know this even with the pain that I now know is probably a huge cut if they had to open me up. Crap, haven’t these people heard of keyhole surgery?

“No, you’re not. You may be healing physically, but I know you, Leila. You forget that you were family for almost a year. I know when you’re trying to fake it, babe.”

My eyes burn at his words, and it’s not easy keeping the tears at bay, because the truth is that a part of me is pissed that I’m here. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have to get through anything, wouldn’t hurt and have to tell myself that surviving is better than death.

Because it isn’t always, you know. Sometimes surviving is a sentence that is filled with the pain of your experiences, and I may not be thinking of those experiences now, but they’ll come, and it will hurt.

“I’m alive, Hawk.”

“Thank God for that, Leila. When Mika snapped out of it and saw you, I thought that girl was gonna lose her shit! For someone who’s poised and calm, that girl has a filthy mouth on her.”

I laugh because it’s true. Mika is dead calm all the time, a result of hours spent in pain, trying to hide it, and the knowledge that she could die any minute. But she has the mouth of a trucker who used to be a sailor.

“She’s okay?” I ask, worried because she isn’t physically strong.

“Still swinging and spitting in people’s eyes,” he laughs.

Hearing that gives me peace, and I’m able to smile again because I need to. I am alive, God help me, and I have one of my very dearly loved friends at my side. For now, I won’t look at Lyon, because I just can’t, but soon enough I will have to, and that’s okay because I love him too. In a strange way that’s muted by time and distance.

“I should thank her. For saving me.”

“Yeah, but not today. You need to rest and get better, and trust me, Leila, if Lori’s coming, so are the others, and they’re not easy to be with, especially not if you’re weak and recovering.”

Weak. I don’t feel weak, I think. I feel strong even with the pain, because I’m here. And surrounded by strong men who’d flatten the world for me.

“Probably. Later,” I mumble. “Can I have some water, please?”

My throat feels scratchy and sore, and the cool water is like a balm as it travels down, coating my throat. Once I’m done, Hawk pushes the cup away and looks at me somberly.

“You’ll have to talk to him soon, you know. He won’t sleep forever. The only reason he’s sleeping at all is because Lynx put crushed sedatives in his coffee.”

I snort and manage a giggle because the damn fiends did the same thing to me with melted chocolate once upon a time. If I’d known then, I’d have kicked their butts. But I know that they do it because they care, and Lyon looks so exhausted I don’t blame them.

“I know. Just…later,” I sigh, settling down and relaxing completely to give my stomach a break.

“Later. Hmmm. Time. It’s the one gift we have that we can’t ever get back once it’s gone, Leila. You know that, babe,” he says soberly.

Yeah. I know that. I spent three years drifting through my life, just making it through college when all I wanted to do was check out. I stayed and faked my way through because Mika was still with me, and what sort of animal would I have been if I’d stopped living when my little sister was dying and trying to cling to life with a death grip?

But I know he’s right. Time is the strangest thing. It can fly by one minute, creep slowly, eternally slowly the next, and then it’s just gone. Poof! As if it was never yours to begin with.

I wasted three years of my time mourning, and even now, I’m not really paying it all that much mind. I’m just floating, or I was, I think, suddenly happy to be alive because Hawk’s right. I have time!

And I should use it to my best ability because I’m lucky. I could have lost it all, and sure, okay, being dead isn’t the worst that could happen. I believe in heaven and all that mystical stuff, so I guess I’d maybe go there and none of this earthy business would matter.

But I know now, right this minute, that I don’t want to die. I want to live and have more good memories and do all the things on my sparse bucket list.

Later though. For right now, I’m not feeling top of the charts. I hurt, and I’m still not ready to talk to Lyon. I may never be, but for him being here, knowing he still cares enough not to have walked away, I can’t hate him.

In fact, I think I could so totally be okay with him in my life again. Not as anything more than a friend. I may be alive, but I didn’t pick up some stupidity bug almost dying.

Lyon Wylder destroyed me once, and I won’t ever get close enough to let him do it again. But friends. That I can do.

“Talk to me. Tell me all about your life,” I say, changing the subject.

Not that I’m just using it to hide. I truly am interested in what they’ve been up to. I remember Lynx being excited at the prospect of joining his father in the family construction business and Hawk being unclear about his future. All he really wanted was to stick close to home and give his mom peace of mind.

Lyon was always the tumbleweed, wanting to be somewhere different while he just tossed in the breeze. Wolf and Bear were already on the road to their own dreams, and Sparrow…

Poor Sparrow.

Hawk grimaces, but with a sigh, he starts telling me about what happened after Lyon and I parted. I’m shocked but also respect them for the lengths these men went to, to avenge their baby sister.

When he tells me that Bear and Wolf became gangsters of a sort and that Bear finally clipped the guy who had Sparrow murdered, I let out a quiet whoop and high-fived Hawk.

What! I may not have met Sparrow, thanks to the brevity of my relationship with the world’s most possessive man, but I loved her too. I knew all about her, and I still feel that I would have adored her had she not been killed.

She was funny and cheeky, and I heard some of the voice messages she left Lyon. That girl was a firecracker.

“Yeah, so that’s been us for the last few years. Now we’re legitimate citizens. We all trained with the military at one point, and we’ve established an agency that specializes in recovery. Mostly kidnap victims or hostages. Sometimes we go deep for Uncle Sam when the military can’t go into certain areas. But that’s mostly it.”

So, Lyon finally got his military career, in a weird way. That makes me happy because I never forgot that if he hadn’t met me, he’d have gone against Hawk’s wishes and enlisted.

I felt guilty some, but not guilty enough to let him go. Now though, yeah, I am glad that he’s living part of his dream.

“And you?”

Well, now, that isn’t exactly as cut and dry as I want it to be. I shrug softly and lick my dry lips.

“Well, I finally graduated and got a job at the little Native American museum we visited that time you and Lyon took me to see the East quarter. As you know, Mika pulled through chemo and radiation, so…things were good. Mom and Dad moved to Florida a few years back when Dad got a promotion, and…that’s it.”

Mostly it. I won’t mention the last year of my life, where I’ve been at loose ends and struggling. I’ve been in a relationship for about eight months now.

Rory is…safe, I guess you could say. He’s average-looking with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, and he works in accounts at a chain store in the city.

We get along, and if things aren’t exactly exciting or passionate, well, that’s okay. I really do love him. He’s a good man with a reliable nature, and he doesn’t push me on the bigger issues, which I know are important to him.

We’ve discussed marriage once or twice, but things aren’t going in that direction yet, thank God, because I just don’t want to think about it yet.

I’m twenty-seven years old. I still have time to do those things. Thanks to Lori.

“Scintillating,” Hawk mutters, making me laugh.

“Don’t be an asshole, Hawk. What did you expect? That I’d graduate and go into extreme sports as a career and travel the world with my snowboard just looking for the next good powder?”

He gets all serious though, doesn’t even give me a grin, and shakes his head.

“No, but I never thought for one minute that you’d just stop caring about your life, Leila. I’ve been stuck in a holding pattern for eight years, but even I have lived more than that. You got your job? Great. Does it make you happy?”

“Of course.”

Sometimes. When I source a particularly interesting artifact and can trace it all the way to its origins. That’s about as good as it gets, otherwise I’m just an organizer trying to drum up more interest in our little museum.

“Sure. Right, that’s why you’re biting your lips. You forget I know you.”

“I am happy. I have a little house that I love, I have a good car and a boyfriend, and I have Mika. That’s a good life, Hawk.”

It is! It has to be, because I won’t ever go dancing in the rain with Rory, because he hates getting wet, doesn’t even like swimming. I won’t hike to the top of the old buildings downtown and look at the sunrise like we did one morning after we spent the night stargazing in the park and drinking rum and coke.

All of that is in another life, and it has to stay there because it isn’t me anymore. I work, and I have a steady relationship based on respect and mutual affection.

“You’re in a holding pattern, and you don’t want to get out because it may pose a threat to all the order you love so much. But you just survived a terrible ordeal, and there’s nothing like almost dying to wake you up, Leila.”

Yeah, except that waking up will entail a come to Jesus moment with my ex, a man who broke up with me while hung over and ignoring me to the point he never once looked at me before telling me it was all over.

“I’m tired.”

Hawk sighs when I close my eyes, and kisses my hand softly. I fall asleep with his hand still stroking me.