No cops, no hospitals.

Aaron could lose his sisters. He could go to jail. We all could.

We deal with this our way.

“Did she stutter?” Callum asks, leaning casually against the wall, hands in the front pocket of his hoodie. His voice is pleasant enough, his expression serene, almost too calm, as he turns blue eyes over to Whitney, spurring her into action.

I give Cal a look of thanks as I sit down on the edge of the sofa, sweeping Aaron's auburn hair back from his forehead. My throat feels tight, like there's a sob stuck in there somewhere that I'm just too stubborn—or perhaps just too broken—to let out.

“He isn’t going to die,” Callum tells me, like he somehow knows this for certain. I look down at Aaron for several quiet moments, trying to commit his face to memory, the smooth line of his jaw, the tiny scar on his right earlobe. But then I realize I’m doing it and why I’m doing it, and I get furious all over again.

“You can’t know that,” I growl, turning back to Callum and finding his eyes not on Aaron, but on me. We stare at each other for a long time before he finally speaks in that beautifully dark voice of his, like his vocal cords are shaped from the shadows of Halloween night.

“He won’t go, not when there’s so much uncertainty between the two of you. He’s never stopped loving you, and he’s never had the chance to truly prove how sorry he is for the things that happened.” Cal pauses as Whitney comes back into the room, carrying a glass pitcher of orange juice and several glasses. He takes one from her and then looks her dead in the face. “Sit down at the kitchen table, and don’t try anything I might not like.” He taps the end of the bloodied baseball bat with the toe of his boot and her face pales even further, a feat I hadn’t considered possible.

Callum brings me some juice, letting his fingers linger against mine for longer than is really necessary. Neither of us misses how much they shake, but we both know that emotional wounds can be dealt with later. Physical ones have an expiration date.

I try my best to get Aaron to sip some juice, but he isn’t moving. Fuck, he’s barely breathing. After a while, I give up and drink it myself. The sugar rush goes straight to my head, giving my adrenaline-addled body the boost it needs. I set the glass down on the pristine surface of the coffee table, hoping it leaves a ring and ruins the furniture.

“Happy Halloween,” I whisper to Aaron, leaning down to press my lips to the clammy skin of his forehead.

I'm going to give Vic and Hael two hours, no more.

And then, even if it costs me everything, I'm taking Aaron to a fucking hospital.

If he dies, something inside of me will die with him, and there isn't that much left of me to give. I'm a tree with barren branches, one lone blossom clinging to a wooden wasteland. I will not let this part of my childhood go, no matter what the cost.

Pretty sure the Havoc boys like to torture me. Must help them get off or something. It's quite literally two hours and three minutes into this nightmare before we hear back from Hael and Vic. There's a loud knock at the front door of Nurse Yes-Scott's house, a sound like a cop’s knock, the pounding of a frantic fist.

Callum checks the peephole, and then wrenches it open, revealing a blood-spattered Hael Harbin.

“What in the actual fuck?!” I shout, standing up as Hael steps inside, clutching a plastic grocery bag by his side. His face and chest are drenched in crimson, and he scowls as he swipes a hand over his full lips, smearing blood across his too-handsome features. His honey-brown eyes look wicked, surrounded by all of that crimson. I’m surprised by how scared I am for him. Little bit more than just a sidepiece, eh, Bernie? That’s when I know for certain that I’m well and truly screwed. Havoc has its claws in me, and it’s never letting go. I force my next words out through clenched teeth. “Are you okay?”

I pray to every dark god I don’t believe in that it’s not his blood. How messed up is that? I want to hear that he slit some asshole’s throat, that Hael isn’t hurt in any way, shape, or form.

“I broke one of these fucking things,” he says, handing me the bag. When I glance down to see what's inside, I find several sealed bags of blood and some clear bags of saline, among other things. My stomach turns as I lift my head to look at him. “Ran into trouble on my way back. Mitch is on the warpath tonight; our boys are even starting to refer to his goons as the Charter Crew.” He shakes his head and drags his arm over his mouth again, flicking the blood onto Whitney’s perfect white walls as I pass the bag to her.

She looks into it, face paling, before lifting her brown eyes up to Hael's bloodied face.

“How did you get this?” she whispers, but Hael just laughs. He's not going to answer her. She should know better than to speak to us like we're anything but her captors.

“Never you mind that, sugar tits,” he says, lighting up a cigarette with shaking hands. Hael might look like a cocky asshole right now, but he's as afraid for Aaron as I am. I flick my attention back to him as Nurse Yes-Scott starts to set up a blood transfusion, right there in her Pottery Barn-inspired living room. Fitting, I think, since everything in here was paid for with blood money. “Use some of your wasted medical knowledge on fixing up our friend.”

“I'm not a surgeon,” Whitney begins, but the look she gets from Hael clearly relays the fact that we give zero fucks. “But I'll … I'll try.”

“Try really fucking hard,” Hael warns as Callum closes the door behind him, and Hael strips off his shirt, using it to scrub the blood from his skin. If this were any other moment, I’d most definitely appreciate his crimson-covered chest. “Vic'll be back soon. Doubtful you want to hear what he'll say if you screw this up.”

Whitney purses her fuchsia-painted lips, giving Hael a side-eye as he smokes a cigarette in her living room, but she gets to work, inserting an IV into Aaron's arm. The bullet is still inside of him; what if it’s lodged next to an artery or something? What if Whitney’s right, and we really do need a surgeon to get it out?

Minute by minute, Bernadette. Take it minute by minute.

Hael takes a seat on the coffee table while I stand near the foot of the couch, watching as Whitney does her thing, removing Victor’s careful stitches and digging into the wound with what I can only hope are a clean pair of household tweezers. This is so wrong, so wrong on so many levels. I turn away, but only for a minute. I can’t let that bitch work on my ex without at least keeping an eye on him.

Even though it turns my stomach to see Aaron opened back up, I glance over and watch Whitney remove the small piece of metal from his bicep. With a frown on her face, she drops it into my empty orange juice cup.

“He could very well have internal damage in his arm that we don’t know about,” she murmurs, but she keeps working until the wound is closed and bandaged.

While we wait, we watch Aaron go through two pints of blood. He eats up everything Hael brought and looks like he could use a little more.

I feel like I'm imagining it, but his face seems a little less pale, his cheeks a bit pinker. I touch my fingers to the wound on my own arm, but I don’t want Whitney distracted with my injuries when she needs to be keeping an eye on Aaron. My face is going to scar, I think, but I push the thought back. It isn’t important, not right now anyway.