Honor

“Any word on the other GSW victim?” The guy that had tried to keep me from getting on the ambulance shook his head.

“He was DOA on the scene.” His gaze skipped over to me. “Seems like you were pretty lucky to make it out of there unscathed.”

Oh, I was very much scathed. The one person in the world I knew that I would ever love and ever give myself completely to was struggling to stay alive and I could see him losing the battle with every minute that ticked by. It was grossly unsettling that Nassir could survive war, his own warped beginnings at the hands of a zealot, the corrupt manipulations of government and political power, and the streets of the Point only to be taken down by a kid that had been crafted in his mirror image.

I dropped my head into my hands and pulled on the front of my hair so hard that it hurt. “I’m not feeling so lucky at the moment.”

“You should’ve just met us at the hospital. It’s never easy to watch someone you care about hover on the verge of death.”

I snapped my head up and glared at the insensitive ass. I didn’t need to know how close Nassir was to not pulling through. I could see it for myself. His normally golden skin was waxy and tinged gray. His lips looked blue and there was still blood oozing out of him in more than one spot.

“I’m going to appreciate any time I have with him, even if that time is running out right in front of me.”

Deciding I didn’t care if I was in their way anymore, I reached out and found Nassir’s hand so I could hold on to some part of him as we raced the rest of the way to the hospital. Once we got there, the doors to the ambulance swung open and an army of doctors and nurses rushed to attend to him. They were saying things like “shock,” words like “blood transfusion” and “nonresponsive” hit me like bullets. I didn’t want to let them take him out of my sight but I knew making the medical staff deal with a hysterical woman wouldn’t help him, so I bit my lip and continued to cry as I stepped out of the boxy vehicle and watched them take my man away.

I don’t know how long I stood there in front of the hospital covered in Nassir’s blood, silently weeping and at a loss as to what to do with myself, but it was long enough for Chuck to eventually find me. When his arms wrapped around me and I was pulled to that barrel chest, the numbness that had been holding all my bits and pieces together evaporated and I became a wailing, noisy, sloppy mess. I started screaming about the unfairness of it all, about how I would never forgive Nassir for pulling me so far in that I couldn’t get out. I cursed a million different ways for his making me love him when he knew it was going to lead to this kind of heartache.

I ranted.

I raved.

I raged.

Chuck just held me and continued to pet my hair while I acted like a crazy person, and told me everything would be all right. When I finally calmed down, he pressed his cheek to the top of my head and gave a soft little chuckle.

Indignant that he could find anything funny about this dire situation, I dug my elbow into his ribs until he grunted and took a step back.

“How can you laugh at a time like this?” He reached out a hand and rubbed a finger over the frown lines that were dug in deep on my forehead.

“I’m laughing because I had almost this exact same conversation with Nassir when you got shot.”

That made my heart dip and Reeve’s words about our men being just as scared that something bad was going to happen to us drifted like smoke through my tumultuous thoughts.

I rubbed my chafed and raw cheeks furiously and tried to suck in enough air to calm myself down.

“Why would he take that kind of risk, Chuck? Why would he sacrifice himself like that?”

That gold tooth winked at me as he offered me a tiny little smile. He reached out and hooked an arm around my neck so we could go inside and see if Nassir did indeed have the luck of the devil.

Chuck pressed a kiss to my temple and whispered in my ear. “He did it because all the love you showed him proved that he could have turned into a real boy.”

I gulped and felt a fresh wave of tears well up. I loved that Nassir was a real boy but I hated that being one meant he was just as vulnerable and fragile as the rest of us, and I couldn’t help but have the fleeting thought that robots and puppets didn’t bleed.

Nassir had to pull through. The Point hadn’t seen the kind of hell on earth that would follow if he didn’t.

Chapter 18

Nassir

I had been on the slippery edge of death more than one time in my twenty-seven years of life. I’d been shot, stabbed, blown up, starved, beaten, and even had my own hands in the mix by giving in to weakness and overdosing just to stop seeing the bodies drop and the blood flow. All the times when I knocked on death’s door, the reception was exactly what one might have expected. I saw the fields of lost souls I had cultivated. I saw my mother, and even in her incorporeal state, felt the disappointment that still hung around her because I hadn’t lived up to all of my potential as a killer and avenger. I finally had a face-to-face with my father, and in my limbo state he condemned me for not being a man of faith or conviction. Before, when I’d hovered between life and death, every action and its subsequent consequences played out before me, taunting me with the knowledge of how all the things I set in motion would eventually come around full circle. Violence and vengeance did not occur in a vacuum, and as everything inside of me struggled to fight for life, the loss I was feeling mingled with the pain was a constant reminder that there was no escaping from a lifetime of misdeeds.

This time, as I chased death down, it was distinctly different. I knocked on the door, probably harder than I ever had before, but for some reason death wasn’t answering. No one was. So I was just there waiting to be let in or sent back.