JACK: Las Vegas Bad Boys (18 page)

He keeps talking and I step back, not wanting him to touch me.

“But we all knew the stories your mother told, how she took you because she wanted a daughter. That bitch was crazy and I knew I needed to keep her and her wild mouth close. Well, that, and she was a good fuck.”

I brace myself to be strong, to be reckless. To take action. But I have no means of defense. No weapon, no way of knowing how many people are behind him, ready to shoot. We all heard the gunfire when the club was brought under siege.

“I don’t care about her,” I scream, “or you. You both tried to ruin me. But you can’t.”

I hear a gun cock, see the silver gleaming in the dark.

“Oh, fuck that, Cammie,” he says. “I can ruin you if I damn well please.”

T
he show began
like the rest, only I wanted this one to be memorable. Unforgettable.

I remember scanning the crowd for Tess, wanting somehow, some way, to see her face in the sea of people. It was impossible, of course. The strobe lights were bright; the dancers around me impeded my view. This night, this music, wasn’t about me.

It was about the people who came here looking to escape.

That’s why everyone comes to Vegas, looking for something they can’t find anywhere else.

For me, I came here looking for something I didn’t even know I was missing.

But I found her. Found Tess.

And now, in a flash, in a gunshot, in a blackout, in an instant … I lost her.

I can’t see Tess. I can’t see anyone. I know she is here.

And I need to fucking find my woman.

I rip off my headset, but don’t bother with the mic. I need to get off this stage and get to my girl. The club is full of people, but they’ve dropped to the ground. I can’t see a fucking thing, but then I remember my phone, and slide on the flashlight. At first I scan the club with it, but quickly realize why no one else is.

This thing could get me killed.

Still, I try to think of what I could do to get us help, because it seems like this entire club is on lockdown.

I swallow, realizing that the one thing I promised I’d never, ever do, I must.

I begin to record everything that’s happening with the fucking Periscope app that broadcasted the sex tape.

I carry the phone in my hand, willing whoever started this mess not to notice me as I climb off the stage, ninja-style.

I know how to get to the VIP section where my friends are seated, and I crawl toward it, silently moving up the bank of stairs against the back wall.

Once at the top, I drop to my knees, and see three security guard shot, on the ground.

Rounding the corner toward the section where I know my friends are, I see them on the floor. McQueen makes eye contact with me, and I realize everyone is silent because they’re listening to the conversation a few yards away.

Tess.

It’s clear the moment I hear his words. Anarchy has found us.

Found her.

I stand, unable to stop myself. She’s the only thing I care about. I understand why McQueen isn’t standing to protect his sister; I can’t judge him. His arms are covering his fiancé. Same with all the men here in this VIP lounge. They are being the men they promised they would be to the women they love.

I have to get to her, and as I cross the room I see JoJo’s father reach out to me, and pass me a gun. Jeb McQueen stands, follows behind me. He has my back, and his daughter’s back.

But, fuck, I have no clue what I’m up against. And Tess can’t lose her father the day after she meets him.

I hand Jeb my phone, knowing whatever happens next, that will be the only evidence of what goes on tonight. And I can’t have him dead.

Holding the gun in my hand, I run toward the voices. The only voices, the ones echoing in the club.

I hear a gun cock, but it isn’t my own.

Fuck, no, not now. Not like this. No one is going to take Tess from me.

I run toward her, lights coming on across the club as I do. Thank God, someone must have penetrated the gang.

I see the man with a bandana over his face raising the gun toward Tess. She tries to shield herself with her arms, but that won’t stop a bullet.

I push through, jumping as I run.

She screams. The gun fires.

And I take the hit meant for her. Falling, I pull the trigger of the gun in my hand, and I shoot—hard, and fast.

But I’m falling from my own hit, and I miss my target.

Crashing to the floor, I hear Tess’s sobs. Her fingers pry the gun from my hand. Without hesitation, she raises the gun. My hand is on my chest, blood pouring from my body. I watch as she pulls the trigger.

As she shoots her father.

And then, once again, everything goes black.

* * *

Watching blood seep from the man I hate most in the world, alongside the man I love the most, claws at my heart.

I scream with reckless abandon. Moments after the last shot is fired, the club is filled with a SWAT team, and my life is ruined, the way the man I shot foresaw.

How could it not be? A hundred men from the Brotherhood are handcuffed; club-goers shakily sit up from their fetal positions.

But all I do is scream, beg. Pray. I cover Jack’s face with my tears as his blood covers me, as it soaks through any hope I had of a life more ordinary. Of a life shared with the man I loved.

“Don’t go,” I sob into his face. “Don’t leave.” I kiss his lips. I cup his face with my hands. “You’re okay, love. You’re going to be fine.”

A medical team arrives and Jack is on a stretcher and my hands hold his and I won’t let them push me away. I hold to him tight. So tight. So fiercely that they allow me to walk beside them, out of the club to where an ambulance waits, where police cars and helicopters and more press than I ever imagined seeing hover around us.

But fuck the cameras, and fuck the spotlight. Because Jack is dying.
Is he dead already?

I climb into the ambulance, praying to a God I don’t know, for help I so dearly need.

“Hold on, baby. Hold on.”

His fingers tighten on mine, and I know he isn’t gone. Not yet.

Then his hold loosens.

Then his hold is gone.

And then it’s just me, clinging to him.

Holding on for dear life.

Holding on for hope.

* * *

E
veryone is here
, and I love them, and they matter—but not like Jack.

I pace the hall. I refuse to eat. I don’t want to speak. I just want to be with him.

Not our friends. Not my new family. Not Kirby or Kendrick or Lola. Not the police. Not the entire city of Las Vegas.

The news reports the events. The entire sequence was broadcasted live from Jack’s phone, and the entire world watched Jack leap to save me from the bullet meant as payback. The entire world watched as my hands pulled the trigger.

That’s why we were rescued.

But it’s too late for Jack.

Too late for me.

I shot a man, and before that I shot his wife. We are coated in trauma and covered in fear, and all I need is Jack.

Jack.

Jack.

Jack.

The police come, but with me they are brief. Everything was recorded. And they’ve been looking for a way to shut down Anarchy.

This was what they needed. The Brotherhood’s thirst for revenge cost them everything.

And it could cost me Jack.

Jack.

Jack.

Jack.

Then he is in surgery.

Then he is in recovery.

Then the doctors speak to the family. I stand with his parents, Benny and Judy. Our hands are clasped; my heart is shattered. How will I go on without him?

“You can go see him now.”

It’s like I don’t hear the doctor. Her words don’t compute.

I saw the blood, I felt his fingers slip from mine.

But maybe ... maybe love fights in bigger, deeper, more true ways than I understand.

“He’s alive?” My words are whispers, fragile and desperate.

“He is.”

I rush into his room, and there he is.

His eyes are closed, and that’s okay—because I just need proof of a beating heart.

He’s covered in tubes and wires, and it could look like death. But all I see is life as I pull down his hospital gown and see the bandages across his chest.

Beneath them is a beating heart. And I know this is true because Jack’s eyes open.

They are on mine.

“You took the bullet meant for me,” I cry. Angry and grateful and desperate and his.

“No.” He shakes his head, his words scratchy and uneven because he’s still clawing back to the land of the living. “I took a shot to the heart, but I knew it wouldn’t kill me.”

“How?” I ask him, tears slashing my face. “How did you know?”

“Because loving you has made my heart invincible. Made me strong.”

“But you aren’t a superhero, Jack. You’re a man.”

“Not just any man.”

I smile through my onslaught of tears.

“You’re right,” I tell him. “You’re my knight in shining armor, my dream come true.”

I
t took
several months for her to stop waking in the middle of the night, gasping for breath, crying for help. I would wrap her in my arms, carry her outside to the beach, and with the water hitting her toes she’d stop heaving, stop shaking.

She would wake fully, remembering that she was here. That I was here. Both alive, both with beating hearts intact.

I didn’t for a moment blame her, in those weeks, those seemingly endless months, for waking in such a frightened state.

The ironic fact that fucking Periscope saved us all is not unnoticed. However much I hated that app before, I now endorse it wholeheartedly. How could I not?

KMG, of course, loved all the press. I mean, Tess and I went from a sex-tape scandal to a live shooting. Once the truth of her kidnapping, her childhood in the Brotherhood, and the FBI investigation was out, she agreed to a modest interview with Diane Sawyer. She was no longer a girl running; she was the fucking hero.

I signed with KMG. There was no longer a reason not to. They’d already given me the contract I wanted for music, and once Tess didn’t have any fear of imprisonment we were free to do whatever the hell we wanted.

Somehow, with millions in the bank, we are back here, on this island, shopping at fucking Roscoe’s.

Tess never wanted the fame, the fortune. She didn’t want me so that her face would grace a magazine cover.

She wanted me because she fucking loves me and I love her, and that is all and that is everything.

And now we’re getting married.

“Man, what the hell?” McQueen asks. “You got all the money in the fucking world and yet here we are in Washington state, watching you get married at a farmhouse.”

“It’s your sister, ask her,” Ace says, laughing as Landon hands him a beer.

“Man, Sophia loves it here,” Landon says. “The chickens are seriously her favorite thing ever.”

“You are such a dad. It still freaks me out,” Ace says.

I grin. “You will be, too, soon enough.”

We all turn at look at our women. Emmy is six months pregnant, glowing as she should be. Claire is spinning Sophia around in the grass. JoJo is laughing with Tess as they raise their champagne flutes in the air. The late summer wind runs through Tess’s hair.

She’s dressed in white linen, and her feet are bare and her clear blue eyes are bright. And I’m gonna fucking marry that girl today, and love her for the rest of my life.

“How did we all end up so lucky?” I ask, turning to the bad boys of Vegas, who have somehow ended up with the best women on the motherfucking planet.

“I don’t know,” Ace says. “But I’m willing to bet the house that no one gets dealt hands like this. You gotta fight for this.”

“Play hard, love harder,” I say, raising my beer.

No doubt it’s exactly what all four of us will do for the rest of our goddamned lives.

* * *