Page 3 of Freeing Souls

I can’t move.

I watch Cade haul Harley back as she fights and screams at him. The voices begin to fade away until there is just a dull echo in my mind. I don’t know what to do. Ryker would know what to do. He can help me.

He has to help me. Center me.

Without him, I am being dragged out to sea, swept away by the storm. What do I do? I can’t do anything.

Is this when I break?

Have I only made it this far because of Ryker?

Hazel eyes captivate mine, and like resurfacing from the depths of a dark ocean, I can breathe again.

Harley

Where are you? Where the fuck are you?Sweat drips down my face as my hands violently shake, but it doesn’t stop me. I need to find him. Why has he not called out yet? Where the fuck is he?

Trying to yank a large piece of concrete out of the way, I grunt as I strain every muscle in my body, but I can’t move it. Arms wrap around my middle, pulling me away from the carnage. Shoving at their arms, I scream for them to let me go, but they just keep tugging me away.

We move back to the front of the club, and I’m set on my feet, but before I can move to go back and keep looking, I’m spun around and shoved against a wall. “Harley!” Cade snarls in my face as he holds my shoulders against the wall in an unrelenting grip.

Snapping my eyes up to his, I plan to yell, but before I can, he releases one shoulder and slams his palm against my mouth.“Shut up and fucking listen to me! I’d let you keep looking, but we weren’t making enough progress, and there are firefighters here now who will know how to keep looking safely. We don’t know how much damage happened to the structure, and it could be unsafe. You have to calm the fuck down and take a breath, because you aren’t helping anyone right now.”

“Ryker could be dead. Sugar could be dead,” I gasp, gripping my chest. It feels like someone is squeezing my heart and preparing to rip it out and dangle it in front of me. I can’t handle a loss like this, not when I just found them all. I can’t do it. I won’t do it. It would destroy me. Losing anyone here would have irreparable damage.

Gruff hands grip my face and tilt it up. “Open your eyes, baby girl.” My eyes snap open at the command. “I am terrified too. I understand the fear you feel right now, but look around. Things are a mess, andeveryonehere is terrified. We all need each other. So I need you to find my badass girlfriend I know is in there and get it together. When the dust settles, we can all fall apart, but that time is not now. You know how to do this. Be strong.”

Staring into his blue and gold eyes, I let him ground me until I can breathe evenly, and then I slowly nod, preparing myself to pull it together the second he releases me. “There’s my girl. Now, Grayson needs you. I’m going to go find out what the next steps are. You go help him.” He gestures with his head to the left, and when I glance over, I find Grayson standing at the front of the garage, but he looks frozen and lost.

Bypassing everyone, I head straight to him and grab his hands. When his wide, terrified green eyes lock with mine, I watch them fill with tears. “Grayson?”

“Y–yeah?” he chokes.

“He’s going to be okay. He has to be. But in the meantime, we have to pull it together. Ryker would be kicking our asses if he saw us right now,” I tell him, holding back my own tears.

Grayson lets out a choked laugh. “Yeah, he probably would be. I just–” He pinches his lips together and glances past me. “Let’s figure out what to do.”

“Cade went to find out what is going to happen now, but it looks like he’s coming this way,” I tell him when I notice Cade heading towards us. Giving Grayson’s hands a squeeze, I let go of one of them and watch Cade.

“They are stabilizing the structure. It’s not safe for anyone to be in there right now. I know we all want to be in there searching, but we have to let the firefighters make it safe first,” he tells us.

I nod and then frown. “All of them? Axe is out, so it’s just Sugar and Ryker, right?” I ask.

Cade sighs and rubs his hand up and down my arm soothingly. “Atlas too. He got home right before, according to Axe.”

“What?” I gasp, the weight on my heart heavier as I think about the possibility of losing three people who mean the world to me.

I let go of Grayson and rub my chest as everything comes into focus.

I lost my mom, ruthlessly taken from me. She was my best friend. I really thought there could only be evil left in the world after she died, that I was stuck with the Wilsons. Every day, week, year that passed left me hating everything, wishing for something better but knowing there wasn’t anything out there.

After finding Brielle, Atlas, Lincoln, and Ryan, I thought they were too good to be true. There was no way I could ever truly trust them, so I refused to let them fully in, no matter how much they showed me they weren’t going anywhere.

Then, I did a stupid thing and came here, storming in with a gun, determined to kill Gabriel. That one stupid decision changed my life. It showed me that Bri and the guys were really here for me, and they weren’t going anywhere, no matter what I did. It opened doors to discover a whole other family, and then men who love every broken piece of me.

It has been a long few years of discovering myself and learning to trust the people in my life, but one thing that never fully occurred to me is that with this joy, love, peacefulness comes the risk of losing them all. I never want to experience a loss like my mom again, but I know life doesn’t work that way.

But it’s too soon to lose any of them. I can’t do it. I feel like I’ve opened my heart, and now, I run the risk of it being ripped out of my chest and stomped on. I don’t think I could live through that again.

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