Page 85 of Cole: Bloodlines
Devlin nodded, his throat tight with unshed tears as he carefully helped Cole into bed. He tucked the blanket around Cole's waist with trembling fingers, then pressed his lips to Cole's cheek, lingering there as if trying to transfer warmth intoCole's chilled skin. “Try to rest, babe,” he whispered, his voice thick with a helplessness that threatened to overwhelm him. “I'll let you know when you can visit Ezra.” Devlin stepped over to Gabe's bed, dropping his voice to a raw whisper. “Take care of him; he's... I've never seen him this broken.”
“I will,” Gabe promised, the words a solemn vow that resonated through his entire being.
“Do you need anything?” Devlin asked, his voice heavy with the weight of everything they couldn't fix.
Gabe kissed him, a weary smile dusting his face, eyes filled with a gratitude that transcended their exhaustion. “That'll do for now.”
Devlin returned his smile, the simple gesture an island of warmth in an ocean of heartache. “For me, too.” He parked the wheelchair in the corner and left the room, his shoulders sagging under invisible burdens.
In the other bed, Cole lay still and quiet, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as tears leaked down his temples, each one carrying a fragment of his shattered heart. The hollow emptiness in his gaze spoke of a grief so profound it had become physical. “Cole? Babe?” Gabe murmured, his voice a gentle bridge trying to span the chasm of Cole's despair. “You can talk to me, baby. You don't have to go through this alone.”
Cole stared at the ceiling, unresponsive, his eyes vacant pools reflecting nothing but inner devastation. The only movement was the slow, repetitive working of his fingers against the leather bracelet—a desperate, unconscious ritual, as if each touch might resurrect the past from ashes. A hollowness radiated from him, making Gabe's chest ache with helplessness. Dane had relayed to Gabe the stories Cole had told him about Ezra, each word like a knife twisting in Gabe's heart—and the horrific things Cole's father had forced upon him, leaving wounds too deep to fathom. The bracelet's history—a talisman of both love andtorment—had come to Gabe secondhand, through Dane's gentle, pained recounting. Cole had shared so little—only his real name, his father's identity, and fragments of unspeakable trauma—but never Ezra. That sacred wound he'd kept hidden, protected even from Gabe's love. What he knew of Ezra, he’d learned from Dane.
Was Ezra's memory so precious, so intimate, that Cole couldn't bear to share him? Or was the pain so fused with love that speaking of it might shatter what little remained of Cole's fractured soul? Gabe ached with the need to gather those broken pieces, to create a safe harbor where Cole could finally release the tsunami of grief that threatened to drown him from within.
“Cole...” Gabe said softly, his voice a tender lifeline thrown across the chasm of grief between them. “Tell me... about Ezra. If you loved him so much, he had to be an amazing person.” He attempted a smile that trembled at the edges, fragile as blown glass. “That's why you love me, right? Because I'm awesome?” The joke fell into the silence like a stone into still water, and Gabe's heart constricted. “Sorry. I was just...” His voice caught on the jagged edges of his own inadequacy. “Sorry.”
Cole's throat worked, the muscles contracting around words that seemed to cost him physically. “You are,” he whispered, each syllable carrying the weight of devotion that even devastation couldn't diminish. “Awesome.”
Gabe looked at him, his blue eyes brimming with tears that magnified the raw, desperate love shining through. His heart cracked open, pouring everything he couldn't say into his gaze. “So are you. You're the most awesome thing to ever come into my life. Even before we knew we loved each other… you were still the best part of my life.” His voice broke on the last words, thick with a devotion that transcended their current pain. “You always will be.”
Cole's face crumpled like a discarded love letter, each line deepening with self-loathing as he whispered, his voice raw and threadbare, “I'm poison. His blood...” His throat constricted as though the words themselves were choking him. “It makes me poison to... to everyone I love.” His chin trembled, the slight movement betraying the earthquake of grief beneath. “All of this...” Each word seemed to tear something vital inside him. “...happened because of me.”
“It happened because ofhim,” Gabe said, his voice rising a notch with a fierce protectiveness that made his chest burn. His hands trembled with barely contained rage—not at Cole, never at Cole—but at the monsters who had shaped his lover's perception of himself. “Because ofthem. Theychoseto be monsters.” His throat tightened around the words, each one carrying the weight of his desperation to make Cole believe. “Fuckyour bloodline—you are who youchooseto be.” He leaned forward, eyes glistening with tears he refused to let fall, needing to be strong when Cole couldn't. “And you made that choice a long time ago.” His voice softened, breaking on the edges of his love. “None of this—not Abel, the kids, me... or Ezra—is your fucking fault, Cole.” The last words emerged as a plea, raw and aching. “Do you think any of us blame you? Do you think Ezraeverblamed you for what that psychopath did to him? Do you, babe?”
Cole closed his eyes as more tears leaked through his lashes, each one carrying a weight of shame he'd been bearing for years. “It doesn't matter if he blames me,” Cole's voice cracked. “Or you blame me.” He swallowed, the sound audible in the quiet room, his Adam's apple bobbing with the effort of containing a sob. “It happened because of me. That's just... reality.”
“No,” Gabe murmured, his heart constricting at the sight of Cole's self-flagellation. “That's the realitytheywant you to believe.” His hands flexed, fingers trembling with the need totouch, to heal. “The truth is, you never had a say in the things they did... or the things they made you do. How can you be at fault for things you had no control over?” His voice rose slightly; a desperate plea wrapped in reason. “It's illogical.”
Cole sniffed, the sound raw and childlike in its vulnerability. “If it were you,” he whispered, his eyes opening to reveal pools of anguish so deep Gabe felt himself drowning in them. “If it were you... in my place... you wouldn't feel any guilt?”
“I would,” Gabe admitted, his shoulders sagging with the weight of his honesty. “But I would be wrong.”
“It doesn't matter...” Cole's words came out in fractured syllables. “...if it's right or wrong. You feel what you feel, and...” His chest heaved with a suppressed sob. “...and when the people you love get hurt...” His fingers clutched at the blanket. “...nothing can make that feeling go away.”
CHAPTER 39: DAWN OF THE DEAD
“You sure you’re up for this?”Clint asked, eyeing the Egyptian’s stiff movements. “We can handle it.”
“The fucker shot me,” Cochise growled, his jaw clenching so tight his face twitched. “I’m up for it.”
With the help of Cruz and Sanchez, the two killers were moved out of the factory and crammed into the trunk of Clint’s car.
“I know a place,” Cruz said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a tattooed hand. “About an hour upstate. Large commercial farm with easy access to the back pens. No one will even know we were there.”
Clint nodded and started the car, the engine rumbling to life with a predatory purr. “I'm up for a road trip.”
The conversation withered into silence during the drive. Cochise stared through the front windshield, his brow knit tight, jaw muscles pulsing beneath his skin. His eyes focused on some distant point that seemed to exist in another dimension entirely. Clint recognized that haunted vacancy; the Egyptian was drowning in what-ifs. The bulletproof vests had been a last-minute decision—an afterthought that now separated life from death with just half an inch of Kevlar. Without the vests… Cochise might be dead now. And there was no way the Egyptian wasn’t contemplating that fact with every fiber of his being, playing through scenarios in his head of Kane receiving the news that the love of his life was justgone—not with dignity or meaning, but in the cruel, arbitrary snap of God's indifferent fingers.
Clint's stomach clenched with a nauseating mix of relief and retroactive terror. His chest felt hollow, scraped raw with the knowledge of how close he'd come to losing his brother. Forthat split second when he knew Cochise was shot, Clint had felt the world collapse inward—a black hole of grief opening beneath him. The Egyptian wasn't just a man; he was the gravitational center that held their universe together. Without him, they wouldn't just mourn—they would disintegrate. Some losses carve out pieces of you that never grow back. This would have been one of them.
The terror of what could have been gnawed at Clint's insides, a ravenous thing with teeth that tore and shredded his peace. His hands trembled against the steering wheel, betraying the hurricane of fear still raging beneath his calm exterior. Cochise sat beside him, a fortress of silence, but Clint could feel the man's anguish radiating like heat.
The Egyptian rarely spoke of love or laid his heart bare, but Kane's name lived in every beat of his heart, and his kids’ laughter echoed in his rare smiles. Clint saw the way his stoic face softened when Kane entered a room, how his voice gentled when he spoke to the kids. The Egyptian carried his family—Kane, the kids, Clint, Axel, everyone at the mansion—not as separate entities but as vital organs within himself. Losing him wouldn't just be a death; it would be an extinction-level event for them all.
Clint exhaled slowly as Cruz and Sanchez's voices filled the car with talk about nothing that mattered, drawing his mind away from the abyss. Even Cochise's shoulders lowered a fraction of an inch, though he offered only grunts and nods when directly addressed.
The matte-black Jeep Rubicon sat silently across from the abandoned factory, a chameleon in the shadows of the brick-lined alleyway. The driver sat hunched behind the wheel, his six-foot-two frame kinked and aching from spending what felt like a lifetime behind the wheel. Stubble darkened his jaw, and sweat had dried in salty rings around his collar. His search was over—but someone else had gotten to his prey first.
