Page 147 of Last Man Standing

I slam through the stable doors and lock up at the sight of my mom on the ground, screaming and draping her body over Mav. I catch Detective fucking Mills’ panicked spin as he gives us his back and swings a gun in Scarlett’s direction. My legs tremble as I lock eyes with my green-skinned Uncle Bas, then my baby brother, whose cheeks glisten with tears.

Koda never cries.

Scarlett snarls like a fucking she-devil, and as though the universe wanted to ensure I would bear witness to all of my worst nightmares in one go, she runs toward Mills’ gun.

Not away.

Until six months ago, Uncle Bas was the best marksman I ever had the pleasure of trying to beat. He had the steadiest hand. The longest range. The sharpest eye. He was a fucking beast, and not once in a million years would I have doubted his skill.

But his hand shakes now, and he’s too weak to stand on his own, let alone reprise his role as Arabella Aster’s head of security.

He closes one eye like it helps his failing sight, and raises his hand, though it doesn’t come nearly as high, nearly as easily, as it used to before cancer made him weak.

He squeezes the trigger, because Cameron Mills is a threat to the people he swore to protect, but his instincts are slow, his ability to pivot, non-existent. Because the same second he lets off a shot, is the same second Scarlett runs between him and his target.

“No!” I spare just a single thought for my mom. My brother. My heart squeezes and my entire existence flickers as gray tinges the edges of my vision. While Scarlett darts toward Mills, I dart toward Scarlett. While my mom cries out for help and Linc skids down beside her, slamming his knees to the side of her thigh so hard that a cry of pain escapes her throat and joins the rest of the noise inside this building, I’m not nearly as fast as Scarlett’s trim one-hundred-and-twenty-pounds, so I get a front-row seat to the way she mounts Mills’ legs and brings her elbow down over his face.

As Bas’ bullet passes through Mill’s forehead.

The first one, anyway.

The second passes through Scarlett.

Then they fall, Mills’ legs collapsing under the weight of a woman possessed and a body already beginning its postmortem breakdown.

I watch, horrified, as Scarlett bounces the side of her head off the hard ground. As blood bursts from her face and her beautiful, long, dark locks create a curtain I don’t get to look beneath.

Behind her, Bas drops to his knees, too sickly to stay up. Then to his ass, because he’s dying, too.

Mom’s keening sob rocks my entire soul and commands I spin to save her, but I dive across Mills’ corpse and scoop Scarlett into my arms instead. I whip her hair back and search her face. Her closed eyes. Her busted lip and the nasty gash Bas’ bullet dug across her fucking temple.

It pulses with blood, gushing faster than she can afford.

“Scarlett?” I lower her to the dirt and press my fingers to the side of her neck. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. “Wake up, Princess. Wake up.” I tap her cheek and reject the blood leaving her body. Coating mine. “Scarlett!”

“She’s sleepin’.” Bas exhales a tired groan and flops to his back. “She didn’t freeze. She didn’t even panic.”

A hundred bodies surge into the stables, led by my dad and ordered around by Koda. But in the quiet of our small space, Bas tilts his head to the side and grins. “I guess I shot her a little bit. You think she’ll forgive me?”

I hold vigil beside Scarlett’s bed in the medical wing and… stare. Remind myself to breathe. Shout a silent wake up! to the woman who hardly likes to sleep anyway.

Is she stuck in her nightmares, unable to crawl her way out?

Is she dreaming of the men who’ve hurt her, punctuated by Mills’ betrayals?

Is she grieving Mav all alone, where I can’t reach her?

“She’ll be okay.” Serena presses a hand to my shoulder, squeezes, then releases me again and makes her way to the machine that beep-beep-beeps. Thank God it beeps. “Just a couple of stitches, and a nice bit of rest. She’ll be like brand-new.”

She doesn’t like you! She won’t wake up for as long as she can hear your fucking voice!

But those are the hurtful words Scarlett would disapprove of. Even if she was thinking them, even if she felt them, she’d never say them, and she’d scowl if she knew I said them on her behalf.

I take her hand instead and glance out the door to where my mom sits with her back against the wall. Her face is splotchy and red, her fingers stained with my brother’s blood.

“How’s Uncle Bas?” I grit out. He’s here somewhere. Back in his bed. Clinging to life. “He alright?”

“Resting.” Serena plugs an IV bag into Scarlett’s tubes and casts a wary peek Linc’s way. Because it’s entirely possible he might get up and Hulk smash this whole fucking room to pieces. “These are precautionary antibiotics. She got a lot of dirt and debris in her wounds, so I figure⁠—”