Page 39 of Priest

Blue

They wheel him out faster than I expect. One second Deacon is in front of me, bloodied, breathing with help, tethered to machines and surrounded by hands that refuse to quit on him, and the next the surgical team is moving, voices clipped and urgent as the doors swing shut behind the gurney.

I stand there for half a heartbeat too long before Priest’s hand closes around my arm. “Where are they taking him?”

His voice is rough, scraped raw by fear and hours of holding himself together with stubbornness and adrenaline. I should pull away on instinct alone, but the look on his face keeps me still for one breath longer than I mean to allow.

“Surgery,” I say. “We stabilized him, but that’s all. He needs a trauma surgeon now.”

Priest nods once, sharp, like he is bracing for impact. His hand slips from my arm, but his eyes stay locked on mine. “Go with him,” he says, the words stripped of command. “Please.”

I look at him then. Really look. Blood dries on his cut and along the torn skin near his cheek, but it’s his hands that catch me. They shake just slightly, clenched into fists at his sides like he can hold himself together by force alone.

“He means something to me,” Priest says, voice low and urgent. “He’s my brother. I need you with him. I need to know someone I trust is there.”

The room seems to narrow around us, the chaos pulling back just enough to leave us standing on opposite sides of the same fear. For all the anger between us, for all the things he has no right to ask from me anymore, this one lands where I cannot block it.

“Please,” he adds, quieter now. Pleading. “Go with him. Make sure he makes it.”

I hold his gaze until the old ache tries to move under my ribs, then I nod. “Of course,” I say. “I’ve got him.”

Relief breaks across his face so fast it almost hurts to see. “Thank you,” he breathes.

That is all I need. I turn and follow the gurney down the hall toward surgery, already shifting gears, already locking everything else away. The surgeon catches sight of me as I pass through the doors and gives me the look doctors reserve for trouble they recognize in a lab coat.

“Doctor,” he says, pointed. “What are you doing back here?”

“I know him,” I answer simply. “I just need to be present.”

He studies me for a beat, then sighs. “Stay out of the way.”

“I can do that.”

The doors to the OR swing open, and before they close again, another familiar figure slips through. Lila comes in with her face pale and her chin lifted, looking every inch the woman who has already decided rules can argue with her after the man on the table survives.

The surgeon groans. “And you,” he says, gesturing at her with a scalpel like he might chase her out with it. “What are you doing here?”

“I know him,” she says evenly. “And I need to know he’ll be okay.”

He mutters something under his breath about too many staff knowing unsavory people and turns back to his work. Lila and I take up positions along the wall, scrubbed and silent, watching the choreography of controlled chaos unfold around Deacon.

For a minute, neither of us speaks. The machines fill the silence. The surgeon’s commands cut through it.

Then I lean closer to her and murmur, “Okay. So tell me now.”

She side-eyes me.

“How do you know Deacon,” I say, stressing the road name before softening it with the other. “Jackson. Whatever we’re calling him.”

Lila exhales slowly. “He’s Jade’s father.”

The words hit like a dropped tray. My hand flies instinctively to my stomach, and Lila’s eyes follow the movement before she looks back at my face.

“Oh,” I breathe.

Her jaw tightens. “Yeah.”

I swallow, because there are entire histories inside that one word and this is the worst possible room to open any of them. “Okay. Your turn.”