Double Jinx (Wattys2017)

Chapter 38

"We have to get him to a hospital so they can pump his stomach!" I ordered through a tone weighed by tears. But even I heard the hopelessness in my words. We weren't close enough. By the time we reached the hospital Ace would be ... he'll be ...

Creston pushed around me, reaching for Ace. He wrapped one arm around Ace's back and another under his knees, then lifted Ace into the air. Ace groaned, his face twisting in pain. He was still black and blue with bruises, and he never went to the hospital after his fight with Vic and Roman. I didn't doubt the pastor's abilities but Ace needed a licensed practitioner. Someone to look at the gunshot wound in his shoulder.

"Careful." I reminded, racing after Creston as he bolted through the house and out towards the car. His movements were slow due to carrying Ace but I've never seen anyone move so fast.

Working through the growing pain in my stomach, I passed Creston to jerk the door open just as he began loading Ace into the passenger side. I climbed in after him and braced Ace's body against my own to keep him still. His skin was slick, his eyes fluttered rapidly, and his jaw hung slack. He looked dead ... could he be ...

No. No! I couldn't think like that right now. We have to get him to a hospital and my morbid thoughts wouldn't help. I waited impatiently as Creston ran around his truck to the driver's side before he gunned the engine and peeled out of Ace's driveway.

"Hold him tightly." Creston warned as the speedometer breached eighty miles an hour, then ninety. Still it climbed, brushing past numbers as though there weren't a barrier. Creston's truck whined loudly under the weight of this speed, it wasn't meant to go so fast. But Creston had faith in it, so must I. He glanced towards Ace every few seconds, each time becoming more distraught at the sight of his friend.

My attention turned to Ace as well. I wrapped my arms around him tightly, gripping his face in my hands as I whispered, "Hold on, okay? I stayed for you, now you have to stay for me."

My pleads got no answer, only a moan of pain as we hit a bump and my elbow jabbed at his shoulder. The blood was so dark against the stark white of that gauze, so thick and unrelenting. Had the pastor treated Ace entirely or simply just wrapped him up and gave him some pain medication? Was it ludicrous to fear that maybe it wasn't only the amount of medication in his system that was killing him, but the bullet wound as well?

He was so pale, so weak. I've never seen him like this, even when I lay there dying. Even when Vic and Roman were torturing him, he never gave up. But now, laying in my arms like his, he looked as though he'd already lost.

I can't lose him now, not after everything. Not after we just won. I came back for him. I left my mother and the possibility of eternal bliss to face a mortal lifetime of heart complications, for him. It was all for him. We were suppose to live together, start a family, someday tell our children how awesome their parents were and how we kicked ass on a day neither of us would soon forget.

How could I do that if Ace was dead? More tears entered my eyes and slipped down my cheeks. What could I do? How could I help?

"Gen."

The breath of a word slipped from Ace's mouth, no louder than a summer breeze. Still his eyes remained closed, still his pulse weakened, but through it all he was thinking of me. I placed my head against his, willing him to feel me beside him, to hold on until we reached the hospital. The chances were slim, but so were the chances of Ace and I finding one another after ten years.

But we did.

So were the chances of me coming back from the dead not once, but twice.

But I did.