I went to Ryker’s head and got to my knees. Lifting his head gently, I slid my thighs under it to act as a pillow.

“Merry?” I called.

Merry looked from Ryker to me. “Yeah, Cherie?”

“Jones said he shot Ryan.”

Merry’s mouth got hard and he looked to Colt.

Colt looked to Sully.

Sully pulled out his phone and stepped out of my kitchen.

I turned my attention to Ryker.

“You’re good, brother,” I told him, curling my hands around his neck. “You’re good. You have to be. Alexis is boy crazy and someone has to protect her from teenage pregnancy, and you are the walking, talking anecdote for any boy who wants to get in a girl’s pants, if that girl’s your daughter, that is.”

Ryker, unconscious, said nothing.

My fingers curled in tighter.

“You’re good, brother,” I repeated. “You’ve gotta be good. You got sugar in your bed. What man in their right mind would leave that?”

Ryker just lay there.

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t Ryker.

Ryker didn’t just lay there.

He annoyed.

He got up in your shit.

He threw back drinks and spouted inappropriate crap that made you want to smile and punch him at the same time.

I leaned over him as far as I could get.

“You gotta be good, brother. People like us, Ryker…people like us, we can’t give up. We gotta show the world. We gotta show our kids. We gotta show ’em it’s okay. We gotta show our babies we can do it if we don’t give up. We gotta show ’em it pays off, it comes to you if you got it in you to wade through the shit. You’ll get the good if you don’t give up. You can live it if you just dare to dream.”

I heard the sirens.

I bent even further, my forehead to his.

“You got it all, brother. You finally got it all. Don’t give up,” I whispered.

Ryker said nothing.

He just lay there in a puddle of his own blood on my goddamned kitchen floor.

* * * * *

Ryan

He was trying to open his eyes.

All he saw was fuzzy. Blurred.

But he smelled weird stuff. Like he was in a hospital.

He felt nothing.

He blinked slowly, the only way his eyelids would move.

The blur was still there when he was done.

But he felt something.

His hand was squeezed.

Then he heard it.

“You’re good.”

Cheryl.

She was there.

As crazy as it was with all the shit that had happened to them, she was always there.

The best friend he’d ever had.

“You’re good, Ryan,” she whispered. “Rest, brah. Yeah?”

He tried to nod.

He didn’t succeed.

He fell back to sleep.

* * * * *

Garrett

Three Days Later

“Well, fuck yeah, of course. Because I am,” Cher declared loudly.

Garrett stood at the door, shoulder to the jamb, and watched his woman move away from the hospital bed. She rounded it and gave Lissa a hug. She went to the chair Alexis was curled into, bent, and kissed her cheek.