Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

TODAY

EMERSYN

M y right arm trembled faintly as I adjusted my stance. The warmth of Liam at my back with his hands on my hips shifted my position a bit more, then he flattened a hand between my shoulder blades.

“You’re out of practice,” he said, though there was no recrimination in his voice. The noise suppressing headphones muffled his voice, but I could still hear him. “Kel was worried that too many weeks without practice would throw off your aim.”

It wasn’t an unfair assessment. Shooting, it turned out, was like any other skill. I needed to practice it regularly to keep my muscles in shape and the skill itself honed. To my own surprise, I’d turned out to not be a bad shot. While it wasn’t my favorite task, my skill made the boys feel better.

There wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for them.

“Easy,” Liam continued, the pressure forcing my shoulders back. It wasn’t quite a relaxed position, but it eased some of the strain on my right arm. With his left hand on my hip and his right hand on my back, he braced me. “Now, sight, relax, breathe, squeeze the trigger on the exhale.”

I knew how to do it. Kellan had taken it as a personal challenge to prepare me to defend myself using three different types of guns. I favored the smaller one that was easier on my hand, but I could fire both Kel’s and Liam’s guns nearly as well as my smaller caliber preferred weapon.

Breath control was as much a part of dance as the muscle discipline, so I slowed my breathing down as I sighted the target at the end of the gallery. The targets were different, depending on the shooting range we used. This one had people shaped targets, with the rings spreading out from right over the heart.

Liam and Kel both insisted body shots were good, but go for the head if you wanted to make sure they didn’t come back. Think of targets like zombies, Kel had suggested once and at my wrinkled nose, he’d laughed .

I hated zombies or zombie movies. So imagining them was not really conducive to my peace of mind, but it worked real well to shoot them and make them go away. One more deep breath and on the exhale, I squeezed the trigger.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Six shots in rapid succession. I didn’t close my eyes once. That was one of the first habits that Kel drilled out of me. Protecting yourself is a natural instinct. You are tempted to look away from what you’re shooting at—don’t. You know it’s going to be loud, so you’ll brace at the last second, which can pull off your aim—don’t. You may not want to keep firing even as you adjust your aim, but you have to trust your training. The weight of the gun and the action of firing it will affect your targeting, so use it to your advantage.

I’d taken the rules and the techniques, and made them my own. I didn’t need anyone to repeat them to me, I was already doing it. So while some of it was muscle memory and training, the rest had to come from putting my experiences to work for me. I would never be an expert shot and I’d rather never be in a position where I had to fire a gun again…

Shots streaking through the darkness. The pops accompanied by muzzle flashes as lights around me exploded. The guys were hauling me up on the emergency line, but the theater in Prague where I’d been performing turned into a nightmare of screams as gunmen raided it.

We’d planned for almost everything, even the full assault that we faced, and it still left me dangling, heart racing, and a little panicked until I had confirmation that all of my people were safe. My guys. Lainey. My brother.

Everyone.

“Hey,” Liam shifted his hold to slide his arm around my middle and he pulled me back against them even as he braced my right arm with his hand on my wrist. “Where’d you go?”

He studied me with flinty eyes. The severity of his expression and the fierce mask he wore would convince everyone of what a hardass he was. Liam could be an absolute dick if he wanted to be, but he also loved me with a kind of all-encompassing possessiveness that shielded me as much as it embraced me.

Me and his twin were his two favorite people. They were definitely two of mine. Like every other relationship I’d forged with the other Vandals, ours was unique. Liam loved to bait me and give me hell. He also taught me how to kick his ass and the ass of anyone else who needed it. His words.

“Nowhere,” I promised, resting my head to his shoulder. The warmth of him surrounded me, buffering against the aches from all the shooting. “Just…” I paused when he tugged off my ear protection then his own. Fortunately, Liam had rented the whole range to give us privacy. He nudged me forward, and I kept my grip on the gun until he was ready to take it. Once he had it unloaded and on the table in front of us, he turned to face me.

“Want to try that again, Hellspawn?” He locked those stunning blue eyes on me, depending on the light they could go almost blue-green. They always reminded me of the Caribbean in some ways. As identical as he and Rome were, their eyes reflected different facets of their personalities. I loved just staring into their eyes, as silly and swoony as that sounded.

“Nowhere I needed to be,” I amended, but at his continued stare, I sighed. “Just—thinking about Prague. The shooting…”

His expression went grim. “Why are we thinking about that?” He didn’t tell me I shouldn’t or why I shouldn’t think about it. In fact, he didn’t tell me how I should behave or react at all. He asked.

“I love you,” I murmured and that earned me a curve to his lips and a faint softening around his eyes.

“That’s not why you were thinking about Prague,” he chided me, but his eyes remained gentle. “C’mon, Hellspawn, tell me what is upsetting you so I can fix it.”

“It’s not upsetting me,” I protested and when he cupped my chin to search my eyes, I met his gaze unflinchingly. “I promise, it’s not. I just dangled out there when the shots started firing and I didn’t freeze, but—I couldn’t do anything. It was a horrible few minutes to not know if everyone was okay or not.”

“Vaughn and Jasper had you.” Absolute confidence infused every word.

“Yes, they did,” I agreed, leaning my cheek into his hand when he shifted his grip from my chin to my face. “Vaughn pulled me up so fast and they covered me on the catwalk. But those people were firing wildly. Later, they said they’d deliberately started firing at me to distract all of you.”

Which just pissed me off.

“What makes you angrier? That you were used as a distraction? Or that it worked?” The blunt honesty in his voice demanded the same from me.

“A little bit of column A and column B.” I shook my head. “I hate when you guys are put into danger because of me.”

He snorted. “Hellspawn, if you took a bullet one of us could prevent, none of us would forgive ourselves. You’d take a hit for us if you could and you have ,” he continued, stressing that last word without allowing me to interrupt him. “You know it, I know it. Trust me, the guys know it too. The last thing I ever want is for you to be hurt again.”

“But it’s okay if you guys get hurt because of me?”

“In my opinion? Yes.” He made no apologies for it either and I sighed. Not because we were disagreeing but because it was the last thing I wanted. “Look, if I take a hit and you don’t, I’m okay with that. I’m more than okay with it.”

“If Rome took that hit instead?” I dared him and the corners of his mouth tilted a little higher. “It’s not funny,” I added with a scowl and thumped his chest.

“It’s not funny, but you are adorable.”

I rolled my eyes and pushed away, but he just dragged me back. “Liam…”

“Shh,” he hushed me then dropped a kiss on my lips. When I just glared at him, his smile deepened. “Hellspawn, it just makes me hot when you get mad.”

I scoffed but the comment managed to burst the bubble of my temper. “You’re impossible.”

“For you, I am anything but.” He winked. “Now, if Rome got hurt protecting you, I’d be pissed—at the people who were trying to hurt you and then hurt him. I’d be just as fucking mad if you got hurt. Like I was when you two were taken and they were threatening you to keep ‘me ’ in line.”

They’d made Rome take a beating by threatening me. “I stabbed that guy.”

“Yes, you did,” Liam said, his smile growing, the pride evident in his expression. “Just like you shot the guy who had the drop on me. Or went after that bastard at the hospital who was trying to hurt you. You’re a fighter, Hellspawn. I’ve known that from day one. So… you can be pissed that someone targeted you to distract us so they could get to Lainey. I’m pretty fucking annoyed by it too. But none of us are going to regret putting you first.”

“And that’s that?” I tilted my head back to study him and he slid his hands down to cup my elbows and tugged me forward.

“Not the answer you wanted?” He pressed his lips to my forehead and I closed my eyes, drinking in his nearness.

“It’s not about the answers I want,” I said. “It’s about the ones I can live with…” But I slid my arms up around his neck and he lifted me right up and hugged me close. “I just want to keep you guys safe.”

“Same,” he reminded me. I buried my face against his throat, and took a deep breath of him. He had that crispiness of fresh autumn leaves, sunshine, and amber. I could just detect the notes of his coffee from earlier too. The rest was just him, gunpowder, and the smell of the range. “That’s why we practice, so we know you can protect yourself if we just don’t happen to be there.”

“And so I can protect you too,” I reminded him and he chuckled. I pulled back to eye him, but he had me lifted clean off the ground, which was fine. I liked being nose to nose with him. “What’s so funny?”

“Just how fierce you are, Hellspawn. I will never make the mistake of thinking you can’t handle something or you can’t protect us. You do a damn good job of it.”

“But?” I prompted, not quite trusting the devilish little twinkle in his eyes.

“This ass of yours is just fine,” he teased me, squeezing one cheek playfully. “No other buts about it.”

A real laugh escaped me and his expression softened.

“Better?” That question was packed with so much meaning. Was I feeling better about what happened? Could I handle that their answers weren’t likely to change? Did I know how much I meant to him?

“Yes,” I said, dipping my head to press my lips to his. The connection was instantaneous. It had been from the beginning, even when he irritated me. Or I irritated him. I couldn’t help my smile as I lifted my head. “So does that mean we can call practice finished and go actually spend our time doing something else fun?”

Liam didn’t spend as much time on the tour. He couldn’t, but he visited every chance he got. I understood the absences from him, from Jasper and Kellan. Even Mickey had to go back periodically. Didn’t mean I didn’t miss them, and I went back to Braxton Harbor so we could all be there together as often as possible.

“Nope,” he told me, his smile growing. “Need at least another thirty minutes, so I can tell Kellan honestly that you’re getting your practice in.”

I groaned and let my head fall back as I stared up at the ceiling. “So mean to me.”

He nipped my throat. “I can be meaner, Hellspawn. We haven’t had a good sparring session in a few months.”

Lips pursed, I eyed him. He was only partially kidding.

“Fine, we can wrestle when we’re done as long as you have to be naked.”

“If I’m naked,” he informed me. “You will be too, whether you start out that way or not.”

“I’m not really hearing a downside here.” I bit my lower lip as he groaned. The heat flashed into his eyes and he landed a slap against my ass that was all sting and a little heat. Another wave of laughter burst out of me. I really wasn’t hearing a downside. I mean, I got why he wanted to practice. “Promise you don’t have to leave tonight?”

He’d just gotten in this morning in the very early hours after taking a red eye flight.

“I can stay for a couple of days,” he promised, then set me on my feet before he reached back and got the gun reloaded. “So, show me what you got…”

The temptation to take off my shirt to tease him was right there, but I decided to save it for later. He didn’t offer me the gun until I put the ear protection back on. Then he put on his own.

He got the new target set up and it was back ten feet from where the other had been. Right… thirty minutes and then we could “play.” I braced myself and used both hands this time to steady my arm.

I didn’t need to be perfect, I just needed to be accurate.

The next six shots went center mass and I caught Liam’s wild smile of approval.

“Next?”