5. Lucky

5

LUCKY

G oddamn, I missed her.

When Leo called me, I couldn’t believe it, I didn’t believe it until I heard her on the other end of the line. Even then I was still so shocked I could barely fight the emotions seeing her name on my screen brought out of me, and I could hardly speak.

But I knew I had to go to her.

It didn’t matter why she called or even if it was an accident, I needed to be where Leo was and come hell or high water, I was making it happen.

I grabbed my keys and flew out the door without even putting my shoes on, but the guys were over so Mark chased after me with my Chucks in hand, asking what the hell happened.

As soon as I said it was Leo, he told me to wait a second and put my damn sneakers on then he ran back in to get Norm and Pete.

I then proceeded to break about thirty different traffic laws while tearing through the city, and we got to her place in record time.

Ask me if I give a shit.

I don’t.

Squeezing Leo’s shoulders a little tighter, I watch her closely as she attempts to process our presence and I’m not going to lie, I breathe her in a little as I do.

She still smells the same, like everything warm and sweet, like cinnamon and vanilla with a hint of peppermint oil. Leo always smelled like Christmas and summertime all at once, and even after spending a bulk of our ten years together sharing space in some way or another, I could never figure out why. Doesn’t mean I’d change it though. That fucking scent became my safe haven— our safe space, and the void going without it the last three years created has been massive.

Now that I’m standing here with our girl in my arms, breathing her in, seeing her in the flesh, I’m nothing but relieved.

I was never really sure how I’d handle seeing Leo again. I always knew I would, I knew fate would bring us back to her, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be angry or sad, maybe hurt or just heartbroken, and surprisingly enough I’m none of those things.

I’m just so fucking relieved .

A huge part of me—of all four of us—has been missing the last three years, and it comes wrapped in a five-foot-seven package of hell on wheels mixed with heaven on earth. Leo is the final piece of my soul, the other part of who I am and the simple joy I feel at having her back in my personal bubble is overwhelming, to say the least.

And I don’t plan on letting her put distance between us ever again.

The five of us were a unit, an impenetrable fortress, a fiercely loyal family and Leo was our unspoken leader. She and I co-parented as Norm always put it, the two of us running things as soon as she joined the band.

We were hesitant at first, unsure about adding a female into the mix but the first time Leo opened her mouth, I knew. Hell, let’s be real here, I knew the second I laid eyes on her that she was meant for us, but it wasn’t until Justine forced her to audition for our lead singer position that my gut feeling was reinforced, and from then on, nothing mattered but the five of us.

Leo brought balance to The Ravens.

She was a little unhinged, a little angry ball of energy with a hot temper and a fierce personality, but it balanced out the rest of us. Her random spurts of rationality worked with my regimented and routine ass, which is exactly how we kept things on track and were dubbed the parents . Leo is probably one of the only people who can both talk Pete off a ledge when he’s pissed, then make him laugh harder than he ever allows himself to. Mark was the one who got Leo to loosen up, who showed her it was ok to be relaxed and a little carefree while she showed him he had to wear his big boy work pants at times. And Norm… he’s the one who got through to Leo’s softer side, and she stiffened his spine and gave him the strength he didn’t know he had.

Literal balance, and it was fucking perfect.

We had a solid, constant stream of love and support for ten fucking years. We were each other’s day in and day out, each other’s everything and nothing all at once, but Leo, she is the heart of us.

We all laughed together, cried together, we fought like cats and dogs, and we protected each other. What the five of us share is something more powerful than any of us anticipated, and it’s more intense than any of us have ever experienced. The night that changed that, changed all of us, something broke, and I was terrified we would never be able to fix it.

Being here now gives me a hell of a lot of hope, though.

I feel Leo’s head tilt and I look down to meet those black as night eyes, eyes that are taking in every inch of my battered face but instead of pity or disgust, I see straight-up guilt reflecting back at me. And I don’t want that, either.

“Don’t.” I shake my head as she opens her mouth to speak. “You don’t have to.”

Leo holds my stare, her guilt growing by the second. “I never asked about you. I never asked about any of you...” She turns and tries to break away from me but I don’t let her, I just hold her tighter while she looks at the ground and pulls another cigarette from her pack. “Not once in almost three years, I never asked about you.”

She inhales shakily, her fingers trembling so hard the hot falls off her smoke seconds after lighting it. “Justine told me about all of you. The trial, the time, the injuries. She told me every time one of you called or sent a text. Then one day it just stopped. She had nothing else to tell me and until right now, I was glad for that.”

“Leo, you don’t have to—" Pete starts but Leo cuts him off.

“Please. I haven’t had any words for you in almost three years. Let me say this now because I don’t know when the panic is going to take over again, and when it does, I’ll never get to say it.”

She’s pleading with us, practically begging to pour her heart out right here in this damn parking structure, Leo’s eyes locked in on Pete’s sable ones hiding behind long silver dreads while she does.

Which is why Pete nods and folds his arms against his broad chest. He’ll give her this right now, but I know he’s not going to let her beat herself up for long.

“I promised myself that I was never going to put any of you through that much pain, that much hardship ever again. I promised myself that whatever we had for those ten years was done, that it had to be done. I’d never be in the same room, the same building as you four again.” Leo shakes her head as she breaks his stare and tries taking a hit from her barely lit smoke. “Because of me your lives were horribly changed forever. I was determined to shut down the part of me that longed for the music, longed for what we did together, and I successfully did for thirty-five months.”

My eyes flick to Norm as he raises his hand, his lips pressed tightly in a thin line, his greenish-blue eyes narrowed on Leo.

“Let me fucking finish,” she snaps, her body tensing when Norm flinches. “I know I don’t deserve to be listened to, but I won’t be able to live with myself if I can’t get through this. I owe you at least that, to hear me out before you make any decisions.” Leo takes a deep breath and avoids looking at any of us. “The day Justine stopped telling me about your phone calls, I was relieved. It was killing me not to have you around. I missed your stupid jokes, your political rants, your beautiful music. I missed literally everything about the four of you but when you stopped trying it was way easier to let you go. So, I did. I let you go, and I disappeared into myself. I wanted you to move on. Cliche or not, I wanted you guys to move on and forget about me, forget that night, and the last decade. I wanted you to keep doing what you had done before I came along and fucked everything up.”

My hand slides down to Leo’s back and I start rubbing the place between her shoulder blades. She’s always carried her tension there, and it used to practically have her purring in my lap when I’d do this.

Because I want Leo to remember that we’re her safe space, too.

We always have been, even if that one night made us question it.

Leo tosses her cigarette on the ground and immediately lights another one, which makes probably a half pack since we got off the phone.

I’d put money on it.

“Then today, something in my brain snapped and for some fucked-up reason, my reaction was to call Lucky.”

I wince and stop rubbing her back because that fucking stung but then those dark eyes dart to mine, and I see her apology. I see her begging for me to understand the true meaning of those words and fuck, I actually do.

“I didn’t even think. I just picked up my phone and immediately dialed you. It just happened like it was normal, a programmed response to a shitty day the way it used to be.” She sighs as she scans my face, her stare never lingering over my scar the way everyone else’s does. If I was an idiot, I’d almost think she doesn’t see it. “But when I realized what I was doing, I thought of a million reasons why you wouldn’t, why you shouldn’t pick up the phone.”

Leo looks at me a little longer before she shifts her gaze, searching each of the boys the same way she did me. “And now you’re here. All four of you are here in the flesh, in the parking lot outside my loft, hugging me and crying with me like no time has passed at all, like nothing ever changed. Until this moment I was relieved you weren’t in my life anymore but I’m kidding myself to think I’m better without you… or that you’re better without me.” She smirks a little but none of us react, and her eyes immediately drop to the ground.

“I need you,” Leo whispers. “I need all of you. I can’t do this alone anymore. You had every right to tell me to go fuck myself when I called or when you showed up, but you didn’t. Standing here looking at you, seeing my missing pieces right in front of my face, man, I know I fucked this all up, but I’m asking for you to forgive me anyway. I don’t deserve it, and I’d understand if you chose not to do it but I’m selfish enough to ask, and stupid enough to hope that you do.”

I watch Leo light another smoke and push her gorgeous bright red hair out of her eyes before I turn and look at our boys.

Mark is staring at Leo with tears on his lower lids, the big bear barely keeping it together after that little speech. Norm is openly crying—albeit quietly—he’s always been the most sensitive of the five of us, and his feelings have never been easy to hide. And Pete, he’s still standing there with his arms crossed against his chest waiting for the other shoe to drop because getting his hopes up hurts him too damn much. And it’s exactly why he’s the first to speak up.

PETE

“We never stopped calling,” I grunt as Leo’s head snaps toward me.

Jesus Christ, this is fucking intense.

And way harder than I expected.

But as soon as Luck said it was our girl on the phone, I knew this was a turning point. One we’d been waiting for a long-ass time. A turning point the other guys were optimistic would happen.

One I’m still skeptical about.

It doesn’t matter that we’re standing in this fucking parking structure having a makeshift intervention, or that Leo is showing emotion after constant reports of her being one level up from a zombie. I know her and as soon as she finds an opening, our stubborn girl is gonna book it right back to her own personal hell.

And yeah, it’s why I look Leo right in the eye and make her uncomfortable as fuck with the contact. I want to see if she’s going to run. “We just stopped calling you, princess. We still called Justine every day, today included.”

“Pete’s right,” Norm chimes in while wiping snot from his face before he pulls his long blonde hair into a terrible ponytail. “We know you well enough to know that if we kept calling you, we’d only send you further and further into your pit.”

Leo stares at his face then looks up at Luck in question, and he nods with a slight smile. A look between them that warms my fucking heart to see once again, especially after spending the last three years trying my hardest to keep that man smiling at all.

Losing Leo was hard enough, I wasn’t going to lose Lucky, too.

And she needs to hear this. She needs to know how much we loved her through her pain and recovery, how much we still love her through whatever the hell this new chapter is, and how we’ve tried to still be there for her. Even while Leo was checked the fuck out.

Luck starts rubbing her back again, and I arch a brow at him. Cool it, dude.

This isn’t the old days where we had to peel Leo off of us. She’s skittish, she’s scared, and our girl can’t handle her emotions on a good day. If he keeps it up, he’s going to push her right back into her pit like Norm said.

But Lucky just winks at me before reiterating what we’re saying. “We never gave up on you. On us. We knew that one day you were going to wake up from the nightmare you were living, and we had every intention of being there when you did.”

He reaches out to catch the lone tear that manages to escape down her cheek then traces the path it took to her chin.

God, I just want to fucking hold her.

“Plus, you’re right, we fucking suck without you.” Mark smiles through his beard, the fur on his face sparkling with the tears no one saw him shed. “I was a little worried we were going to have to send up a flare or call in the troops, though. You were thick in that shit, Leo.”

The most beautiful smile breaks out on her face and I know we have her, I know that this is the beginning of a new chapter in the story of us, so I move. I cross the space between us and turn her toward the doors that will lead to her loft, motioning for everyone to get on board. And as Mark distracts her with another stream of goofy bullshit, I shoot a grin to Lucky and Norm while marching our girl inside.

If we don’t take the chance that has presented itself after all this time, we’ll lose Leo, most likely forever, and I’m not prepared to go through that again.

None of us are, and even though I’m still leery, hope wins out in the first of what will no doubt be many battles to get our girl back for good.