Page 61 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Jett

Only because he’d been standing exactly where he was.

Only because the wind had been blowing at that exact velocity and the sky had chosen to open up and pour with rain during a February drought.

Only because Nella had been there, throwing her weight against Sally’s arm (in her non-dominant hand because Razor had fought back), so the shot went wide.

That was what kept him alive. And that was what kept him awake all those nights in the hospital.

Not the wound itself, not the memory of the pain and the cold and the blackness of nothing.

But the pieces. Everything that had to be exactly as it was for him to survive.

Every piece of his life had led to this moment, and every piece he chose from now on would shape the trajectory of every bullet.

It could be far more crippling than a bullet wound, this knowledge. The impossible weight of probabilities. The uncertainty of where each decision would go, which bullets he’d be straying in the line of if he chose a certain path.

His mind went round in this merry-go-round each night as he lay in the cool sheets with the filtered air and the never-quite-dark room. But his last thought, before sleep took him, was of that one thing that the rest of the pieces fit into.

It was the one thing he’d gone for so long without, trying to fit everything else together in its absence. But he couldn’t kid himself anymore. He always drifted off trying to picture the strange shape that all the pieces of his life would have made if he’d never met Nella Barbarani.

She hadn’t come to see him. The disappointment throbbing through him prompted him to question if the surgeon had missed some bullet fragments and now he was slowly dying of a secondary infection.

He resisted asking the others where she was.

He didn’t know how much they’d guessed about the depths of his feelings for her.

Grey told him she was sorting out the particulars of the deal she’d made with Matteo La Marca.

Matteo was being difficult, shockingly. He had no right to feel any sort of hurt over it.

But it ... registered that she hadn’t come to check on him once, and now he was home.

Well, the home he’d known for the last fifteen years.

The knock on the garage door came as he pulled a black garbage bag tight. He’d packed up a bunch of clothes for the Good Sammy’s – he’d have no use for the nice shirts and pants Giovanni had bought him for driving to black-tie events up in Kevin’s workshop.

He was expecting Grey or Max or even Tom, who’d been inexplicably popping in every day to list all the different ways Jett could die in the hotter parts of WA further north.

It wasn’t any of them.

It was like being shot, all over again, if he was being honest, every time he saw her face.

He’d trained himself by now to not look down, to not let himself even skim his eyes down her body.

But he hadn’t been expecting her. So now he unfortunately knew she was wearing her goddamn black satin pants that were offensively tight around places he wouldn’t think about and a white long-sleeved blouse that fell open at the wrong buttonhole.

‘Hey,’ she said, like the last few weeks didn’t exist, like the wound in his upper arm wasn’t there, or the stake through his heart that no surgeon would ever be able to remove.

‘Hey.’

Her eyes went to his wound – he’d been letting it breathe between dressings – and he went to turn away, to hide the ugly, fresh scar, but she reached out, without asking, her fingertips a breath away.

Jett had rarely seen Nella cry up close except for the moment in the car in Italy.

She’d cried in the backseat of his car plenty of times, drunk crying, angry crying, frustrated crying, silent crying when she thought he couldn’t tell, but he could always tell.

But now she was crying openly in front of him – completely raw and unfiltered.

‘Jett ...’

‘It’s fine.’ He fixed the new bandage on and took her shaking hand, placing it on the part of his arm unscarred by bullets or cigarettes or glass.

‘Your tattoo.’ Tears slipped between her lips. ‘It’s gone.’

He followed her gaze to the surgeon’s scar.

The bullet had ripped clean through the tiny letters he’d branded on his skin at eighteen to always remember, to never forget.

DCT. Now there was just a snarl of a scar and a tiny black line that used to be the top of the T.

‘Random happenstance,’ he said, his voice rough.

‘No.’ Her thumb brushed close to the tail of the scar. ‘I don’t believe that.’

‘You’re right.’ He closed his eyes, letting himself breathe in the only scent that had ever calmed him one last time. The only smell he’d drive through black nights for. The only place he’d ever felt at home. ‘It was because of you.’

Her breath ripped. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

He realised his mistake as she started to pull away.

‘I didn’t mean ...’ He gripped her firmly, his arms unable to do anything besides the most natural, obvious thing, which was to wrap around her and pull her back towards him, back home.

‘I didn’t mean it was your fault. I mean the only reason I’m alive, the reason I only have a scar, is you.

Because you found me, you came for me. No one’s ever cared enough to do what you did, Nella.

It was stupid and fucking insane, and I’ll never, ever forgive you for risking your life like that just for me. ’

‘Just for you?’ Her voice shook as much as her hand.

‘You stupid arsehole, don’t you remember what I said in the water?

You know the only reason Daisy ... Sally .

.. whoever the hell she is ... the only reason she targeted you was because you were standing in her way.

In her fucked-up mind, you were a threat, because even Sally Sue could see how I felt about you.

How important you were to me. Everyone could see. ’ She paused. ‘Except you. ’

He tried to not believe it, but the voice that told him when to run, the instinct that felt for the vibrations in the earth before an earthquake, was silent.

‘This won’t be home without you, Jett,’ she whispered. ‘You are my home. Please don’t go.’

‘Come with me.’ The words rushed from him like an arterial bleed.

‘I can’t.’ Her breath was so close to his skin that all of his blood rushed to the spot where her lips hovered, forgetting about his heart. That spot of skin was the only thing keeping him alive right now. ‘My family ... I ... I have to stay. I have to be there for them, I have a duty to them.’

‘I know.’ He pressed his forehead against hers. ‘More than anyone, I know.’

‘She played me,’ Nella said. ‘You were right, all along, about instincts, about my challenges. They don’t work, because Daisy passed all of them.’

‘Nella, my instincts told me Daisy was the type of girl I could date. I think you being hoodwinked by her actual qualifications was more understandable than me thinking with my ...’

‘So how am I meant to do it then? How am I meant to sort the sociopaths from the power-hungry, the ladder climbers from the gold-diggers from the people who genuinely care about me?’ The pain she’d kept hidden for so long was burning through her eyes like her blood had singed to coals.

‘It’s easy,’ he said wryly. ‘You get held at gunpoint on a cliff and see who comes to rescue you.’

What could have been a cry broke into a shocked laugh that reverberated through her body into his. That’s when he realised there was no going back. The movement stirred everything he’d tried to shove back into the attic, but now, after Devil’s Pool, the door was jammed open.

‘You finally get it,’ she said.

‘Do I?’ His heart felt boxed against his ribcage. If she came any closer, all of his resolve, every box he’d stacked neatly upon each other in his attic would fall, and he would lose every piece of control.

But it wasn’t until she pressed her lips against his, still salty from her tears, that he got it. Finally.