**NOWWWW. The cute moments end and THE WAR STARTS. 🔪🔪☠️☠️

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many people were okay with Lacey dying. Call it an experiment, but I definitely wanted to compare reactions to when Soren died. I won't share my opinion, but it was eye-opening.

Anyway. I promised you. Who is ready to revive dark Soren? That curb-stomping, merciless killer that we fell in love with in CBA?

Because...someone just shot his fucking wife, so...

Uh. Yeah. We...gonna get...violent again. But I'm armed with so many knife emojis.

🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪🔪

😘

"I know that this is what you want, a funeral keeps both of us apart. You know that you are not alone, need you like water in my lungs.
This is the end."
— Play Crack The Sky, Brand New

♛♚

ACT TWO

"LAAAAACEY."

I didn't think I could ever forget that. I'd always hold it close.

That lazy slur of my fake name, hot and heavy in my ear like a sultry summer night.

Soren Calloway could drag it out like it was the most important thing he'd ever said in his life. Hundreds of thousands of words in the English and Spanish language combined, but he seemed to find solace in the stripper name I'd chosen for a life on the run.

"Calloway."

I grinned as he nuzzled into my neck, pressing faint butterfly kisses along warm skin. With each brush of his lips, the feeling faded into a longing that I loved. A peaceful partnership.

Maybe we had been crazy, but we always had moments when things fell into place; when the world seemed to stop spinning and we simply inhaled what was so infinitely unmistakable between us.

"I miss you," he murmured softly, the words dangling like the first tangible taste of heartbreak. I sank into his chest as dark strayaways of hair escaped to flutter across the empty sky. "I always miss you."

Salty air caressed us until we were nothing but a calming casualty of war.

There were always casualties.

Maybe I was always meant to be one. Maybe it was another thing that was inevitable.

Inescapable.

In all the ways that I'd been warned. We'd never be safe. Our family would never be safe.

"Lacey, you promised you'd never leave me," Soren whispered in my ear, betrayal laced through the withering wisps of a broken vow. "You promised you'd never leave."

All those wasted words felt surreal, like an abstract dream of a distant life. Vague and muddy, left hanging in the wind with forgotten fears and those one days that we'd been collecting together.

Were we really never meant to survive?

It didn't feel real. In a perfectly constructed deception of everything I'd ever dreamt of, the cloudless sky painted a portrait of all our promises.

Waves rolling along the horizon of an abandoned summer daze; a chaotic season of love dwindling to an end.

All things had to end.

Soren and I had escaped too many things to count, saving hopeful one days for another life.

One day, we'll be happy. One day, we'll have everything. One day, we'll be safe.

Maybe if we had met in a different life, we wouldn't have been doomed. We would have been happy.

We would have been this moment.

A fantasy of melting colors and crashing waves, drifting along an August haze before it vanished. Still and silent, along a blurry blissful end, somewhere in the middle, the sunset meeting the ocean.

We would have been this. One day.

"You promised to take me to the beach," I barely breathed. "One day."

Soren choked on a soundless sob behind me. His fingers spread against my stomach as I leaned back into his body to stay warm. Soren was always warm.

An ache spread through my chest where I knew my heart was meant to be.

Heartache. It came violently, like the savage tides of a rising ocean before us.

When I finally turned in his embrace, the soft, sensual sounds fell away. Glassy, green eyes clashed with mine, and instantly, I felt my shoulders shake with a sob.

Céladon.

That was the color.

Everything came with it. All the fleeting shades of green I'd memorized, all the fears I'd overcome, all the conversations I'd held onto, all the fucking love that I'd lost.

"Please," Soren whispered with the infamous desperation that I'd learned to hate. "Don't cry, Lacey."

Was I crying? Would I spend eternity fucking crying?

When salt water filled my lungs and a shipwreck anchored me to the ocean floor, could I even cry?

"We waited too long, Calloway." I sighed wistfully, a strange nostalgia running through my veins. "We never had enough time."

Despite the stormy breeze the skimmed the shore, and the brewing hurricane on the horizon, Soren Calloway laughed faintly. Despite the imminent goodbye.

"Oh, Lacey," he hummed my name lowly. "We never would have had enough time. Never."

For a moment, dying didn't hurt. I knew it was supposed to, but for once, I didn't feel like I was burning. It wasn't a natural disaster or a fire, it wasn't blades or gunshots. It was my name, ensnared in the fleeting finish of a decaying existence.

It was Soren.

Wrapped in his arms and gazing out into the infinite future that never stood a chance, we simply breathed.

We existed.

Without enemies, without friends, without families, without anything but each other.

Everything was over.

Gently and quietly, like he always did, Soren threaded his fingers through my tangled hair. I sighed with happiness at the soothing pattern that he took to, somehow knowing that if I could spend the rest of eternity like this, I would find some type of peace.

Soren finally broke the silence with a strained whisper. "It was my fault. It was all my fault. You shouldn't have died."

I died. I fucking died.

A dizziness suddenly captured me, and I swayed with the force of that reality. Rushing between my ears, the sound of the ocean made me sick. "I died," I choked out. "I died in front of you."

As Soren twisted me, his fingers caught a loose strand of hair from the summer air. It stole my breath; the way he held it delicately as his sad eyes churned with regret and loss.

I really died.

His lips tilted into a empty smile, nothing but a mere trace of something bittersweet in his expression as he tucked dark locks of hair behind my ear. "I guess we're even now, huh?"

Like the sand slipping through my bare fingers, the memories started to trickle away from me. All the simple smiles and dainty kisses, the blood and ink, the metallic taste of a gunshot in my veins.

"You...couldn't save me?" I whimpered, suddenly clutching his shoulders to keep him from vanishing with the next gust of ocean air. "Our baby...our family, we...you..."

Soren was fading away like the last inkling of the sunset. Soren was leaving me.

Something in my chest ignited with the truth. A red-hot plea of pain, cauterizing my lungs and searing me to the bone.

Blinding heat that laced around my veins—

Into a million tiny pinpricks of violently raging flames—

From my lungs to my fingertips—

I couldn't breathe. I wasn't breathing.

Soren pressed his lips to my forehead and it felt like fucking fire. "I tried. I tried to save you."

Ashes fluttering around my heart, and embers ebbing to a orange glow—

Scorched and withered, like wilted flowers—

It consumed every last inch of my body until I was shaking beside Soren Calloway on some uncharted beach, just barely able to realize that I hadn't survived.

"No, no, no," I choked out, the words licking up my throat with panic. It couldn't be real. "We were supposed to have a family. We were supposed to grow old together and..."

Soren swiped his thumbs across my cheeks frantically, flickering through the crimson veil that came down on me. "Lacey, please don't cry. I hate it when you cry."

Tears still came down my cheeks like scalding hot track marks, sizzling as the sun continued to set on us. I closed my eyes to blink them away, to ignore the subsiding colors.

I didn't know anything but the suffocation that anchored me into his arms, desperately clawing for any way to keep him here, any way to go back to him. I wasn't breathing, I wasn't living.

I was fighting. I would always be fighting.

"Lacey, breathe. Please, breathe. Breathe. I can't—"

The words faded off with a winding whisper of air. Soft and sad, they seemed to bleed from somewhere above me. From rooftops and tendrils of black smoke and completely reckless storm clouds.

"Lacey, please. I can't do this without you."

Can't do what?

My eyes popped open to a soft, dazed green in front of me. Dizziness hit me first, and as I reeled back with the first inhale, I found myself frozen at the amount of worry in his eyes.

"You can do anything," I whispered as he cupped my cheeks. "Soren Calloway can do anything alone."

"I..." His bottom lip started to tremble. "I tried. I tried so fucking hard, Lacey."

Collapsing into his arms with a shaky inhale, the scent of smoke and sweat snuck through me. It held something deadly and familiar, something that felt like home and hell at the same time.

The seascape before us meant nothing. In my dreams, I'd imagined the beach as a destination that would help us start a new life, a safe haven to harbor all of our hopes for redemption.

But this. This wasn't the way it was supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to feel like an end, it was supposed to feel like a beginning.

My fingers twisted into his shirt as he tucked me closer. "I never...I never wanted anything to happen to you." The soft sea breeze swept his curls away from his forehead before I could. He wouldn't need me to do it anymore. "I never wanted this to...I wouldn't have..."

"We should've gone to Mexico," I confessed in defeat. "We should have left everything and everyone behind."

Soren poked my nose tenderly before pointing off to the side. "Not everyone."

As the ocean threatened to swallow the last breath of the slow sunset, the silhouette of a little girl stood clear against the rippling waves that inched up the shore to us.

Splashing innocently, she whirled around to look at us. Every single messy curl followed the short, careless motion.

No, no, no.

My lower lip trembled uncontrollably as she started to wobble through the sand towards us. A numbness seized me with each clumsy step she took to Soren and I. With a small, toothy smile, she threw her arms out in my direction.

The last few inches between us closed with her gleeful squeal. "Mami!"

Mami.

Nothing could've prepared me for that. Nothing could've fucking prepared me for that.

A thick sob tore through me when she collapsed into my lap like a mini tornado, all tiny giggles and fumbling fingers. "Mami, can I—"

Her words died when she looked up at me...and then something inside of me died.

Wide, dark eyes met mine. Her eyes were dark, but deep in a way that held a thousand miles of unseen oceans.

"Why are you cwying, mami?"

"I..." Because I never got to meet you.

"We haaate it when you cwy," she said with a pout, her voice soft and small. "It makes papi sad too."

I swallowed back my next cry and mustered up a smile. "I'm happy. See? I'm soooo happy."

Two little brows rose. "¿En serio? ¿Estás telling the twuth?"

I felt laughter bubble up at the Spanglish question. "Of course I'm happy. How could I not be happy with you?"

How could I have let something happen to her? How could I have put our baby in danger?

With a very unconvinced look, she scrambled from my lap to reach for Soren. I couldn't help it. My arms wound around her waist to keep her in my lap. I wasn't ready to let her go.

Still, she squirmed in my grip as she pinned Soren with a stern look. "Papi."

And fuck, her voice held a demand that told me everything I needed to know. She had Soren wrapped around her finger.

Soren huffed under her scolding. "¿Qué pasa, chiquita?"

"Dad!" I winced at the sound of her disgruntled squeal, and my grip loosened as she snapped, "I'm not a wittle girl!"

Soren stuck his tongue out at her. "You can't even say little."

Balling her tiny hands into fists, she narrowed her eyes at him. If Soren was phased by it at all, he didn't show it. Instead, he shot me a lazy, sideways grin. "She takes after you. She doesn't like labels."

"Papi," she started again with dramatic exhaustion. "Make mami happy."

"I always try to make her happy, mija," Soren said without hesitation. "Siempre."

"No, no, the way you can always make her happy."

Something mischievous tugged at his lips. As she hoisted herself up from my lap to reach his ear and cupped her hands over her lips secretively, Soren held my gaze the entire time. "Sí, mija."

And then she pulled away from us both and plopped down in the sand. Dark brown eyes flickered from Soren to me and then back as she crossed her arms with a sassy look.

"She also gets the sass from you," Soren chuckled faintly before dipping towards me, mimicking her actions to whisper in my ear. "She told me to give you a kiss."

Of course. Because Soren would have our child believing that kisses heal all. Kisses could heal death.

Maybe Soren had watched Sleeping Beauty as a kid too.

"Besos," I murmured softly. "Bésame para siempre."

"I will," Soren promised with the grit and determination that I'd always loved. A glint in his eyes that reminded me of too many shadows and too many threats. "You just have to come back."

That stirred something in my stomach that I couldn't control, a stampede of butterflies that wanted to break free. "Come back?"

"You promised you'd always come back to kiss me," he said with a cheeky grin. "You have to come back to me."

My lips twitched. "All for kisses?"

"No." Soren shook his head and then looped an arm around our daughter's waist. As she let out a high-pitched giggle squeal, he tugged her into his lap and playfully tickled her. "For this. For our family."

"Our family."

I reached for my family.

I blinked.

And then they were gone.

I was alone. Sitting on the beach with nothing but the leftover trace of a once-burning sunset. My heart felt dull and heavy as I dug my fingers into the sand to watch the night devour a black ocean.

I blinked and blinked and blinked, desperate to conjure up the family that I'd lost. I blinked and blinked and fucking blinked, but they didn't come back.

Cutting through the veil of darkness, the only person I saw was a stranger. A complete stranger.

My lips were dry and my throat felt like sandpaper, but I couldn't help but rasp out, "Soren?"

"Mierda, tengo que llamarle. Ahora."

A fuzziness was all I could really feel. Like murky waters and a sunburn tattooed along my bare arms. Itching, gnawing, twisting beneath the surface. "What..."

I blinked again to find the beach.

But I was lying on a bed. A blanket pulled up over my waist, gazing up into dark, dark, dark eyes. 

"Who...what happened?" A jean jacket hung loosely around his thin frame, and a cautious smile on his face ramped my nerves up. "Where am I? Who are you?"

"Oh!" The man squeaked out with a blush. "I'm Santiago. You're in my apartment."

I watched him run a hand through his hair, starting at dark roots and coming out clean through the faded, blue ends. He looked oddly familiar, in his lean figure and his angled jaw. He looked young.

"I'm in your apartment," I breathed, glancing away from him to squint into the dim space. "Why am I in your apartment?"

Faint light filtered in from a window above my head, barely showing off the tall bookshelf beside the bed and the small, wooden desk across the room. Only a lamp and a pile of textbooks sat on top of the desk, but several loose pieces of paper were strewn across the floor.

Who was he?

"We were closest to the memorial," he said simply.

"The memorial? The memorial." Everything came hurtling back at full force. A burn, a burn, a burn. "Where— where is Soren? Where is he?"

Santiago winced at the tail end of my screech and held his hands up in surrender. "That's O, right? King Loco. He's probably on a rampage right now. I've never seen someone that...crazy."

Short pants started to tear up my throat as I scrambled in bed. "I...what happened? I...my baby, my...I..." When he pressed at my shoulders, it was gentle, but firm, and it unleashed a fiery storm of agony. I jerked back into the bed with a cry. "Ah!"

"Don't get up," he warned me with panic in his voice. "You can't get up yet. You need to lay down."

The flames traced from the tip of my shoulder and down to my wrist. "I need— I need to see him! I need to...our baby...is—"

"I'm going to call him, I'm going to call him, but you can't get up," Santiago cut me off. "You were shot."

He didn't say anything about my baby. He didn't say anything and that only added fuel to the fucking fire. Before I could stop myself, I was sinking into the pillows with violent sobs, half-hiccups of pain pulling at my nerves.

"Why isn't he here? What...I—" I cried out when the burn in my shoulder fractured and spliced like ice about to crack. "Did the bebé get hurt?"

"No, no, no." Santiago shook his head frantically, another flash of panic in his eyes as I tried to sit up. "You're fine. Your baby is fine. It was a clean shot through your shoulder."

My gaze flew from his face all the way down my arm to my fingers, only for my heart to leap up my throat. "What...what happened to my hand?"

"You fell. You broke a few fingers, but they should heal within a few weeks with the splint."

Wide eyed and panicked, I couldn't help but look at him again. His dark eyes held an immense amount of pity and I didn't know what to say to it. "And my...my shoulder?"

"Can you move your arm?"

I didn't think before I raised it, and another ball of fire bolted down my arm. "Ah!"

"It hurts, yeah," Santiago sighed. "But the fact that you can move it is a good sign. I stopped the bleeding pretty easily, so I knew it didn't hit the brachial artery..." he trailed off, his gaze finding the ceiling. "Or any artery."

All I could do was swallow. "It didn't?"

Grimacing, he shoved his hands in his pockets. "No hemorrhaging. Blood loss could've killed you in minutes if it hit an artery."

"Oh."

"Sorry, I don't mean to scare you. I just...I was worried that the bullet might have hit the brachial plexus. Even if you survived, you could've lost all motor function in this arm."

Arteries? Brachial plexus? Motor function?

His words didn't seem to really hit me. I glanced at my shoulder hesitantly, only to find it bandaged neatly all the way across my bare torso. "I..."

"I think it was a 9 millimeter, which is good because it seemed to be small..." Everything spiraled into a ringing sound as I flexed my fingers and winced, the splint moving stiffly. "...if it had been any lower, you could have—"

"Someone pushed me."

"I pushed you."

I blinked up at him in disbelief, my throat closing up with gratitude.  He didn't even know me. "How did you...why..."

Santiago shuffled, and then sat down on the edge of the bed. Gently pulling the blanket back up over my chest, he sighed. "I knew you were pregnant. A shoulder wound is easier to treat and easier to survive than if it had—"

I cut him off before he could suggest anything else. "What are you? A doctor?"

Pride surged in his eyes. "I'm studying to be one."

"Oh," I squeaked, examining the small dimples in his cheeks. "That's...that's awesome."

Silence filled the dim room. A lump climbed up my throat.

He knew I was pregnant? He didn't want me dead? He helped me? He pushed me?

How long had I been unconscious? How did I get here? Where was here? Why had Soren left me alone with this man? Did he trust him?

I wanted to ask him so many things, but as his eyes travelled over my body slowly, he leapt up from the bed. "Oh, shit. I'm so sorry. I need to get you some water."

Nodding, I spared him a thankful look and tried to bite back the tears budding in my eyes. "Thank you."

He smiled softly. "I'll call O."

"Where is he?" I dared to ask as he turned away from me. "Is he..."

"He's...I think he's trying to find out who shot you."

My heart came to a grinding halt. "They don't know...who shot me?"

Scratching the back of his head, he faced me with a sheepish smile. "It could've been someone from either gangs. No offense, but you've got a lot of enemies."

Why did that make me want to fucking scream?

And somehow, I blinked away the rage and the tears. "I know. I always will."

Before I could ask anything else, he moved out of the dark room in a haste, sweeping his phone off the desk on his way. I watched his silhouette in the next room as a light turned on.

His voice was low and soft. Muffled. I couldn't understand a word he was saying in the fluent Spanish until he came back with a glass of water. With the phone still to his ear, his eyes flickered over me patiently. "¿Estás con él?"

He was with who?

"Sí, sí."

A pause.

Santiago handed me the water, and I used my other hand to grab it. It still shook, but as I tried to steady it, a rush of frantic Spanish bled out from the phone.

Even muffled, it was fierce and furious and...Soren.

For the first time since I'd woken up, I felt the familiar mantra creep up on me.

Breathe.

"Sí. Está despierta. ¿Dónde estás?" Santiago asked in a calm voice, sitting on the edge of the bed again. "Maria Hernandez Park?"

Breathe.

"Oh, Marcy Projects?"

In. Out.

Santiago paused, his lips parted. "¿Cinco minutos? You'd have to fucking fly to get here that quick."

As soon as he hung up, I asked quietly, "Why was he in the projects?"

"Lots of us live in the projects," he said with a shrug. "He's probably searching for someone or he's hiding from a man-down. There were a lot of cops." Turning to me, he pointed at the glass of water. "You need to drink."

"Sorry." I took a timid sip. "There were a lot of cops? After I got shot?"

Santiago nearly cringed. "A white girl gets shot in our hood? Of course there were."

That shut me up.

I didn't really know what to say to that. Santiago heaved a sigh, an unspoken apology written out with his grimace. "Here. He said five minutes, but I—"

"Then he'll be here in five minutes," I reassured him. "He doesn't do halfway. What time is it?"

One glance at his phone and he grinned. "A little before midnight. I'm going to time him. No fucking way he gets here that quick."

But he did.

In exactly five minutes and twenty five seconds, there was a harsh slam on the apartment door. "Abre esta puerta ahora mismo or I'm going to break it down with your brother's dead body, you motherfucker!"

Ignoring the way my heart soared at the sound of his voice, I fumbled with words. "Your brother?"

"Oh, mala mía," Santiago rushed out with a grin. "I forget that we never really met. I'm Mateo's brother."

**YOU ALL REMEMBER WHEN THAT LITTLE SHIT MATEO BETRAYED OUR LACEY TO SAVE HIS BROTHER?

Yeah, well. He's paying her back for it. These two...kinda saved her life.

Sooo...be honest with me. Did anyone cry? I cried like a BITCH when I wrote out the beginning of this chapter. LIKE A BITCH. So...I'd like it if someone else cried as much as me. 😂

ALSOOOOOOOO. A guy called me la reina de besos the other night and I think I fell in love with him. Hence the change of my profile name 🥰 lololol BESOS for everyone! 😘😘