Page 68 of Thrown Off Balance

“That’s not true, I asked you to go out with me tonight.” Jax frowns like Jude doesn’t make sense.

Jude’s eyes move from us to Maddox and back. His gun always follows whatever path his eyes go and I don’t know what to do. We can’t make a run for it, even if we got to safety, I'm not sure Maddox would. I don’t want to risk his life.

“How about you let me take Sloan and leave. You can stay here with Jax,” Maddox offers.

“No! Jax is just lying to me. She’s poisoned him completely.” Jude hits the side of his head with his palm like he’s trying to make this all make sense to him. “I'm going to kill all of you. If I can’t have Jax as my best friend, none of you deserve to live.”

He glances at us before turning his attention back to Maddox and raises his gun.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Mason growls as he steps into the kitchen with a gun trained on Jude. He’s not about to let anyone in his family get hurt. Maddox drops to the floor as soon as Jude’s attention is off of him.

Jude turns towards the new voice, but Mason fires off a shot before Jude can do anything. Two loud shots fill the air and have me covering my ears. It’s so loud. I blink, trying to focus on the scene in front of me.

Jude crumples to the ground, holding his chest. Mason doesn’t waste a second, he holsters his gun and hurries to Jude’s side. He kicks the gun out of Jude’s reach before squatting down next to him and placing pressure on Jude’s wound with a kitchen towel.

There are so many voices talking through the ear piece, but I can’t focus on any of them. I feel like I'm under water and I can’t focus on anything.

“Jax, I'm dizzy,” I whisper.

“What? Are you ok?”

“Sloan got shot!” Cody sweeps me into his arms as the room spins. “Stay with me, baby. I'm going to get you help.”

His face is the last thing I see as everything goes black.

Chapter 40

Cody

“Sloan? Sloan!” I place her on the couch, not really caring if the thing gets destroyed from the blood.

“Where?” Uncle Mason pushes me out of the way and squats down next to the couch.

“Her thigh.” I point to where the blood is coming from.

He pulls something out of his bag and places it around her leg. He tightens it as much as he possibly can before putting pressure on the wound.

“I only took one shot. Jude must’ve shot at the same time. I think it nicked her artery. That’s too much blood to not have hit an artery.” He motions to the floor where Sloan was standing.

“Is she going to be ok?” My voice is frantic, even to my own ears.

“I’ll do everything in my power to make sure she makes it out of this alive. Peck called an ambulance when he knew this wasn’t going to end friendly. They’re coming up the driveway now.”

I struggle to get to my feet and stumble towards the door to open it. As soon as I see the EMTs, I choke on a sob and motions towards Sloan.

“She was shot. Help her!”

Uncle Mason quickly talks to them and explains how he thinks the bullet hit an artery. They don’t waste a second getting her into the ambulance and shutting the doors in my face.

“I need to go with her!”

“Go, I’ll deal with him.” Uncle Mason waves off the EMTs, encouraging them to leave with Sloan.

“No! I need to go with her!” I try to push past him, but he doesn’t let me go.

“Cody, listen to me. You can go to the hospital, but they need to hurry or she could die. Give them space to work.”

“Let’s go, son.” Dad appears at my side and takes me into his arms. He leads me right to his SUV and gets me into the passenger’s seat. He buckles my seatbelt before rounding to the driver’s side and getting it.