Mateo caught her, guiding her back to a seat.
I couldn’t move, caught in the vortex of taking Galen’s words at face value and the brutal reality of every crash scene I’d ever attended as a firefighter. How a patient could be lucid and talking one minute and dead the next. How a firefighter, even one as trained and experienced as Galen, didn’t have X-Ray fuckin’ vision. “How bad is the leg?”
Galen winced. “I couldn’t see. They were debating the extraction when your brother tagged in.”
“My brother?”
“Yeah.” Rueful humour lightened Galen’s features. “Overbearing feckin’ buffoon squeezed himself into a mouse hole and booted me out of the way. That’s all I know, I swear. I got called to another vehicle after that, but you know Lo won’t leave him. Not until they get him to surgery.”
“Surgery?”
Galen gave me a grim nod. “There’s no way Nash is getting by without it, but it’s a good thing. If they operate, it means he’s stable, okay? You know this.”
No. I didn’t know anything except that the first man I’d ever given my heart to was banged up to hell—trapped,awake,beneath a fuckin’ lorry cos I hadn’t got my shit together in time to parent my kids properly.
Should’ve been me.
The thought solidified in my chest, sinking like a stone into the pit of my stomach.
Galen disappeared to use his connections to find out more. Orla said my name, but her sultry voice, my favourite thing in the whole fuckin’ world, was a distant buzz.
I need out.
Of this building. Of everything. I was at a crossroads of life and death.
My life.
Orla’s.
Nash’s.
I walked out knowing that the feelings crushing my soul weren’t entirely mine.
Nash.
Cold, wet air hit my face. It was still fuckin’ raining. I stared at the sky, letting it soak me, breathing hard through my nose, glad I’d sent my kids home when they’d both begged to stay with me. They’d bothcried, a memory that would lance me later, but I didn’t have the strength to be a father right now. I didn’t have the strength for anything, and I wouldn’t until I knew for sure that Nash would live.
Should’ve been me.
Anger rattled me. Frustration. Visceralpain.
Should’ve been me.
“No.”
I spun around.
Saint was behind me, as soaked by the rain as I was. “You’re supposed to live.”
“What?”
Saint came closer and drew me away from wherever I’d wound up. He steered me to the shelter of the hospital’s other building—outpatients andsurgery—the two connected by a staff-only skybridge. “You’re supposed to live,” he repeated. “For him. Forher.”
“She might lose him because of me.”
“She won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”