I think I can see figures at the door. Everything is blurring into one. I lift the gun. Try to point it. My arm weighs a thousand pounds.
My vision goes black, and it’s like a switch. My ears are ringing. I can’t hear what they’re saying to me, whoever they are, whatever they’re shouting. It’s like someone has turned the volume down on the entire world.
My body melts against the ground.
And it feels… nice. Like peace. As if I’m sinking into warm water. Like falling asleep in a bathtub while someone makes you hot chocolate downstairs.
All I can see is Hunter and Wyatt.
They’re standing in sunlight. On the porch. Wyatt is waving. Hunter has his hat tipped back, and he’s smiling at me.
They’re telling me they love me.
I think I smile back.
It’s like floating.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
HUNTER
I come through the door,and the world ends.
Not with an explosion. Not with a sound. With a silence so absolute it swallows me whole. Lola is on the floor.
Face down. One arm stretched toward the doorway, fingers still wrapped around a gun. Her red hair is fanned across the wood, dark with blood at the temple. The gash is open and bleeding freely. There’s a pool beneath her head that’s still spreading.
She’s not moving.
My legs stop working.
For one second, a single, annihilating second, I think she’s dead. And in that second, I die too. Whatever part of me is human, whatever part loves and feels and exists beyond muscle and bone, it flatlines. Right there in the doorway.
Then I see her back rise. The smallest breath. A tiny expansion of her ribs that wouldn’t be visible from ten feet away. She’s breathing.
I’m on the floor beside her before my brain has given my legs the command. My knees hit the wood. I take the gun from her hand and press two fingers to her neck.
A pulse. My girl is in there, still fighting.
“Lola.” I cup her face with both hands and turn her head. The blood is everywhere. The gash is deep, but it’s not the wound that scares me. It’s her eyes. Half open. Unfocused. The green is dim. Like she’s not really in there.
The woman I love is dying in my arms.
“Lola, baby. Look at me.” My voice splinters, just like my heart does.
I’d switch places with her in a heartbeat.
Her eyelids flutter. A sound escapes her lips. It doesn’t even sound like a word, not even close.
“That’s it. Stay with me. You hear me? You stay right here.” I scoop her off the floor and into my arms. Her head lolls against my chest.
“Drago,” I roar. “AMBULANCE! NOW!”
Drago appears in the doorway. One look at Lola, and his phone is already to his ear. He turns away, speaking fast, coordinates, and uses medical terminology I can’t process.
Behind him, Jett is dragging Reese out by his collar, and that asshole is screaming. “Wait! Wait—you need me!” He’s clutching his stomach with one hand and grasping at the doorframe with the other. “Hunter—please—I have information—I can clear your name?—”
I hold Lola tighter. “You did this,” I seethe.