Carter sinks slowly into the side chair, as if his legs have given out beneath him. “Chloe,” he mutters a second later, never looking away from me. “You’re crushing her.”
“Sorry! Sorry.” She pulls back so her weight is off my chest, but she doesn’t leave my side. Her eyes gloss over with fresh tears as she stares into my face. “I’m just so happy you’re alive! And your brain still works!”
“Worried I was going to wake up a vegetable?” I ask wryly.
“Maybe. But you’re not!” She drops a kiss onto my forehead. “Christ, don’t ever do that to me again.”
“I’ll try,” I murmur, trying to remember what, exactly I did to land myself here. “My mind feels all… foggy.”
Carter and Chloe trade a glance.
“That’s from the concussion and the pain meds they gave you,” Chloe says finally. “It might take some time for everything to come back to you. You were out for nearly twelve hours.”
I look to the window, trying to gauge what time it is, but strangely, there isn’t one. Just cement walls and fluorescent lighting that reminds me of a storage locker. It doesn’t look like any hospital I’ve ever been in.
“Where am I?”
“Fort Sutton.” Carter runs a hand through his hair. “It’s an off-the-books facility used as a military base, nuclear bunker, and royal hospital whenever there’s an… incident.”
Incident?
I nod absently, still feeling rather sluggish. “Is Linus here?”
They trade a worried glance, but I hardly notice. My brain is otherwise occupied, piecing together details at a snail’s pace, like a jigsaw puzzle of memories that don’t quite fit.
The square…
The stage…
The speech…
The screams…
“Oh my god,” I whisper, my voice a hollow shell of devastation as it all comes rushing back. “Oh my god, the truck… All those people.”
Chloe’s gone pale. She grabs my hand and squeezes hard.
“Tell me it’s not real,” I beg, eyes filling as I glance from her to Carter. “Tell me it was just a bad dream.”
“Honey…” Chloe’s voice breaks.
My vision blurs as a flood of tears begins to leak down my cheeks. The first drops from the sea of pain inside me, crashing through my mind in waves as memories play out.
The truck culling a path through the crowd like a scythe through a field of wheat. Cutting them down before they could even run for cover.
People running, falling, dying.
A terrified woman in a blood-spattered coat.
A tiny baby in a pink blanket who’ll never grow old.
It’s too much. Too much to process, too much to feel all at once. Chloe’s arms go around my frame, holding me close, absorbing the torrent of anguish pouring out in great heaving sobs.
“It’s okay,” she whispers against my hair, trying her best to soothe me. “You’ll be okay.”
But deep down, I know she’s wrong.
I’ll never be okay again.