This time, Lyra had to help Alisa hold him back. “Wantmeto hit someone?” Lyra asked Nash. “I don’t have a pregnant wife. I might get myself arrested, but—”
“Like hell, Lyra.” Nash gave her a look.
“Exactly,” Alisa told him. “Now are you two going to let me make those calls, or do I have to stay here and babysit the pair of you?”
They let her make the calls. At some point, the rest of the onlookers were moved back, behind a second barricade, that much farther from the carnage on the isle. Not long after, Nash managed to meet Lyra’s eyes.
“He’s alive,” Nash told her. “I’d know if they weren’t.”
Lyra wasn’t okay. She had no way of knowing if she’d ever be okay again. But for Nash’s sake, she nodded and said, “They’re alive.”
You are damn well alive, Grayson, because if you aren’t, I won’t do a damn thing with that ring. I won’t keep it. I won’t sell it. Do you hear me?
Please hear me.
You’re coming back.
You have to come back.
Chapter 94
LYRA
Waiting was torture. Eventually, Lyra stopped fighting the sobs that wanted to wrack her body, even though she knew that she was being photographed, that those photographs, with her hair blowing wild and tears streaming down her face, would beeverywheresoon, that they’d be the kind of photographs that lived on, immortal, a snapshot of tragedy, a moment forever frozen in time.
Lyra didn’t care. All she cared about was the search and rescue team methodically clearing out rubble—to no avail.
All she cared about was Grayson.
I am ordering you, she thought, unable to stop the sobs from wracking her body,to come back to me. I am ordering you to remember that you are the kind of irritating, frustrating, maddening, mind-blowing, sure-of-himself, capable-of-anything asshole who simply cannot die.
“Lyra.” Nash’s voice broke into Lyra’s thoughts, and she realized—
In the distance, there was movement. Rescue workers were running, running in a way that could only mean one of them had found something, foundsomeone—dead or alive, it wasn’t clear.
And then—
And then.
The rescue workers were stepping aside.Someonewas making them step aside, as if by magic, and Lyra knew. The second she saw even just the outline of him, sheknew.
She knew from the way he moved. She knew from the way he walked. She knew from the way herantoward her.
Grayson.
And just like that, there wasn’t a force on earth that could have held Lyra back. She surged forward and leapt the barricade in a way that shouldn’t have even been possible, ignoring every shout, dodging every hand that reached for her, running the way only someone who’d spent years pushing her body to its limits could.
The distance was nothing. The devastated, treacherous, unstable terrain was nothing.
Her body crashed into Grayson’s. His arms wrapped around her as hers went around him, and holding Grayson Hawthorne, being held by him, burying her head in his shoulder—
It was like stepping out of time.
Kissing Grayson Hawthorne, being kissed by Grayson Hawthorne—it was like gravity didn’t even exist, like nothing else existed, like nothing else ever had.
“Sweetheart.” Grayson’s voice—that voice, she’d thought she’d never hear his voice again—was a balm to her soul. “Lyra, sweetheart—”
“I’m here,” Lyra said. “I am right here.”