Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146548 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 733(@200wpm)___ 586(@250wpm)___ 488(@300wpm)
Then I fell for him.
It’s a love that pummels me every time I wake and crave to near him. Every time I see his morality and think, how good you are, and fuck, I’m lucky. It’s a love that beckons me towards him when he’s gone. One that reaches into my core and wraps itself around me. It’s that persistent, unforgettable undetachable love.
He’s in critical condition, and he can’t know what I know. I’ve never lied to him, but I can’t tell him this. Right now, I’m the first and last defense against fatality.
“Oliveira!” I shout, the night sky rumbling as sheets of water pound the pavement and us.
Oscar leaves security’s car and sprints to me. “What do you need?” He crouches so neither of us has to yell.
“The trauma bag.” We keep one in security vehicles in case the concierge doctor needs supplies. “You’ll find a needle decompression kit, and get me an umbrella.” I almost have to shout since he takes off running. Realizing the enormity.
“Farrow…” Maximoff inhales a ragged breath, forearm tucked to his chest. He tries to gesture me closer, but his fingers only twitch.
I hover over my boyfriend, my palm on gravel above his head. Rain thumps against my back but helps keep his chest and face dry.
“You’re bleeding…” He tries to reach out again, to help me. He grimaces, his arm immobile.
“Don’t,” I say. “Just relax, wolf scout.”
His eyes drift to my temple. “You’re bleeding, you know…”
I touch my temple, the cut small. “It’s nothing. Tell me how you feel.”
He licks his lips. “I feel…great.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “Like I could fly to the moon, pick us up some lunch, take my Audi out for a spin.” His eyes melt against mine before flooding with pain. His face twists.
I stroke his dark, wet hair out of his face. “It’s not lunch time and you don’t have a license.”
He almost grimace-laughs, and then he coughs roughly. Really roughly, and suddenly, Maximoff solidifies to marble. He notices blood splashed on pavement.
He’s coughing up blood.
My head swerves to the car. “Oliveira!” He has to be struggling to find the kit. I check the time on Maximoff’s wristwatch.
“Farrow…” Maximoff says, swallowing, his teeth stained with blood as he winces. “Just…tell me.”
He wants to know what’s wrong with him. It’s killing me. It’s killing me. “Maximoff—”
“You’ve never…held anything back before…” He takes a shorter breath.
My eyes sear and well, but rain washes my agonized face. I’m dying…with him. I take a deep, punctured breath and get my shit together.
Breathe. Give him what he wants.
Like always.
Gravel digs in my palm as I shift closer. “You have a flail chest; ribs four through seven are fractured,” I say. “Hemoptysis, coughing up blood, indicates a pulmonary contusion.” Off his confusion, I say, “Your left lung is bruised.” That’s not the serious injury. This is… “You’re in severe respiratory distress on the affected right lung. Neck vein distension, no breath sounds, tracheal deviation. It’s a tension pneumothorax. Your broken rib collapsed your lung, and now air is filling in the pleural cavity.”
I don’t explain how at this stage the pneumothorax can cause obstructive shock. Lack of blood flow to the heart, and the heart will stop pumping blood to his body.
Maximoff nods slowly, listening. Understanding. He’s good at that, and he knows. I know he knows that this could be fatal, so I say, “I’m not going to let you die. You hear me?”
He grimaces, blood still filling his mouth. “You’re…smarter than me.”
“Stop.” I need him to say how I’m the know-it-all asshole. How he could’ve regurgitated all this shit just as easily as me, even if we both know that’s not true.
I help lift his head as he coughs.
His forest-greens stay on me, screaming love me.
Love me.
And he says, “You’ve always been smarter than me.”
“Don’t.” I shake my head repeatedly. I can’t listen to him admit that I’m wiser, older and stronger. “Don’t.” My head whips. “OLIVEIRA!” I yell at Oscar to hurry the fuck up, and cameramen scream questions at me about whether Maximoff is alive.
I tune out the chorus of alive and dead.
Maximoff stares right into me and chokes out, “I love you, you know that?”
We’re both crying. “Stop.” I clutch his sharp jaw. I’m a stubborn idiot too. Because I refuse to say I love you back in a goodbye.
Maximoff takes a shorter breath. “Tell Jane I love her…” He swallows a knot in his throat. “Tell my parents they’re the greatest…”
“Maximoff—”
“I love you,” he repeats.
“Stop. Stop.” I can’t do an ending with the one person I’ve loved enough to want to last forever. I can’t. I haven’t even told him that I can see forever. I haven’t said all that needs to be said yet.
“Take care of my sisters…my brother—”
“Look at me.” I hold his face as his breath shortens. “You’ll be here tomorrow and the next day. This isn’t it, wolf scout. You’re not ending here. And I’m confident…” I nod over and over, his eyes flooding. “You will see your sisters grow up to be old women and you’ll see your brother become an old man—and I’ll be right by your side.”