Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 60950 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60950 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 305(@200wpm)___ 244(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
“She will be. How the fuck did you get here, Bo?”
Hid in van.
Kevin came running in. “I heard something explode. What the fuck happened?” he asked, surveying the scene, huffing like he’d ran all the way to the house.
“No time to explain. Take Bo to the van. NOW!”
Kevin did what he was told, grabbing Bo’s hand and dragging him from the house.
The collapsed ceiling-turned-wall shook, revealing a dusty but alive King and Bear standing on the other side. “You look like you guys fell into a bowl of blow.”
“I fucking wish,” Bear answered. They both looked as relieved to see me alive as I was to see them but there was no time for a family reunion.
I picked up Dre, ignoring the shooting pain in my chest, and followed King and Bear out into the sunlight.
Dre was dazed from all the blood loss. Her skin pale. The circles under her eyes dark. “I have to get her help. Now.”
Before it’s too late.
King started dialing numbers on his phone.
Dre’s eyes rolled back in her head and she began to shake. Then the world began to shake.
We were only a few steps from the house when it exploded around us with a boom that was both blinding and deafening. Bursts of orange flooded my vision, bits of metal tore open my skin as I was blown forward.
My wife torn from my arms by the blast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Preppy
I hate the term ‘nothing left to lose’.
Because lying there in that hospital room was everything I had to lose. I barely let the hospital staff tend to my gunshot wound and stop the bleeding, it was barely even a wound. It was a sandspur in my sock compared to the chunk of my guts destroyed the last time I’d been shot. But my injury wasn’t important. What was important was Dre and that’s why as ridiculous as the idea I just had was, I couldn’t ignore it. I’d try everything and anything to bring her back. I didn’t care if she was getting comfortable wherever she was. I didn’t care if they were ushering her through the pearly gates with a bottle of champagne and three-dozen white fucking roses. I didn’t care if she was the happiest she’d ever been and if heaven was everything she could ever want. Didn’t care. I was a selfish man.
She was mine, and I wasn’t letting her go.
Ever.
I closed my eyes and started the deep breathing technique Mirna had taught me years before. I hadn’t meditated since getting out of Narnia, but sitting there next to my wife I felt helpless. It was worth a shot.
It was only seconds, or at least that’s what I felt like, when I was no longer in the hospital room, holding onto my wife’s bloody hand as the machines she was hooked up to beeped and blink with the erratic rise and fall of her chest.
We were now on top of the water tower. She was awake, standing on the edge just like the night I met her. Except this time, she wasn’t naked. She was in a hospital gown splattered with red. The IV tube still taped to her wrist. Her eye and lip swollen and bruised. She looked over the edge of the rail. Her black hair blew around her battered face.
“Don’t jump,” I said, taking a step toward her. I tried to keep my voice as calm as possible, hiding the fear pitting in the depths of my stomach. Dre turned to me and smiled. I gasped when she leapt up to sit on the very top of the thin and rusted railing. My heart leaped into my throat and I step between her legs, wrapping my arms around her waist and resting my head against her tits. Holding her to me. Holding her onto the tower. “Don’t leave me,” I told her. “Don’t leave us. Bo misses you. I miss you.” I felt the vibration of her laugh and looked up into her bruised but beautiful face. Her smile was big although her bottom teeth were coated in red.
“Save me, Preppy,” she said, her voice an eerie echo that doesn’t sound like it’s coming from her mouth, but from the air around us. Her lips weren’t even moving.
“I did save you,” I argue. “At least I tried to save you. It’s up to the doctors now.” I held her tighter, but it’s not tight enough. It never was.
She shook her head and pressed her index finger to my lips, which I kissed on instinct. “No, you still have some saving to do. It’s not over yet. Not yet.” She touched my face and suddenly I was awash in an image. A doctor leaning over me and I realize it’s not me at all. I’m seeing him through Dre’s eyes. The doctor laughs when she tries to cough out her words. Questioning what he was doing and why. “Save me,” she said to me again, and the image of the doctor is gone. I’m back looking into the dark eyes of the only woman I’d ever loved. The breeze is now a wind. Leaves and pine needles from nearby trees cyclone around us, creating a wall of debris and a noise that sounds like a train clattering against the tracks.