Total pages in book: 62
Estimated words: 58615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 293(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
“You’re fucking crazy,” I bark. “You really think you’d get away with this?”
A weird cackle rips from her lips. “Milo is at the bottom of the ocean, and once you bleed out, you’ll join him.” She attempts to swing out at me like a rabid cat.
I rear my fist back and smash it into the side of her head, knocking her clean out, her small frame collapsing with a soft thud.
Too much time wasted on fucking crazy.
I drop to the floor beside my girl and tilt her head back, pinching her nose. I breathe into her lungs and then begin compressions.
One…two…three…blow…
One…two…three…blow…
“Please, baby,” I beg. “Please, baby…don’t leave me. You can’t leave me.”
Driving up toward the house, we see the garage door open and head straight for it. The energy thrumming in the air shrouds around me like a storm cloud waiting to erupt. Every muscle in my body aches from being rigid since learning our girl took off on us. There’s this pit in my gut like a black hole swallowing all the happiness from these past weeks into its cavernous pit.
We all exit at the same time, me from the Tahoe and Leo and Zac from the Mustang they borrowed from Rick. They’re both armed already, and I fling open the backseat of the car to grab my own weapons. Once we’re ready, in less than thirty seconds later, we take off in a jog into the garage and through to the house.
“She’ll be fine,” Zac barks for the thousandth time since he came back to get us, reading our minds because he feels it too. A shift in the air, the dread weighing us all down. We shouldn’t have let our guards down. We let her slip through our fingers. If anything happens to her, I’ll never forgive us. “She’ll be fine,” he says again. But there’s a tone to his voice I’ve not witnessed before. Fear.
“Hello?” Leo calls out when silence greets us inside. “Hello?” he tries again as we each take a room, searching them.
“Up here,” a desperate call penetrates the air from upstairs. Sebastian.
I’m closest and first up the steps. A drumming pounds in my ears as I race to Clove’s bedroom. The world spins when I go inside to see her limp body soaking wet on the bathroom floor.
Blue.
So fucking blue.
What the actual fuck!
Sebastian leans over her, his huge palms pumping at her chest.
No, no, this isn’t happening. This isn’t real. She’s not dead. This isn’t real.
I’m barged out of the way as Zac and Leo race past me and take over for Sebastian. Tears drip from his eyes as he watches them frantically work on her.
One…two…three…breathe…
One…two…three…breathe…
“Ford, in the garage there’s a medical cabinet with a defibrillator. Go now,” Zac orders, jerking me from my state of shock. His voice is more desperate than I’ve ever heard him.
My feet stumble and my heart leaks its essence into my chest cavity when I witness no life coming back into the woman we love. Lead fills my bones, making them heavy and off-kilter.
“Now,” he barks, jolting me into action.
I rush through the house to the garage, locating the huge white cabinet standing from floor to ceiling. Inside is everything you may need in case of emergency. I grab the defib and take off faster than I’ve ever moved in my life back to the bedroom. They’ve moved her now to the bedroom floor. Leo snatches the box from my grip and begins placing the two pads onto Lucky’s chest. My eyes trace over every inch of her, sending up a silent prayer to a god I’m not even sure I believe in.
She’s so pale. Her lips are darkening to an awful shade of blue. Crescent blood moons mark the skin on her palms, and bruises litter her flesh like a mirage of her will to survive.
She wasn’t going without a fight.
Fuck, she looks so broken lying there with strong, broad men moving her body around, trying to breathe life back into her. She’s fading from us with each passing second. If she doesn’t come back from this, none of us will.
Movement from behind them in the bathroom, snags my attention. A groaning sounds and a guy is getting to his feet inside the smashed shower stall.
“Who the fuck is that?” I snarl.
Sebastian’s eyes follow mine, and he winces as he tries to stand. That’s when I see the torrent of blood flowing down his back from a massive shard of glass wedged into his shoulder blade.
“He did this,” he wheezes, wobbling as he manages to stand. “He fucking drowned her.”
My eyes track the stranger now pulling a knife from a sheath on his belt and glaring at us. We didn’t come unarmed. Both Leo and Zac had time to gather our weapons before Rick showed up and they took off with his car, but this motherfucker deserves more than a bullet. I lean down to pull my own knife from my boot. It’s jagged-edged with my name carved into the steel.