I can’t be certain of whether he’s serious or whether he’s playing to the cold-hearted arsehole everyone takes him for.
All I know is that this should never have happened. Not here and not now when the lives of the people we love the most hang in the balance.
Casper knows that too because he’s as choked as I am. It’s palpable in the frigid air. We’re both trying to pretend that t
his means nothing, when in fact it’s the only thing stopping us from falling apart.
The hospital is like a ghost town as I follow him to the waiting room, my heels clicking on the bleach-worn floor. Slowing down, I pause before I walk into the room behind him.
Leo’s pacing. Christopher’s standing by the window. They’re both covered in blood. So much blood that it makes my stomach turn again at the sight of it.
Casper’s gaze meets mine, and the need to scream and rage and hurt tornadoes in his eyes. I feel it tear me apart from the inside out as I silently choke on my unshed tears. Clearing one of the chairs of the creased magazines and empty coffee cups, he brings it over to where I’m standing to the side of the open doorway.
“Sit,” he orders.
When I do, he stands beside me, fingertips ghosting over the back of my hand as I clutch at the arm of the chair.
He came back, I think, something fluttering inside me as he stands, unmoving, arm dangling at his side, occasionally grazing my skin with his rough fingertips. He came back to me.
Just like that night, he’ll come back to me now. Won’t he?
Chapter 11
FLEUR
The bright sunlight stings my eyes as the hatch is opened. I’m so cold and tired, with no idea how long I’ve been down here. What I do know is that it’s not Casper thudding down the steps towards where I’m huddled in the corner.
“We have to get you out of here,” Ryan tells me as he picks me up and starts towards the blinding daylight.
My shivers have me trembling. I’m not sure if it’s the temperature or if it’s the ice running through my veins.
Ryan’s here, so…so… It takes everything in me to think it, but as Ryan holds me tight, I finally admit, Casper is gone.
If I could physically shatter, it would be a blessing. If I could only tear out my heart and leave it in this pit…
Tears burst from me relentlessly as I try to claw away from him, awful sobs that I wish would stop. Violent panic pummels what’s left of my heart and all the hope I held on to into nothing.
“Hang in there,” he tells me, cooing at me as though I’m a child that can be easily comforted or pacified. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
It’s so quiet that the flutter of the birds and the swish of the trees deafens me. They scream of a life I’ll never have. They mourn a man I’ll never see, touch, or feel again.
Ryan trudges through the muddy path, taking me past the house and all the way down to the boat. Standing me on my wobbly legs, he helps me inside before jumping in. The jostle of it makes my stomach turn.
“Don’t worry, we won’t be on this for long.” He pulls a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and hands it to me. “I’m sorry it took me forever to get here.”
Ryan rows us along the cliff edge. He keeps talking, but the only thing I can hear is the gunshot firing on repeat, and with every echo my heart breaks again and again, crumbling into so many impossible pieces. When he hauls me from the small boat, I have no idea how I’m still alive. Sitting on one of the large rocks in the cave he’s taken us to, I am depleted. Completely vacant while I watch him move around with a clear plan in place.
There’s a powerboat—the kind we used to go out to sea on for the day at Heavers Hall—and he’s checking it over. The cave is tucked far enough up the river that the tide doesn’t rise high enough to fill it.
“Is he really dead?” The words pour from me even though I already know the answer.
Ryan looks at me as he transfers some things into the bigger boat. “I don’t know,” he says matter-of-fact. “He and Cameron haven’t answered my calls since I got Cam’s message last night.”
“So why are you here?”
He’s not actually sure anything has happened, right?
Hope flurries inside me. My lungs begin to fill with the briny air.