Murder_ A Sinful Secrets Romance - Ella James Page 0,210
arm.
“Don’t touch him!”
“Please?” The word collapses. Sobs start coming.
It takes me some time to notice that the red-haired one has got a red tube. There’s a tube connecting him to Barrett.
The mean one—the one who said “don’t touch him”—has his hands around Bear’s throat.
Their faces are taut and furious. That’s how they look to me. I can still hear Barrett’s breathing, see him moving. Mine. I drop down beside his head.
“Barrett? I love you so much.”
I’m still sitting there, stroking his hair and forehead, when the ambulance arrives at my house.
“RUN,” one of them growls. “Tell them we need a trach, his trachea is torn and there’s a rip in his left common carotid!”
I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember any of the details. I just see Barrett’s eyes, the way they open and shut, tears leaking the whole time they load him up. His gray cheeks, all wet, and his red lips stretched open, trying to get air into his lungs.
When the red-haired guy detaches himself from Barrett, I jump into the ambulance. Barrett’s fingers stretch out slightly and his face folds on a sob that has the paramedics scrambling around his throat.
I grab his hand. I don’t let go.
THIRTY
GWENNA
I don’t know where we are when Barrett starts struggling and moaning.
“Gwen…?” His voice is so raspy, I can barely make out my name, but I recognize the tone. He’s called for me so many times before, how could I not?
“Right here.” I squeeze his hand. It’s cold and damp in mine.
His head presses back against the top of the stretcher, and his face twists. Then, before I know what happened, someone shoves me. “Back up!”
I hit the ambulance’s wall with a hard bump. Oh my God, are those paddles?
“Stand clear!”
This weird, high-pitched noise whines. The two paramedics are messing with his chest and face. The woman starts counting, pressing on his chest; the man is at his mouth and looking down.
His face looks strange. His skin is gray, his eyes are rolling.
“What’s wrong?”
I can only watch as Barrett’s body twitches. His hand, curled up by his chest, unfurls and curls again as his back arches.
“Barrett!”
The paddles aren’t really paddles—more like soft stickers. The first time they shock him, I’m staring at his face. Please…please…please…
When no one moves or speaks, I start to sob, get up, and try to go up by his head. The man holds out his arm to keep me away.
“I love you!”
I can tell it worked that time because the EMTs spring into motion once again. I can’t even hear their words. Can only stare at Barrett’s face, his bleeding throat.
Oh God, please…
I beg someone to let me hold his hand.
“Okay, but if I tell you move, you have to move back.”
His face and body are so still. I kiss his fingers.
“It’s okay, baby. Gwen is here. I’m here. I love you. I don’t care what happened in the past. It doesn’t matter to me.”
This goes on for hours. Or minutes, maybe. I don’t know. Someone tells me to move back. The ambulance stops. The paramedics jump out, rushing off, and someone helps me down. I guess the driver.
He directs me somewhere. I don’t know. I’m numb. I just want Barrett, but they took him back.
“I’m his wife!”
The woman at the counter looks at me like she doesn’t even care, and more tears come, and then the dark-haired guy is there, the one called Dove. He takes me to some chairs and tables somewhere.
“I just went back there. He’s stable, Gwenna.”
I don’t know. The horror of it. And it’s horror. Nothing less. Dove hugs me and I start sobbing. His shirt smells like butterscotch.
The other one is here, too: Bluebell. Michael, he tells me. I remember something about his dad being in the military, something about a threat, but not specifics.
“I’m going to talk to them again,” Dove says at one point.
I look up at Michael and my stomach bottoms out.
“You’re… Fuck!”
I jump up, running through the hall until I find a door and toss it open, getting sick inside the metal sink of one of the rooms. When I wipe my face, I find Michael in the door and cry again.
Because it’s true. It’s all true…
Michael is the guy who wanted me to share a beer bowl with him that night.
That night.
Really happened.
I don’t want it to have been real—but it is.
Barrett hit me that night. My Bear.
I sit on a rolling chair in the empty room and put my head in my hands.