middle of her chest and press “I fucking refuse to let you die. You can’t. I’ll be so fucking mad at you if I have to go the rest of my life without you.” I count in my head with each press I give to her chest.
Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.
“Come on, baby. Please, don’t do this to me.”
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
I'm scared out of my mind. I can hardly think. I try to wrap my head around what Owen said, the hard truth that Gabriella was dead. The world couldn’t hate me this much to take away the one thing in this life that I have stayed alive for.
Thirty.
I jerk my hands away and cover her lips with mine again, doing my best not to fall apart by the fact this I the first time I’ve touched her lips, and they are frozen. I breathe down her throat and continue another set of compressions.
I remember the first time I saw her. Kendrick had come over to the house to borrow something, I can’t remember what. To be honest, I can’t remember much about that day besides Gabriella. God, she looked beautiful. She wore black jeans and a white sweater, it was fuzzy, and her hair was up showing the long, slender column of her neck. My eyes were locked onto the side of her throat the entire night.
And her perfume.
Fuck me, that perfume had me harder than fucking nails. I was relieved when they left, but guilt sank its way into my bones when I knew she was with the wrong brother. Kendrick has always been an asshole, but I told myself I’d win her over, make her realize how a man was supposed to treat her.
“Come on!” I yell at her, getting angry at the fact that she isn’t breathing. My arms are starting to burn. “Breathe, baby,” a sob breaks from my chest, and I wipe my left eye on my sleeve when a damn tear falls free. Fuck this, I am going to lose it. “Fucking, breathe!” I scream and lift my fist it in the air, slamming it down into the middle of her chest, knowing it is a last-ditch effort; knowing Owen is right.
I’ve gone from happy when I found a match on the camera, to confused, to fucking devastated in a matter of minutes. If Gabriella dies, where does that leave me? No one understands the depth, the … the obsession, the infatuation, the fucking undying need Gabriella makes me feel. It controls me. I’m not a man in possession of my own mind or emotions, and I haven’t been since I first met her.
She ripped out my heart and left me bleeding that day, and I have continued to bleed for her ever since.
Water leaks from the corners of her mouth, and my eyes widen. I slap her cheeks gently. “Gabby, wake up, baby. Wake up, come on,” I beg. She coughs, sending a fountain of salty water into the air. I turn her head to the side and let the water continue pouring from her lungs out onto the floor. I look up to the ceiling and blink away the tears. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” I whisper to up above. I don’t believe in God, not after everything I’ve seen, but right now, I am nearly convinced because it is a miracle that Gabby is breathing. Her heart is beating. Her eyes blinking and her lips, while still blue, they are moving.
She is weak. Once she is done coughing up the water, her eyes fall shut, and she slips into unconsciousness. I watch to make sure her chest rises and falls, and my shoulders sag as mollification takes over.
“You just saved her life,” Owen says, clapping me on the shoulder.
I gather Gabriella into my arms and hold her so tight, I’m afraid I may cause her to stop breathing again. I narrow my eyes at Owen as I place my feet under me and stand. “No thanks to you. You two wanted me to give up on her. Owen, I expected it from you, but Jaxon? If this would have been Quinn, you wouldn’t have given up. Fuck the both of you for telling me to.” I leave them behind as I walk down the hallway, passing Quinn who has tears in her eyes as they lock onto a limp Gabriella.
“Is she okay?” Quinn asks in a wispy, barely breathing kind of voice. Her light footsteps tell me she is following me,