on the toilet lid. I would’ve liked to sit there for hours, trying to process the probability that I was going to have a baby, but the reason I’d rushed to take the test was still valid. I needed to tell Eoin before he became unreachable for who knew how long. This wasn’t the sort of news one could exactly leave on a voicemail.
I dialed in a daze, only snapping to attention when I heard his voice.
“I’m sorry about the last-minute warning,” he said in way of a greeting.
“That’s not why I’m calling.” My voice sounded strange even to my ears. “And it’s all right. It’s part of your job. I just had to tell you before you were unreachable for a while…”
Shit. Maybe this was a bad idea. Did you tell a man this type of news over the phone?
“Tell me what?” He instantly sounded concerned. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Even as the debate over telling him or not continued to war inside of me, I decided not to delay. “I might be pregnant.”
Less than a second after the word left my mouth, I heard a curse. Two. More. Yelling. Not just Eoin.
And then everything went silent.
“Eoin? Eoin?”
Nothing.
He was gone.
Ten
Eoin
The screech of tires.
Shouting.
Light reflecting off metal and glass.
Curses.
A jarring impact sending vibrations through every bone.
Crunching.
Breaking.
Dizzy.
Falling.
Pain.
The flashes going off in my head were like individual snapshots I didn’t only see, but heard and felt. Each one was barely a second in actual time, but they all seemed like an eternity.
Logically, I knew every minute contained sixty seconds, and every properly run clock counted a second out the exact same way, but experiencing time wasn’t always like that. It changed depending on the circumstances. I knew that from too much experience.
And then I was hurtling back in time.
A loud bang and flying through the air, tumbling, crashing.
Gunfire sending little sparks into the air, the sound echoing, filling my head. It was so loud.
And hot.
Smokey.
My lungs burned, and every breath just made it worse. Burned through my mouth, down my throat, filling my lungs with fire.
The world was hazy, edges blurred. Bodies were shadows and outlines running across my vision. Legs moving, running. The sound of boots on sand and rock.
Loud popping. Gunshots. Semi-automatic. Handguns. Rifles. Automatic. Everything.
An explosion rocked the world, shook the ground.
No, the roof. Not the ground. I was upside down. Blood rushing to my head. I couldn’t move. I could see everything. But I couldn’t move.
My ears were ringing. The world was muffled and loud.
I could see everything.
Bart, lying there with his eyes fixed on the sky. Mouth wide open, as if he’d been screaming. In pain. For his mother. That he didn’t want to die. But he was dead. Neck clearly broken.
While he screamed.
I could see everything.
I could hear him screaming, blaming me.
Doto, pinned to the driver’s seat. Blood pouring from his mouth. He screamed too. Cursed me for letting him die.
More explosions, more screaming, more gunfire, more of everything. And I still couldn’t move.
Someone was screaming my name.
Leo.
“Eoin! C’mon, man.”
Not Leo.
Cain.
“Wake up, you fucking bastard! I can’t yank your huge ass out on my own!”
Cain.
I opened my eyes to find Cain leaning over me. He looked like hell. Scratches on his face. Blood.
I blinked, wondering if I was seeing things. I had to be. There was no reason for Cain to be here, and no reason for him to be bloody.
Here.
Wait. Where was here?
I blinked again, and nothing changed.
Except I now realized that he was upside down.
“What…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “What happened?”
Cain ignored my question and asked one of his own. “Can you move?”
“Yes.” Even as I said it, I frowned as I realized something important. I didn’t actually know if that was the truth. Something was wrong, although I couldn’t figure out what it might be. I couldn’t understand what was going on or where I was.
“Eoin!” Cain snapped his fingers in front of my face.
I blinked again and started doing what I should have been doing already. Thinking. I wiggled my toes, then moved my legs. Some pain, but I didn’t think anything was broken. Arms were the same.
As if providing evidence, I wiggled my fingers. “I can move.”
“Great.” Cain moved out of my field of vision before a pair of hands latched onto mine. “Use your legs.”
I did it without really thinking, and between Cain pulling on my arms and me pushing with my legs, I moved. It wasn’t until I saw the sky above me that I realized