54. Piper
FIFTY-FOUR
PIPER
“Theo. Oh, God, Theo.” I scrambled for him where he’d fallen facedown on the floor.
Blood poured from his side.
“No, no, no,” I begged as I reached for him.
A commotion happened around me as my spirit wailed in agony.
Otto shouting at the other man who’d come through the door to get onto his stomach and put his hands behind his head.
While panic assailed every one of my senses.
This man who’d become everything. The one who’d found me when I’d been trapped.
When I’d been a prisoner to my mistakes, and he showed me that I didn’t have to be.
“I’m right here. I’m right here,” I mumbled frantically. I struggled to roll him over onto his back, then a gasp tore from the depths of me when I saw the huge wet spot on his shirt where his jacket draped open.
The wound was low on his side.
I set my hand against it, and warm blood seeped out against my palm.
Dread spiraled through me, and I got up high on my knees so I could apply pressure to it with both hands. I put my weight on it as I muttered, “Theo, listen to me, just hold on. Help is on its way. You’re going to be okay. You have to be. You aren’t leaving me. You aren’t.”
There was no response, just the faint wheezing of shallow, haggard breaths.
Tears poured down my face as I leaned over him. “Just hang on. Hang on.”
Cash crashed through the door.
“Fuck,” he hissed as he found the scene, and I could tell he was talking to Otto when he said, “Colt is here. This was a kidnapping that we stumbled on. Cut and dry.”
“Yup,” Otto said, though his voice was low and heavy with implication. Could feel the weight of their eyes sweep to us.
Heavy footsteps clomped our way, and Cash dropped down to his knee at my side. He pressed his fingers to Theo’s neck. “He has a pulse but it’s weak.”
He slugged out of his jacket and pulled his shirt over his head. He balled it and shoved it under my hands. “Keep the pressure as firm as you can. You can’t hurt him any worse than he already is.”
Could feel him peering over at me as I fought the sob that knotted at the base of my throat.
“Ambulance is almost here. He’s going to be fine.”
Except I could hear the bleakness in his voice.
Another siren approached, and a minute later, three paramedics hustled through the door. Cash stood and set his hand on my shoulder. “Come on.”
“No, I won’t leave him,” I choked.
“Ma’am, I need to look at his wound. You don’t have to leave, but I need you to scoot back.”
Tears pouring down my face, I slid back on my knees, and the paramedic took my place.
Otto came up and curled his hand on my shoulder, his words scraping against my soul. “He’ll be okay. He has to be. It’s the first time in his life that he truly has something to live for.”
I watched in horror as they rushed to save his life.
Torment turning a bitter cold as a paramedic covered his mouth with a mask and started to squeeze air into his lungs while another was straddling him on the stretcher and pumping his chest as they pushed him out and into the ambulance.
Otto looped a big arm around my waist to keep me from falling back to the ground, and Cash stood firm yet stoic at my opposite side.
Chaos was everywhere.
I felt as if I were watching it through vapor. Through a hazy, distorted mirror.
Blood.
There was so much blood.
Nausea convulsed and seethed in my stomach as my mind curled between the past and now. How one wicked man could bring so much trauma and suffering.
I’d give anything to go back.
Rewind to that fateful night.
Save my parents.
My brother.
Stop this tragedy.
This converging of worlds that I still couldn’t grasp.
And I wondered, if somehow, someway, I would have been led here anyway.
For two days, I sat beside him. My only companion the steady, quiet beeping of the monitor and the rhythmic call of his breaths.
I refused to leave.
His family was here most of the time as well, standing guard and ready for anything that was needed.
Waiting for the same miracle I prayed for incessantly.
Though they would only come into the dimly lit room for a moment or two. Murmuring their love and support and belief before they’d leave us alone.
As if they were offering us the time that we might not have.
I pushed from the chair, needing to stretch my aching legs, and I wandered to the window that overlooked the small intensive care unit. The nurses’ station was right outside in the middle.
Their voices muted beyond the glass.
It felt as if I were watching them through water.
Their laughter as they chatted.
Sadness pulsed, and I blew out a weighted sigh.
Then I froze when I felt a wash of that fierce, unrelenting energy swallow me from behind.
I inhaled a shattered breath, frozen for a beat, before I slowly shifted around to look at him where he lay propped in the hospital bed.
This menace of a man with those moonlit eyes.
“Ah, there she is. My favorite Little Liar.”
Tears burned and broke free, streaking hot down my cheeks.
He stretched out a hand. “Don’t cry, baby.”
Of course, that only made me cry harder as I rushed to his side. Leaning over him, I gripped his hand in both of mine.
Feeling him whole and awake and alive.
Emotion rushed, a crush of every regret at odds with this exquisite relief.
“Theo. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” I mumbled through the tears. “I didn’t want to drag you into my mess.”
He reached out with his other hand that had an IV attached to it. Watching me, he gathered the moisture that drenched my cheek. “Told you I would hold it for you. All of it. I’d gladly give it all if it meant you being free. Besides, it seems I was already a part of it.”
My heart thrashed.
“Scarlett.” I whispered her name like a secret. The ghost who had always haunted his eyes. “She died because of me. Because she helped me.”
“Go. Try to save your life. Just like I’m going to try to save mine.”
And she hadn’t been able to.
Sorrow shook Theo’s head. “No, Piper. I was the one who got her involved in that life. She never would have met Toga if it wasn’t for me.”
Justin.
That monster who had used us both. Manipulated us. Bent us to his will.
“I was the one who should have saved her. Saved her and my kid that I never got to meet.” Grief hitched his words.
“She was pregnant.”
Pregnant when she was trying to save me.
A knot rolled his throat. “Yeah.”
I sniffled, still trying to wrap my head around it. “I’m so sorry, Theo.”
No wonder he’d so often looked at my son as if it caused him physical pain.
“I wish I could have changed it.” Theo squeezed my hand tighter, his sorrow bleeding out. “I didn’t love her enough. I tried. I fuckin’ tried. She deserved so much better than me. I did it all wrong. But I won’t do that with you.”
He tipped my face back toward him. “I believed her when she told me I wasn’t capable of loving. Believed my mother when she accused me of the same. But they were wrong, Piper. I just didn’t know it until I met you.”
Tears kept rushing.
Old fears being obliterated and new hopes surging to life.
“I was so afraid of trying again.” His voice was raw. “So afraid of not stacking up. Of not feeling what I’m supposed to. Terrified I’d drag someone into the darkness that I possess. Ruin someone else because I’m nothing but selfish.”
His hand tightened on the side of my face.
“Turns out, I am fuckin’ selfish because I won’t let you go.
Because I love you, Piper. Love you in a way that I thought I wasn’t capable of.
Wholly and completely. With this heart and this body and this life.
So in love with you that my heart feels like it’s going to bust out of my chest whenever I look at you. ”
He shifted and took my face in both his hands, tilting it toward him. “You are every horizon. Every destination. You are the air I breathe and the ground beneath my feet. And because of you, this dead heart beats.”