Chapter 77
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Ace
Song- White Blank Page, Mumford & Sons.
I come back in pieces.
Sound first. The boots on glass, some voices I don't recognize.
Then pain. I feel it everywhere. My ribs. My skull. My left shoulder is wrong, something is grinding when I try to move it that sends fire down my arm. Blood in my mouth.
I'm being dragged.
Hands under my arms, pulling me across asphalt. My head hanging. The sky above me doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense.
I blink. Try to focus.
The car. Harper's car. It's on its roof. Crushed. The driver's side caved in so deeply that the door is gone. Glass everywhere, glittering under the headlights of the SUV parked twenty feet away.
The SUV that hit us. The one that crossed the center line. That wasn't an accident.
And Harper—
She's still in the car. Upside down. Hanging from her seatbelt. Hair touching the crumpled roof. Arms dangling.
She's not moving.
"HARPER!"
The scream tears something in my throat.
"HARPER! WAKE UP!"
Nothing. She doesn't flinch. Her body hangs limp, and her face is covered in blood, running from a gash above her hairline, dripping off her forehead.
Then I smell it.
Smoke. A thin gray curl rising from the crumpled hood, drifting upward in the headlights.
My heart stops.
No. No, no, no, no.
"GET HER OUT! THE CAR IS SMOKING! GET HER THE FUCK OUT!"
I'm screaming at the men dragging me. At God. At anyone. The smoke is getting thicker. Darker. I can see it building under the hood, curling through the gaps in the crushed metal, and Harper is hanging three feet from it. Unconscious. My baby inside her.
"HARPER! WAKE UP! YOU GOTTA WAKE UP!" I scream it as loud as I possibly can.
I thrash in an attempt to get free. Every broken bone, every torn muscle, none of the pain registers. She's in that car, and it's smoking, and she's not moving, and that overrides everything else my body is trying to tell me.
I wrench my right arm free and drive my elbow into the guy on my left. He grunts, doesn’t go down but his grip loosens.
So I drop, hitting the asphalt on my hands and knees. Some glass bites into my palms, my left arm gives out, and I collapse onto my chest.
I crawl through my own blood, screaming the name of the only woman I’ve ever loved in the hope she wakes up before it’s too late.
Before I lose them both.
Every inch is agony. My ribs scream. My vision blurs, clears, blurs again. I can only see out of one eye, and I don't give a fuck. I have one job. Get to her. Get her out before that smoke turns to flame.
Five feet away. The smoke is pooling under the car now, rolling along the ground. And behind her, underneath the crumpled hood, something glows orange.
"No. Fuck. No."
I move faster. Dragging myself on one arm, my knees grinding through glass. Every second, the glow gets brighter. Every second, the smoke gets thicker.
The assholes that did this, I can hear laughing behind me, watching my broken body try to get to her.
They want her to burn. And they want me to see it.
"Goldie." My voice is wrecked. "Goldie, baby. Open your eyes. Look at me."
Nothing.
Three feet. I reach for her. My fingertips brush the air beneath her hand. The heat from under the hood is hitting my face now. The smoke burns my lungs every time I breathe.
"Please, Harper. Stay with me. You promised. You promised you'd stay."
My vision is tunneling, going dark at the edges.
"The baby, Harper. Our baby. You gotta wake up for the baby. Please."
My voice breaks. Something in my chest cracks open that has nothing to do with the crash.
"I can't do this without you. I can't—"
A lick of flame curls out from under the hood. Small. Running along the leaked fuel, tracing a line across the asphalt toward the car.
I lose my mind.
"GET HER OUT! THE CAR IS ON FIRE! PLEASE! PLEASE, JUST GET HER OUT!"
I'm begging. Ace Sterling is on his stomach in his own blood, begging the men who are trying to kidnap him to save the woman he loves from burning alive.
I don't care about pride. I don't care about anything except the fire and Harper and the thirteen-week-old baby I found out about three hours ago.
Hands clamp around my ankles, and they start dragging me backward. I claw at the asphalt. My fingernails crack against the road. I'm leaving blood trails on the ground.
"NO! GET OFF ME! SHE'S GOING TO BURN! LET ME GET HER! HARPER!"
I kick. Connect with someone's knee. But there are two of them and one of me, and my body is giving out.
I can't reach her.
"Harper." I choke on her name. "I love you. I love you so much. Please."
Her hand. Right there. Inches from mine. If she'd just move. Just twitch. Just give me something.
One of the men barks an order in a language I don’t understand. I hear someone move toward the car. Toward Harper. Through the smoke. I hear the click of a seatbelt releasing. The sound of her body dropping from the harness onto the roof beneath her.
They're pulling her out.
I can't see. The blood and the smoke and the tears have taken everything. But I hear her body being dragged across glass. I hear boots moving fast. I hear the fire crackle and hiss as it finds more fuel.
"Is she breathing?" I shout. "IS SHE brEATHING?"
No one answers me.
All I can hear is the screeching of tires from another car as the bag comes down over my head.
I thrash out one more time, and someone's fist connects with the back of my skull.
The last thing I hear is gunshots.
The last thing I feel is the distance between my hand and hers.
Two feet.
And I couldn't close it.