Chapter 27 #2
I sat on the ground, heart pounding, and looked up. The scene I saw made my heart nearly stop, my breath cutting off completely. That image became a nightmare I could never escape.
Cassian.
He'd pushed me away but hadn't fully dodged.
He stood where I'd just been. His whole body flew through the air like a broken leaf, flung by that black SUV, crashing into the green buffer zone by the roadside.
The vehicle veered off course, too, smashing into a fire hydrant. Water shot skyward, refracting an eerie, desolate light in the sunset.
And Cassian... he lay in the rain among maple leaves and blood. His white shirt rapidly turning red.
My mind went blank.
"Cassian!"
I let out a piercing scream, crawling and scrambling toward him. My heels had fallen off when I fell. I ran barefoot across glass shards and cold puddles, the pain in my feet completely absent.
I knelt in the pool of blood, trembling as I pulled his upper body into my arms.
"Cassian! Cassian, look at me!" I sobbed, my hands desperately trying to cover the blood pouring from his chest. But that hot liquid gushed like a broken dam through my fingers, staining my proud red dress.
His face was ghostly pale. Those once sharp, cold blue eyes now looked scattered. He coughed up a thick mouthful of blood, his chest heaving violently.
His blood-stained hand trembled upward, struggling to grasp something. I quickly grabbed his hand and pressed it to my face, tears falling uncontrollably into his palm.
"Good... " With each word, more blood spilled from his mouth. "Luna, you're okay... thank God..."
He looked at me with no fear in his eyes, only a kind of relieved peace.
"Don't talk! Stop talking!" I felt my heart being torn open. My whole body shook. The terror of losing him swept through me.
"Luna..." His fingers lightly brushed my face, blood trickling from his mouth. "I'm sorry... for before... don't be sad... I want you to be free..."
"Stop talking!" I screamed, pressing my hands to his chest, trying to stop the blood, but it flowed through my fingers, warm and sticky, impossible to stop. "Stop talking! Did you hear me! Cassian! You're not allowed to die!"
He smiled. A light, brief smile.
"Laila..." he said. "Tell her... her daddy loves her very much..."
"You tell her yourself!" I shouted at him. "You tell her yourself! She's waiting for you to braid her hair! Did you hear me!"
His eyes slowly closed.
"Cassian! Cassian! Open your eyes! You're not allowed to sleep! Did you hear me! You're not allowed to sleep!"
I felt all my resolve and resentment completely collapse in that moment. Those chasms I thought we could never cross became utterly insignificant the second he fell.
I was wrong. I was so wrong.
For six years, I'd wrapped myself in hatred, telling myself he was a selfish monster. But in that instant, without any hesitation, he'd traded his life for mine.
In this treacherous world, if that wasn't love, what was real?
People around me were shouting something. But I heard nothing except my own crying mixed with the rain, like some wounded animal howling.
Just then, someone rushed over from behind and pushed me aside. Several men in black suits surrounded Cassian. One checked his pulse while another called for an ambulance—his bodyguards.
"Ma'am, please step back!" A bodyguard pulled me backward. "The ambulance is coming!"
I struggled, trying to get back, but he held me firmly.
"Ma'am! Please calm down!"
I couldn't calm down. He lay on the ground in a pool of blood, his face white as death. He'd just been talking to me. How could he die? He couldn't die. He couldn't die!
A scream came from behind. Not mine. Someone else's.
I turned stiffly and saw several bodyguards dragging someone from the driver's seat of that black SUV.
A disheveled woman in a dirty white dress, only one shoe remaining. She struggled, her voice sharp as a knife. When I saw that figure, I felt all the blood in my body freeze completely.
"Let me go! Let me go! I'll kill her! I'll kill that bitch!"
Sloane Reed.
My mind exploded. It was her. She drove into me. She wanted me dead.
The bodyguards pinned her to the ground. She kept struggling, hair covering her face, blood sliding down from her temple. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she'd gone mad.
"Why you! Why you!" she screamed at me. "I waited for him for six years! He wouldn't even look at me! He blacklisted me! Made it impossible for me to survive in the industry! All because of you! Why won't you die!"
She pointed at me with vicious curses, her nails scratching bloody marks on the bodyguard's arm. "I lived like a dog for six years! And you come back, do nothing, and get his love again! It's not fair! Go to hell!"
Ambulance sirens wailed, growing closer.
Sloane was held down by bodyguards, then taken away by arriving police. Her curses faded into the wind, but I couldn't hear a single word.
My world contained only Cassian's faint, fragile breathing that could stop at any moment.
Paramedics rushed over, lifting Cassian onto a stretcher. I chased after the ambulance like a madwoman. The doctor tried to stop me, but seeing my blood-soaked, nearly shattered state, finally let me through.
In the cramped ambulance space, thin mist formed on the oxygen mask.
I gripped Cassian's cold hand tightly, my fingertips tracing the calluses on his palm.
I pressed it to my cheek, praying with every ounce of strength in my heart.
Please, God. As long as he lives.
As long as he lives, I'll give anything.
I just need him to open his eyes and say my name one more time.
I watched the heart monitor's green line jump weakly, sporadically, feeling my own heart teetering on the edge of a cliff.
"Cassian, don't leave us." I leaned close to his ear, hot tears soaking his collar. "You said you'd go to every concert with Laila... You liar, you haven't done it yet. You can't go."
The sun sank completely below the horizon. Night fell. And that glaring red light above the operating room became the only color left in my vision.