Page 230 of The Forbidden Note

“Grey!” I’m trembling so much I can barely move. “Grey!”

She’s not responding.

There’s so much blood.

So much…

The horror is paralyzing.

I want her to open her eyes. Those beautiful, intelligent, kind brown eyes.

I want her to snap at me.

Call me arrogant and obnoxious with those big vocabulary words she earned from years of reading and teaching.

“Grey!” My hands, stained with her blood, rush into her hair. She’s limp in my arms. “Grey, please.”

My first call is to my brothers.

My second is to the ambulance.

Everything outside of that is a blur. I don’t remember the medics setting Grey on a cot and wheeling her to the ambulance. I don’t remember climbing into the back of the truck. I don’t remember the ride, the full-on sprint inside the hospital, the time that ticked by in the waiting room.

I don’t remember when Dutch, Finn and Sol appear.

Or when Cadey shoves a bottle of water into my hands and Dutch tells me to wash the blood off.

I don’t think I remember how to breathe.

Not until I hear that she’s okay. That she’s bruised but there’s nothing broken. That she’s lucky to have come out unscathed. That if the car had rammed into her just a little more to the left, she would be dead.

But she’s not.

She’s alive.

And I am too.

Life pours into me, my veins, my muscles, my heart.

I have a reason to keep going, to keep breathing.

I’m by her side through the night, cleaning her hands, making sure she’s warm, watching over her when my brothers—one by one—leave the hospital room.

And, when she finally opens those eyes I know so well, I grab her hand.

Grey groans in pain. “Where am I?”

“The hospital.” I help her to sit up.

She peers at me, her dark skin making it seem like there are no bruises on her face. But there are and they’ll throb like hell in the next few days.

“Zane,” her eyes widen and she flinches, “there was a car. It was the same one that—”

“I know.”

“Someone’s trying to kill me,” she whispers fearfully, as if the words are live snakes that’ll bite her.

My fingers curl into fists. “I know that too.”

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