Page 214 of Keeping Kasey
I pull my hands slowly from beneath the blanket. Bandages cover them, but they’re loosely wrapped, giving me a peek at the blue and purple patches. Small blisters have begun forming under the skin, and a few areas are already on the brink of peeling. It hurts like hell to move them.
I go to flex my feet, but the pain is so intense that I immediately stop. If this is how my hands look, I can’t imagine what my feet must look like if they hurt that badly.
“What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” Damon asks.
I can recall the feelings without trouble: fear, hopelessness, determination, and the unrelenting cold. The images don’t come as easily, like they’ve been shrouded in darkness—or maybe the memoriesaredarkness…
A singular picture breaks through the dark—a rounded face, beautiful even covered in bruises.
“Kasey!” I shout and jolt upright. “She’s hurt—we have to—”
“Woah”—Damon shoots to his feet to coax me back down—“you can’t be moving a lot right now. You almost died out there.”
I don’t realize I’ve used my hands to push myself up until they burn like I’ve stuck them in a blazing furnace, and I curse as I fall back into bed.
“Kasey’s hurt,” I say again, ignoring the waves of pain coursing through me. “She needs—”
“She’s here,” Damon says. “We found her, too.”
“Where is she? Is she okay? How did you find her? I need to see her.”
“She’ll be back any minute,” Moreno says, his tone condescending, like he’s talking to a lost child looking for his parents.
I glare at him. “What are you doing here anyway?”
“My wife asked me to stay while she and James meet with the hospital director to personally vet every doctor and nurse allowed in this room.”
“Feel free to get out,” I tell him.
“And miss this heartfelt moment?”
Damon curls his lips to suppress a laugh, and I wonder what I did to make my sister hate me so much that she’d leave me here with these idiots.
“What happened?” I ask, patience wearing thinner by the second.
“Dominic kept bugging Ryder about seeing theLightning McQueencar, so he brought the kids to the hotel to see it, but it wasn’t there—and neither were you,” Damon explains. “By then, you’d been missing for a few hours, and all we had was hotel security footage of Kasey leaving. We tracked down the Cadillac, found her stuff, and her boyfriend’s corpse, but no sign of you guys.”
“Then how did you find us?”
Damon answers my question, but I don’t hear a word he says. My eyes are drawn to the door before the knob turns. I know exactly who’s about to come inside—I canfeelher.
The door swings open, and the moment my eyes meet Kasey’s, I’m struck with a relief so pure, the corners of my eyes sting with the force of it. The weight of fear and worry slides off me in an instant, and I’m overcome with peace, contentment, andlove.
Just like that, the memories fall into place. The call from Diaz. The ultrasound. The list. The blizzard. Leaving Kasey.
Realizing I would die in my attempt to save us.
It makes this moment—seeing Kasey here, safe and smiling—feel like floating on air. I risked everything on the chance I might find help, and it very nearly cost us both our lives.
She looks a lot better than the last time I saw her.
The bruising around both her eyes is still dark and swollen, but the gash across her forehead is clean and neatly stitched. The arm that was dislocated rests in a sling, her left leg is in a thick cast, and the way she sits—straight-backed and stiff—makes me think her ribs are taped, too.
She wears a hospital gown, her hair bound in a messy pile on her head, and yet she still manages to be absolutely stunning.
“You’re awake,” Kasey says on an exhale. Her eyes glisten, and her smile is barely contained by the tape across her bottom lip in two different places, keeping the cuts from opening again.
