Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Ethan grins. Ophelia lies on her side on the edge of the pool. He’s got her pinned with his shoe pressed to her neck. He points his gun at me.
I dive, torpedo toward them from under water and he misses, but when I surface to grab his ankle, he aims again. I’m too close. He won’t miss this time. I tug him off balance. He pulls the trigger as he goes down. The bullet hits my free arm, but I manage to hold on to his ankle. I’m a dead man at this range but no way in hell am I leaving her to his mercy because once I’m gone, nothing will stop him from killing her, too. I know that.
He cocks the gun again as I draw him toward the water, the barrel just feet from my face. There’s a splash as he pulls the trigger and I go under.
I’m waiting for the pain, for the burn of this second bullet. Water bleeds red around me, turquoise going black with it, and I realize that splash was Ophelia. She’s there with me, hair floating around her face, eyes wide with shock. The pain still doesn’t come, and it takes me a long, long minute before I know why. Before I understand.
She jumped in. Hands and ankles bound, she threw herself in to save me.
I break the surface with her in my arms.
“Ophelia?”
Her face is deathly pale. I push her hair back and the blood keeps on coming, somehow warm around us.
“O?” Fuck. No. Fuck. No! “Ophelia!”
She blinks, barely managing it, and tries for a smile. “I’ll come for you, too. I—” Her breath catches and her eyelids flutter. Those sirens blare closer, and maybe they are coming for us, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I pull her out, her clothes and mine making us heavy. I lay her on the edge, legs still dangling in the water, blood staining the pristine white stones, seeping into them.
“Ophelia?” I push hair from her cold face, bring mine to hers, hold her, hold her, but she doesn’t move. She doesn’t make a sound. Doesn’t take a single breath.
All she does is bleed. She just bleeds.
37
OPHELIA
The last face I see is Silas’s. The last sound I hear is his. Even the cold doesn’t bother me more than a few moments, not after the tearing, searing pain. But that physical agony, it’s nothing to what I feel when I see Silas’s face. When I hear him say my name over and over again. Because I know what it means.
He’s always rescuing me.
He rescued me in this very pool once a long time ago. The night I fell in love with him.
He would die for me.
I would die for him, too.
Did he know that before? Does he know it now?
I wish I could say it. I wish I could look into his eyes just one more time. Feel his arms around me. Feel the safety of his embrace. That is the agony, that I cannot. That all I can do is watch from above, removed, my body lying still on those blood-stained stones, him trying to make me breathe. Him screaming for me to breathe. His tears falling on my face too late to warm me. Too late.
38
SILAS
It takes four sets of arms to drag me away from her. Four men to haul me off as medics work on her, trying to make her breathe, trying to make her stop bleeding.
Ethan laughs, the sound unhinged and wild.
I look at him. Two men hold his arms behind his back, handcuffs closing around his wrists, the gun on the lawn discarded too late. It’s done its damage.
My arm aches as if my mind just now remembers the bullet lodged inside it. The sound of chopper blades breaks into the night, whipping freezing air and wet snow around us. A stretcher appears out of nowhere and two men lift Ophelia and strap her to it. She still doesn’t move, and when they hurry toward the chopper, her arm slips off the side, helpless. The ring I gave her catches the light.
I need to go to her. I need to go now.
I tear myself away from the men holding me and sprint toward the chopper as they load her on. No one will stop me from going with her. They must see that because a few moments later, we’re airborne. I hold her hand as they put an oxygen mask over her face and someone pumps air into her lungs to make her breathe. I hold her small, freezing hand in mine to let her know I’m here. I’m with her. I’ll stay with her, and I’ll be here when she opens her eyes.
Because she will open her eyes. She has to open her eyes. She has to.