AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Heather assesses the scene before us before slamming her foot to the floor again and aiming for the barricade.
“What are you doing?!” I shriek, my hand flying to the dashboard to hold myself steady with the sudden increase in pace. She’s officially lost the plot.
She ignores me, focused on the barricade and sending us plummeting toward the vehicles before us. The metal barricade looms closer, and I panic. It can’t end like this. Not when I’ve just found my purpose. My reason for existing. I see Parker’s face in my mind, his sweet smile, his soft eyes.
Knowing this will only end one way, I rush to unbuckle my seat belt and start to climb into the back to try and shield Easton from the impact.
I hear Heather curse before I feel the pain. Everything seems to stop; time is suspended, keeping us in a strange limbo.
The gunshot seems like it happens after the fact. Falling back into my seat, I touch my side and feel the liquid flooding out of the wound. Easton’s scream hits me a thousand times harder than Heather’s bullet, but I’m frozen in place, my body feeling like it’s weighed down by rocks.
The next few seconds happen in slow motion. Heather swerves to avoid the barricade, but she’s too late, and we hit it at an angle with a heavy impact. It feels like the world is caving in, stealing my breath from me. Heather is hurtled forward, the windscreen shattering as she flies through it with a bloodcurdling scream.
My ears are ringing, and people move around me in slow motion, their muffled voices sounding like I’m underwater. I listen for Easton but hear nothing. That’s when fear truly hits me, the numbness dissipating at the pain of possibly having lost my precious little boy.
I try to turn to see him, try to call out to him, but my tongue is stuck to my mouth, and haziness surrounds my vision.
Then everything stops.
24
PARKER
The officer looks down at the ground as he takes his hat off and clutches it in both hands. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You’re sorry?” A manic laugh bursts from me. I’m certain that I look as crazed as I sound.
“The paramedics tried everything they could at the scene, but the injuries sustained were just too extensive and—”
“Stop,” I interrupt him. I’ve heard enough, and I can’t bear to listen to another word that he has to say.
“Parker…” Seb pats my shoulder as I try to make sense of everything. From what I’m feeling to how I think I should feel and to all the memories of the night Jenson died that keep flashing to the forefront of my mind.
“That…that woman…she took my son and…and she hurt the people I love. So if you think that I want to know how she died or what her last minutes on this earth looked like, I do not. I don’t care.” Walking away from the desk where I was signing the hospital paperwork for Easton, I head toward the corridor where the ENTs rushed him and Summer.
Torn, I stand between the two doorways of the emergency triage rooms. The noise is deafening. Machines ticking, beeping, clacking, and whooshing as doctors and nurses run between the two rooms, shouting things I don’t understand.
It’s chaos. A war zone that I am not prepared for.
“Go to East,” Seb tells me as he stops one of the nurses to ask about Summer.
“I’ll find out what I can for you,” she answers before disappearing into the curtaining crowd of people in the room to my right.
“You heard her. She’ll let us know what’s happening with Summer. Go check on East.”
Nodding, I back away from Summer’s room toward East’s. My pounding heart crumples with every step I take away from her. I need to see her. If I could just be sure she’s going to be okay…
“I’m sorry, sir!” the nurse yells at me as I spin toward the doorway of the room Easton is in.
It’s nowhere near as crowded as Summer’s, and I’m caught somewhere between relief, guilt, and terror. I can’t lose either of them. They’re my life. My whole fucking universe.
Standing in front of me, the nurse blocks my way so that I can’t enter Easton’s triage room. “You need to wait out here.”
“You need to get out of my way!” Moving her to the side, I step inside the room before anyone can stop me.
Instantly, I freeze.
That’s my son. I’m not sure whether I say it aloud or to myself. That’s my baby boy.
