AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He runs out past me, booking it like his life depends on it. That's fine; let him go. Hell will catch up to him if I have anything to say about it.
"Marcus… Dante… MARCUS! DANTE! CAR! NOW!"
I storm out of the house with Olivia in my arms. Marcus and Dante have the other guard on the ground, unconscious. They must have heard the gunshots, but they sure as hell weren't prepared for the sight of me holding Olivia like I am.
None of this was part of the plan.
"Ree—"
"HOSPITAL. NOW."
The thing about best friends? You don't have to tell them twice when shit gets real.
And this right here is as real as it gets.
62
OLIVIA
I smell acid. Sterile, pungent. A fiery, throbbing ache pounds in every inch of my body. The only thoughts I can come up with are questions without answers.
Where am I?
Why do I feel so groggy?
Why does everything hurt?
I slip in and out of this semi-conscious, mostly delirious state. My mouth feels stuffed with cotton. A persistent beep… beep… beep… like a continuous siren keeps me from fully slipping under the black waters.
The questions start to sharpen up, at least a little bit. They get names. Faces.
Where is Reese?
What happened to Emily?
Her eyes swirl beneath my closed lids. Those eyes. Huge. Brown. Afraid. She was… is…
Holly’s sister.
That’s a turning point. More stuff starts to take shape in the fog of my brain. Holly’s face. That cruel twist of her mouth. The arch of her neck and her shoulder and her arm, leading all the way down to those slim, pale fingers, like a skeleton’s fingers, wrapped around the butt of that gun.
Her anger burns like the acid I still smell. Her mouth opens, moving like she's saying something but all I hear coming out of her crooked mouth is?—
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Over and over, the sharp staccato of gunfire rings. With every shot, my heart speeds up. Faster and faster and then, oh God, it hurts so bad, there’s a burning in my belly, one hot point that gets hotter and hotter and the gunfire goes faster and faster and it takes me a long time to connect the two but when I finally do, they crystallize into two words that hurt worse than anything else I’ve thought yet?—
My baby!
My eyes fly open. My mind is awake now, but my body is so slow and sluggish. I think about caressing my stomach faster than my hands can weakly go there. Desperate, my fingers move down, down, wanting to find the comfort of the bump that’s supposed to be there, but?—
There's nothing.
Nothing but a sharp pain when I swipe too hard at the wrapping of bandages around my midsection. I let out a whimper as the final reality of what happened at that house dawns on me.
"Olivia, dear?"
It's the first time I realize that I'm not alone.
