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I can’t breathe. I tug at the collar of my shirt, crying hard as knives slide into me. I can’t breathe. Pain twists my organs, cutting off all life support. Searing my flesh, languidly, bit by bit.
He’s gone.
We just got married.
I just walked across an aisle. We just professed our love, and he said he knew—he knew that I was the one for a long, long time.
He’s gone.
I’ll never see him again. Never hear him curse. Never watch him run faster, farther than most men can go. Never see love lift his lips. Never spot the compassion in his soul. Never. Never. Never.
He’ll never hold his child.
Boy or girl.
Never see her up close.
Never watch her take her first step. Or hear her voice.
I unbuckle almost instantly, nausea roiling to the surface, and I stretch far over Connor’s lap. He cracks open the door, and I vomit on the street, my eyes squeezed shut. No, no. My throat scorches with acid and pain.
It’s too soon, isn’t it? We have decades yet to live. Eons left to go. Our adventure was just beginning.
I dry heave, losing energy to move my weighted limbs. Connor lifts me up and locks his door closed.
I tilt my head back, from side to side, searching for an escape to this despair that claws at me. Wrapping its vice around my throat.
The waterworks won’t stop, and I shut my eyes, a cry caught between my teeth. I press the heel of my palm to my forehead, my mind packaging all these moments with Ryke and shipping them away.
Please stay.
Don’t go.
Not yet. I want you here with me.
Please stay.
I can’t help but think that my theory proved right. For every happy moment, a terrible one swoops down to smite us. If we never came to Peru, never got married, he’d still be alive.
If he never met me, he’d still exist in this world.
Maybe the universe has been telling us something. We were both meant to be unhappy and alone. And we were just too lovesick to listen.
Connor has his phone to his ear. “This is Connor Cobalt, I need to know if a Ryke Meadows has arrived at the hospital yet…he’s my brother-in-law.” A short pause, and I hear a muffled, we’ve already had four Connor Cobalts call in. He shuts off the phone, seeing the dead-end before it arrives. They must be journalists, impersonating him for updates.
Connor’s eyes redden more. In a controlled voice, he tells us, “Ryke would want you both to keep your heads up.”
I bury my face in my hands again, wishing he’d lie and say Ryke made it home safely. It’s the only way this’ll be okay.
“Christ.” Lo’s face twists. “My brother…that guy—” He opens his mouth but swallows hard, unable to finish.
Ryke kept him sober.
A rock lodges in my throat. I can’t speak at all. Every time I try, a force strangles me, and an avalanche of tears cascades all over again. I touch my belly, sick. Sick and so dizzy.
Some say that you don’t know what a person means to you until they’re gone, but I’ve always been aware of the extraordinary impact Ryke Meadows has on people around him. And on me.
I fell in love with his heart.
Soulfully caring.
Selfless. Generous and kind.
He has his hands on my cheeks. He has his feet on the bridge next to mine. He meets me head on.
Calloway.
Stop pretending to be fine when all you really want to do is fucking scream?!
I scream, so hard that my lungs bleed and my voice punctures the air. Throttling me. I scream until it bursts into a cry, until my body is weightless and free.
I scream. Until I can’t breathe.
Air struggles to return to my lungs. “I…” I choke out.
“Daisy.” Connor rubs my back. “You need to breathe.”
Lo drops his leg and turns to me, tear tracks across his cheeks. When I meet his eyes, sharing his grief, he nods at me like, I know.
Do you know? I wonder.
Can you feel the animal gnawing through me?
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. Worry assaults Lo’s features, and he puts a hand on my back, next to Connor’s.
“Daisy,” he forces.
Wet. Something’s wet on my legs.
“Drive faster!” Connor starts to shout, his voice unnaturally loud.
Lo touches my forehead, almost tenderly, and then yells, “Fucking drive!”
My head lolls, my eyes rolling, and before everything turns black, I look down.
And see the gush of bright red blood between my legs.
RYKE MEADOWS
When my heavy, weighted eyelids try to fucking open, fluorescent light blisters them, and they close for a moment, my head thumping. I try to escape the darkness again, forcing my eyes to remain wide.
Through the harsh, accosting light, I see color.
So much bright, wild color.
Paper flowers and birds hang all above me.
Green and yellow.
Orange and pink. Blue and purple. Strung from the ceiling tiles. Twirling beneath the air vents.
Dozens of them.
Daisy. My chest swells.
I lick my lips and try to prop myself on the hospital bed, shoving my memories far down. For a second. Just a second. My limbs are murderously fucking sore, and an IV pumps meds into my body, numbing the pain that creeps up my right leg, hidden beneath a white blanket.
“Ryke?”
That voice.
I don’t have to look far. Daisy sits on the edge of a chair, by the end of my bed. Dark sleepless circles create crescent moons beneath her fucking eyes. Handfuls of half-creased flowers and birds are strewn around her, but it’s not what pumps adrenaline into me.
“Daisy?” I say, worry catching my fucking voice. I’m about to shrug off the fucking blanket and reach her side, to move closer to her. Daisy, what the fuck—
“Wait, stop—Ryke, don’t move!” she shouts, standing almost instantly, her hospital gown more noticeable. She accidentally yanks her own IV, forgetting it’s attached to her, and then she grasps the pole and rolls it with her until she’s right next to me.
“Daisy.” I sit up, using the strength in my core and I clutch her hip. I can’t stop staring at her fucking hospital gown. Her IV…
What happened? I’m afraid to fucking ask out loud.
She tries to find the remote to my bed, so I can lean against the mattress, but I don’t fucking care about that. I try to shift my legs.
“No, Ryke,” she says, swatting my hands away. “Please, stop.” Her tears come and she wipes them away quickly. “I’m sorry…”
I pinch my eyes. She’s about eleven weeks pregnant, but that could’ve changed at any fucking moment.
We lost the baby.
My face is wet with tears, and I rub them away roughly, swallowing back a fucking sob. I exhale the deepest breath of my life, shaking my head, struggling.
I stare up at her with reddened eyes, my hand falling to my mouth.
“I’m okay,” she tells me repeatedly, the bed screeching as the back mechanically rises with the remote. “You just got out of surgery—”
“I know,” I say, not wanting to lean the fuck back, not wanting to let go of her. I didn’t think I’d be able to touch her again. Now she’s right here. In front of me.
I hold onto this, beyond everything else that’s fucking gone.
It keeps my head up.
I watch confusion grip her green eyes, and I think—God, she looks so young and so tired. What’d I do to her? In the matter of a day or two.
“Ryke?”
“I was fucking awake when they brought me into surgery,” I explain and then I scoot over, my hand still on her waist, gently pulling her to me.
She curls next to me, her cheek resting against my pillow. She stares into my eyes while I look into hers, soundlessly searching one another.
