He’d missed.
Holy fuck—!
Thank God for mechanical inaccuracies!
I leaped toward the door, slamming hard into it before realizing Pete had thrown the dead bolt upon first entering. My hands were shaking as I grabbed the lock, turned it, and fell through the doorway.
Theflip-flop,flip-flop,flip-flopof Pete charged after me.
I bumped into an attendee as I ran onto the showroom floor, stumbled forward, and as I tried to right myself and ended up falling sideways, a second crack fired.
It echoed through the event hall.
People cried out in fear and confusion.
I spun and crashed to the hard floor. A searing, white-hot pain like nothing I’d ever experienced in my entire life blossomed from my right side. A wet warmth pooled underneath me.
Everything was out of focus.
It was too loud.
But… the madness eventually settled.
And sound grew distorted, as if the world were encased in a fishbowl.
I felt adrift in a cloud of gray.
Somewhere far away.
And no one I loved was with me.
“Sebastian!”
Calvin….
Chapter Sixteen
I WASN’Tcertain if it was a dream.
Or if I was awake.
There was an out-of-body feel to it all, really. A sense of not quite belonging.
Like… this trauma wasn’t mine. This deep, soul-reaching ache dulled by a nauseating cocktail of chemicals wasn’t mine.
Thisdyingwasn’t mine.
Although—if not mine, then whose?
The beep of a tired heart lit up the darkness. A beacon just past the horizon promising safe passage in uncharted territory.
I let the sluggish but constant sound lull me back to nothing for just a bit longer.
I WASaware of my own consciousness for a while. I’m not sure how long. I just sort of… realized I was awake. With that sense of self came pain that nearly overwhelmed me—nearly sent me into a tailspin. I was ready to cry. Ready to scream for someone,anyone, to help me.
But it occurred to me, in a very drug-induced state of mind, that this pain was my anchor to the present. I couldn’t be dead if everything hurt.
Right?
