Page 130 of A Sinful Gravity

For six years, I'd wrapped myself in hatred, telling myself he was a selfish monster. But in that instant, without any hesitation, he'd traded his life for mine.

In this treacherous world, if that wasn't love, what was real?

People around me were shouting something. But I heard nothing except my own crying mixed with the rain, like some wounded animal howling.

Just then, someone rushed over from behind and pushed me aside. Several men in black suits surrounded Cassian. One checked his pulse while another called for an ambulance—his bodyguards.

"Ma'am, please step back!" A bodyguard pulled me backward. "The ambulance is coming!"

I struggled, trying to get back, but he held me firmly.

"Ma'am! Please calm down!"

I couldn't calm down. He lay on the ground in a pool of blood, his face white as death. He'd just been talking to me. How could he die? He couldn't die. He couldn't die!

A scream came from behind. Not mine. Someone else's.

I turned stiffly and saw several bodyguards dragging someone from the driver's seat of that black SUV.

A disheveled woman in a dirty white dress, only one shoe remaining. She struggled, her voice sharp as a knife. When I saw that figure, I felt all the blood in my body freeze completely.

"Let me go! Let me go! I'll kill her! I'll kill that bitch!"

Sloane Reed.

My mind exploded. It was her. She drove into me. She wanted me dead.

The bodyguards pinned her to the ground. She kept struggling, hair covering her face, blood sliding down from her temple. Her eyes were bloodshot, like she'd gone mad.

"Why you! Why you!" she screamed at me. "I waited for him for six years! He wouldn't even look at me! He blacklisted me! Made it impossible for me to survive in the industry! All because of you! Why won't you die!"

She pointed at me with vicious curses, her nails scratching bloody marks on the bodyguard's arm. "I lived like a dog for six years! And you come back, do nothing, and get his love again! It's not fair! Go to hell!"

Ambulance sirens wailed, growing closer.

Sloane was held down by bodyguards, then taken away by arriving police. Her curses faded into the wind, but I couldn't hear a single word.

My world contained only Cassian's faint, fragile breathing that could stop at any moment.

Paramedics rushed over, lifting Cassian onto a stretcher. I chased after the ambulance like a madwoman. The doctor tried to stop me, but seeing my blood-soaked, nearly shattered state, finally let me through.

In the cramped ambulance space, thin mist formed on the oxygen mask.

I gripped Cassian's cold hand tightly, my fingertips tracing the calluses on his palm.

I pressed it to my cheek, praying with every ounce of strength in my heart.

Please, God. As long as he lives.

As long as he lives, I'll give anything.

I just need him to open his eyes and say my name one more time.

I watched the heart monitor's green line jump weakly, sporadically, feeling my own heart teetering on the edge of a cliff.

"Cassian, don't leave us." I leaned close to his ear, hot tears soaking his collar. "You said you'd go to every concert with Laila... You liar, you haven't done it yet. You can't go."

The sun sank completely below the horizon. Night fell. And that glaring red light above the operating room became the only color left in my vision.