I'm being dragged.
Hands under my arms, pulling me across asphalt. My head hanging. The sky above me doesn't make sense. Nothing makes sense.
I blink. Try to focus.
The car. Harper's car. It's on its roof. Crushed. The driver's side caved in so deeply that the door is gone. Glass everywhere, glittering under the headlights of the SUV parked twenty feet away.
The SUV that hit us. The one that crossed the center line. That wasn't an accident.
And Harper?—
She's still in the car. Upside down. Hanging from her seatbelt. Hair touching the crumpled roof. Arms dangling.
She's not moving.
"HARPER!"
The scream tears something in my throat.
"HARPER! WAKE UP!"
Nothing. She doesn't flinch. Her body hangs limp, and her face is covered in blood, running from a gash above her hairline, dripping off her forehead.
Then I smell it.
Smoke. A thin gray curl rising from the crumpled hood, drifting upward in the headlights.
My heart stops.
No. No, no, no, no.
"GET HER OUT! THE CAR IS SMOKING! GET HER THE FUCK OUT!"
I'm screaming at the men dragging me. At God. At anyone. The smoke is getting thicker. Darker. I can see it building under the hood, curling through the gaps in the crushed metal, and Harper is hanging three feet from it. Unconscious. My baby inside her.
"HARPER! WAKE UP! YOU GOTTA WAKE UP!" I scream it as loud as I possibly can.
I thrash in an attempt to get free. Every broken bone, every torn muscle, none of the pain registers. She's in that car, and it's smoking, and she's not moving, and that overrides everything else my body is trying to tell me.
I wrench my right arm free and drive my elbow into the guy on my left. He grunts, doesn’t go down but his grip loosens.
So I drop, hitting the asphalt on my hands and knees. Some glass bites into my palms, my left arm gives out, and I collapse onto my chest.
I crawl through my own blood, screaming the name of the only woman I’ve ever loved in the hope she wakes up before it’s too late.
Before I lose them both.
Every inch is agony. My ribs scream. My vision blurs, clears, blurs again. I can only see out of one eye, and I don't give a fuck. I have one job. Get to her. Get her out before that smoke turns to flame.
Five feet away. The smoke is pooling under the car now, rolling along the ground. And behind her, underneath the crumpled hood, something glows orange.
"No. Fuck. No."
I move faster. Dragging myself on one arm, my knees grinding through glass. Every second, the glow gets brighter. Every second, the smoke gets thicker.
The assholes that did this, I can hear laughing behind me, watching my broken body try to get to her.
They want her to burn. And they want me to see it.
