Page 67 of Property of Scar

I reach for her throat, fingers pressing in to find it, to feel it…

A pulse.

It’s faint.

But thank God, it’s there.

Relief hits sharper than anything else has tonight, but it doesn’t slow me down. The bruising is already forming under her skin, the way her breathing catches instead of flows.

“Come on,” I mutter, my hand sliding to her jaw, tilting her head back. “Breathe.”

Nothing.

Her chest stutters. Stops. Starts again, too shallow to matter.

“Cali!”

Still nothing.

I don’t think. I need her to wake the fuck up. So, I do the only thing I know will get a rise out of her.

I slap her.

The crack of it echoes sharper than the door breaking earlier, my hand striking across her cheek with enough force to snap her head to the side.

For a split second, nothing happens, but then… she jerks. Air tears back into her lungs in a violent, choking gasp, her body arching as she drags in breaths. Her hands come up on instinct, grabbing at me, at the ground, at anything solid as she fights her way back into it.

I stay there, one hand still braced at her jaw, watching, tracking every breath as it steadies, deepens, and becomes something that will keep her alive. Relief settles in my chest, heavy and unfamiliar.

Her eyes snap open, locking onto mine, still sharp despite everything, still very much her. She pulls in a breath, then another, forcing control back into her body. “Took you long enough,” she mutters. “I was starting to think you missed me.”

For a second, I look at her.

Really look.

At the way her breathing is still catching at the edges, the bruising already darkening under her skin, the fact that she’s here, conscious and above all alive.

My hand tightens slightly against her shoulder. “I did,” I say, but the words come out quietly.

The words are out before I even decide to say them.

Not sharpened into something safer or buried under something drier.

Just… there.

Her expression shifts.

Not dramatically or enough for anyone else to catch.

But I see it.

Because for once, I didn’t give her something to deflect.

Then I hear a click, a small, sharp, deliberate sound, a sound I know from every nightmare that has ever been worth having, and the world lurches back into real time.

“Run,” Cali chimes.

I look at her. She already has something in her hand. Small, black, an antenna snapped upright. Her thumb presses the switch down with a clean, deliberate motion that doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t second-guess.