Page 76 of Catcher

“Love you too,” I whisper back.

I slide my phone back into my pocket, adjust the strap of my lunch bag, and head for the exit.

The front office is dark when I pass it, and somewhere down the hall, a custodian’s cart squeaks. By the time I push through the double doors and step outside into the late-afternoon heat, the pick-up loop is empty, but a handful of faculty cars remain.

My eyes go automatically toward the front entrance, expecting to see Catcher waiting nearby with my car. At first, all I catch is a crooked angle of metal and a dark SUV sitting where it shouldn’t be.

I take two more steps, and my stomach drops. My car sits crooked near the front, driver’s side crushed, glass shimmering like ice across the pavement. A black SUV is rammed nose-first into it. For a stunned heartbeat, I can’t make sense of the wreck, and my lunch bag slips from my hand.

“Catcher!” I shout, already running, my voice ragged and sharp.

I don’t make it more than a few strides before a body slams into me from behind. The impact steals the air from my lungs. I go down hard, the world tilting into sky and asphalt and then pain as my hip hits first and my palms scrape against the pavement.

My purse scatters across the blacktop as I scramble for balance, desperate to shield my stomach—the baby.

“Catcher!” I scream this time, the name ripping out of me.

Someone grabs a fistful of my hair, making my scalp burn as I’m yanked backward, and stars burst behind my eyes. I claw at the hand, my nails catching skin, but whoever it is doesn’t let go. I’m dragged across the rough blacktop, my skin screaming where it scrapes, my vision blurring.

In panic, my thoughts stutter.

This isn’t happening.

This can’t⁠—

Then my head is forced down. My face hits the pavement with a sickening crack on impact. Light explodes behind my eyes—white, then red, then nothing at all. The sounds around me start to fade. I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. My body suddenly feels heavy, and my cheek is pressed against the hot asphalt.

The last thing that flickers through my mind is thoughts of Catcher and our baby.

19

CATCHER

Sound comes back before sight, not clean or all at once.

It comes in broken pieces, sirens muffled through metal walls, voices overlapping, the hard rattle of wheels over uneven pavement, something plastic crinkling near my ear, and a sharp beeping sound that digs straight into the center of my skull and every breath tastes like blood.

My body jerks before my brain catches up. A hand presses down on my shoulder, and I swing, or try to. My arm doesn’t move right. Pain explodes through my ribs, hot and blinding, and the world tilts under me.

“Shit. Catcher, calm the fuck down.”

That voice cuts through the fog.

Riggs.

My eyes crack open, but everything is blurred at the edges, and light stabs into my skull. Faces blur above me. An EMT leans over my chest, one hand braced against me while the other reaches for something near my arm. The fluorescent glare makes my stomach pitch.

Instinct comes first—fight… get up… find the threat—and I shove against the strap across my chest, muscles firing wrong, pain tearing through my side as I try to sit up.

“Hold him,” someone snaps.

“Don’t,” Riggs growls, sharp enough that even semiconscious, I hear the command in it. “You put your hands on him wrong, he’ll break yours without knowing he’s doing it.”

“Then tell him to stop moving,” the paramedic barks.

Riggs leans into my line of sight, face hard, eyes locked on mine. “Catcher,” he says, voice lower now, controlled. “Let them do their damn jobs.”

My breath saws in and out as the ambulance hits a bump, and pain slams through my head so hard my stomach rolls. Then everything comes back to me—Ruby’s car, the SUV, glass, boots, blood, a man saying ‘we fucked with the wrong people,’ the shot. My memory doesn’t come back clean. It comes back jagged, all sharp edges and missing pieces, enough to cut me open without giving me anything useful to hold on to.