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“He’s secured; he’s en route to the hospital.”

“Is he speaking?” Conrad asked.

“He’s screaming. They can’t get him to stop.”

Oh God.

“Brendan Arnold is dead. Once the cabin was breached, he was shot twice before he could shoot Landry.”

Like I cared about some faceless guy I had never met.

“Landry’s lost some blood, but he’s conscious, and that’s amazing.”

But he was screaming.

“We need to get you”—he turned to me—“on a helicopter now.”

“Why?” Chris asked him.

“Because Landry is screaming Trevan’s name.”

Chapter 10

HE WASN’T conscious when I got to the hospital. He still wasn’t conscious when everyone else made it. Five hours after that, he was still out. The doctor said we just had to wait.

Landry had sustained a blow to the head that had caused a minor concussion. He was also banged up and bruised and suffering from mild hypothermia and dehydration. His physical injuries, all in all, were not bad; they would heal. What had gone on in the cabin, the psychological trauma, was harder to gauge.

“He’s going to hate me,” I told Conrad. “He’s going to think I should have fought him and made him go home with me. He’ll never forgive me.”

Conrad looked at me like I was insane. “There’s no way.”

But he didn’t know Landry.

The nurse told me that he had been yelling and screaming at me, not for me. He had been enraged that I was not the one to find him. It confirmed my very worst fears. My life, on the cusp of beginning, had just ended, because the man I loved hated me.

As I stood outside his room, I let my head hit the wall hard.

“Don’t to that,” Conrad growled at me, his hand sliding around the nape of my neck so he could look into my face. “You don’t know shit about anything yet. Now if you go in there once he wakes up and he’s pissed at you and he hates you, then we’ll know that he actually is all kinds of crazy and there’s nothing, really, for you to hold onto anyway.”

My eyes flicked to his face.

“I like Landry, I do, but he is volatile, and sometimes I worry. But you’re not going to listen to me about what I think he needs and—”

“There’s nothing wrong with him.”

“Maybe not, but when he’s with you, it doesn’t matter. When you two are together, he’s different. Now, if he’s given up on that, if his anger is misdirected, you have to get used to him being gone. I will not allow you to go crazy trying to win him back. There are people beyond Landry Carter who are counting on you and who need you. And maybe right now you think he’s the only one that matters, but bigger picture, he’s not.”

I took a shuddering breath.

“When Landry wakes up, you’ll see what he says and we’ll go from there. Do not stand out in this hall and try and figure out your whole life when you don’t even know what the fuck is going on with it yet.”

It was good advice.

At the eight-hour mark, after Conrad made me eat a granola bar and Jocelyn watched me drink water, after Scott showed up at the hospital and said that his father had broken down sobbing, and after Chris went out and got us all burgers, finally, Landry woke up.

I heard him scream from the hall where I had gone to stretch my legs. Staring at his face, seeing the marks, the bruises, the yellow that his eye would turn as it healed, had made my stomach roll, and I had needed to move.

I bolted back into the room and stood still at the doorway, terrified and hopeful all at the same time.