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He doesn’t answer.

The car drifts.

“Alester.”

His head tips forward. Not fully. Just enough that my whole body goes cold before my mind catches up. His hands slip on the wheel, and the car jerks right.

For half a second I freeze. Then everything in me moves at once.

“Alester!”

No response. His body slumps harder over the wheel, and the car veers sharply toward the curb. I lunge across the console, grabbing at the steering wheel with both hands, barely catching it before we clip a parked vehicle.

The horn screams as my forearm slams into it.

I wrench the wheel left, overcorrect, feel the tires skid, then fight it back again while my heart tries to break through my ribs. The car fishtails just enough to make me think we’re done. My foot scrambles down, finds the brake with the toe of my shoe from the passenger side, misses once, finds it again, and slams.

The world becomes noise. The engine is still fighting while the car bucks and jerks and finally shudders into a crooked stop half against the curb, hazard lights blinking on by accident or miracle.

For one second, I just sit there, bent over the center console, both hands white-knuckled on the wheel, waiting for the rest of the crash that doesn’t come.

Then I turn to him. “Alester.”

Nothing. His head is down, body folded wrong against the seat belt, skin already looking wrong in the dashboard light.

I shove at his shoulder. “Alester, wake up.”

Nothing.

I force myself to breathe.

Pulse. Check his pulse. My fingers find his neck and I nearly cry from the effort of making my hands stay steady.

There. Faint.

Too faint.

My own heart is pounding too hard in my ears.

I grab my phone with clumsy fingers and hit the name my body reaches for before my brain can object.

Dalton.

He picks up on the first ring. “Maggie?”

“Dalton,” I say, and my voice comes out thin and high and nothing like mine. “I think Alester is having a heart attack.”

Silence.

Then movement in his voice. “Where are you?”

“Parking exit road. We just left the hospital, he—he slumped over, I had to stop the car, he won’t wake up⁠—”

“I’m coming.”

The line goes dead.

I don’t remember hanging up.