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“And by taking more of that awful drug, you took away all my choices. Don’t I get a say in this?”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, you don’t.”
I grabbed his arm, hating the ice chilling him already. “That’s why you want me to forgive you? You think I can forgive you for killing yourself for me? I love you, you son of a bitch, and you’ve just taken everything we had and burned it to the ground. How am I supposed to survive without you—”
“At least I know you’re safe—”A grunt of pain shut him up. Internal pain I couldn’t see or stop.
Tears splashed down my cheeks. My chest cracked open. “Safe? I’m the opposite of safe. I’m heartbroken.”
“Don’t. Please, don’t—” His eyes flared as if internal twinges grew worse.
“We have to get you help. Get you to a doctor.” I flew off the bed, racing with my blanket dragging behind me. Hurry, hurry. “If we hurry, we can—”
“Eleanor.” His hand clutched his chest over his heart. “Ah, fuck.”
“No!” I bolted back to him. I dug my nails into his shoulders. “Sully, don’t you dare. Don’t you even fucking dare—”
His eyes met mine again, wild and full of regrets. “Jinx…I—”
He tipped forward, crashing off the bed.
Chapter Twelve
SO THIS IS WHAT it feels like to die.
Not at the hands of someone else.
Not through torture or torment, elixir or old age.
This was how it felt when your very body shut up shop and shooed you out the fucking door.
Christ!
I lay on the floor, vaguely aware that my broken leg had crunched in my fall. Who the hell knew if I’d broken another bone or at what angle it rested. I’d lost all sensation in my extremities.
“SULLY!” The floor shuddered beside me as Eleanor crashed to her knees and clutched me close. Her touch was ruthless and unforgiving, rolling me from my crumpled pile and lying me flat on my back.
I blinked, doing my best to focus on her.
I thought I’d have more warning.
I stupidly believed a clock would start, counting down my remaining heartbeats, giving me a heads-up to kill Drake, kiss Eleanor, and somehow make peace with my passing.
But no…the wall that I’d been running headfirst toward had appeared, smashed me to pieces, and left me for dead.
“Goddammit, Sully, don’t you dare do this to me!” Eleanor shook me. “Breathe.”
I couldn’t feel her.
I couldn’t feel her heat or her worry.
All I felt was the strangeness of having to fight with everything I had for another breath. A breath that refused to come because my heart no longer operated.
“Someone! HELP!” she screamed. “Anybody!”
It sounded as if she existed down a long black tunnel. A tunnel I could no longer travel through.
I choked.
My heart turned into a fiery pyre.
“Sully, God. Please!”
My back bowed in her hold, muscles overriding my nervous system in their quest to function.
I’d watched people die before.
I was even the reason for a few of those endings.
I’d read studies on death and was an expert on all manner of demises—thanks to my position in pharmaceuticals. However, this was new.
No one mentioned in the medical journals how a life was systemically snuffed out.
Two things happened.
One, your body went into preservation mode, shutting off sensitivity to all areas apart from the one thing killing you. It was like a suction. A numbing, erasing suction that forced all my attention to lock onto the scrambled thud of a breaking heart.
Two, your soul—if that was what we housed inside our mortal shells—detached. It no longer took ownership of a body it’d been birthed into but hovered free, unwilling to be associated with a rapidly failing machine.
“Sully. Fuck, don’t do this. Please, please don’t do this! Fight it! Stay with me.” She hugged my head on her knees and rocked over me. I couldn’t console her. I couldn’t apologise or tell her how much I fucking loved her.
I couldn’t feel the fierceness of her hands or the wetness of her tears.
All I could feel was the fading.
The pain and the coldness.
The inevitability of goodbye.
“HELP! For God’s sake, help!”
Her screams were muted now. My ears failing.
Her manic strength was feeble now. My body no longer reacting.
Her attempts to keep me with her useless now as my heart chased its last beat.
My hectic, harrowed pulse grew quieter, slower…gone.
“No!” Shoving my head off her lap, she bent over me and pressed her mouth to mine.
Breath poured into my lungs.
Bracing over me, she pumped my chest with two fists, performing CPR on a body that had already died.
She screamed words again, but I no longer comprehended such a tongue.
Her mouth on mine. Her fingers pinching my nose. Her breath filling my chest.
Her pummels on my heart grew fiercer, driving my spine into the floor.
Eleanor…stop.
She screamed and yelled and shouted incomprehensible things.
I loved her.
Please don’t be sad. It’s better this way.
