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Two hands at my torso do something that hurts like they’re snapping more ribs. I’d be embarrassed of the gasp that comes out of me if I wasn’t about to pass out. “Elise. Where?”
“She’s coming.” Jameson checks his phone. “Charlotte just texted me. She and Mason are at the building.”
“He.Hadher.”
“Who?”
“Bett—” Even with oxygen, coughing like this is the end of the world. “Bettencourt. Had her.”
Jameson leans closer. “No. She’s with Lydia. With her driver.”
I don’t care about the building, but the fact that so many hands are on me is going to make me sick in this mask. I can’t tell if they’re actually touching or if all the points of pressure are distorted by the fall. My lungs still feel torched. The mask hasn’t put them out yet.
“How is it?”
“On fire.” Jameson cracks another smile. “Fire department’s there. Charlotte says there’s no evidence that anyone else was inside.”
“Small. Fucking. Favors.”
The ambulance doesn’t feel like a favor. It feels like hell. It could just be me, though. Wherever I go, I’m in hell. That’s been the case for a long time.
Jameson’s smile fades. “Yeah. Bettencourt’s a saint. Murdering you and only you.”
I shake my head, and Jameson blurs completely. My skull gets more cracks in it. I hope to God I’m imagining that. “Not just me. Mom. Dad.”
He blinks, and another set of tears streaks down his cheeks. Behind them, Jameson’s expression is stone cold. The tears are the only sign of his grief. He looks like Mason, and that scares the hell out of me. Jameson charms and bullshits and rages, but he doesn’t look like this.
“That’s it.” He squeezes my hand. “I’ve had enough with being regular law-abiding citizens. It’s time. We just fucking kill this guy.”
A cold blood-pressure cuff wraps around my bicep. I want it off. My skin crawls when it digs in, getting tighter. It reminds me of the hand on the back of my neck. A spot on my cheek throbs. I didn’t hit the sidewalk with my face, so it must be a memory. I focus on Jameson instead. His hair’s wild around his face.
“I can’t find any breaks,” one of the paramedics calls. “Ribs will be a different story.”
“That’s impossible,” another one answers. “He fell two stories.”
“I’m telling you, I’m not finding any obvious broken bones.”
I force a laugh that I pay for with another sharp pain in my chest. “When were you—” Ouch. “—law-abiding?”
Jameson snorts, readjusting so he can hold my hand with both of his. The ambulance goes over a massive bump in the road. My vision blacks out completely. My hearing must go with it, because when it comes back, Jameson’s talking.
“—looks like he’s going to die. The man fell out of a building. What can you give him for the pain? I get it, but—how long, then?”
The ambulance stops. I feel that head to toe. Did I actually break all the bones in my body, or does gravity just hurt like a motherfucker?
Jameson stands up, and the ambulance doors open with abangthat hurts even more.
Then people are shouting over him, and over one another, and they haul the stretcher out of the ambulance and into a room that’s brighter than the goddamn sun.
The first breath of antiseptic air throws me out of a two-story window and into the night our parents died. Flashing lights in the front yard of our house. That emergency department’s tiny family waiting room. Jameson’s silent sobs. Remy’s loud ones. Mason’s terrified eyes, begging me for our parents’ room number.
Jameson squeezes my handhard,and that’s what pulls me back to the present.
A room. Blue curtains. More people. The pain in my head is excruciating. Worse than hitting the ground. A nurse is in and out of view. She’s cutting my shirt off, I think.
I want Elise.
Whereisshe?
