She’d folded her arms and glared at him. ‘You know if you keep setting fire to everything you touch, you’re going to get burned.’
He’d smirked. ‘I can handle the heat.’ He’d swaggered off the wall he was leaning on. ‘Can you, princess?’
He’d shown her the darkness, and she’d pointed out the stars. Together they followed the illumination, as if fate itself was guiding them.
Thunder cracking yanked her back to the present. They must have crashed. Nothing else could explain the pain. Nothing else could . . .
She stopped.
The memory began to flood back like water rushing through a pipe. Slowly it pooled around her ankles.
The argument with Jefferson. It filled to her hips.
Leaving the party. Up to her neck.
Then the floodgates opened, and water crashed into her head. The man, the needle. Katrina gasped.
“Robert, Robert!” she cried.
Robert groaned and lifted his head. “Katrina.”
Tears of relief burned down her face. “I’m here, I’m here, honey.”
Sucking in a sharp breath, Robert turned his head to her. She couldn’t make out his face, but she didn’t need to; she could picture it in her mind. The long crook of his nose that he hated, but she loved. Lips that kissed her with tenderness every morning and every night and sometimes in between. Warm-brown eyes that shone when he laughed like the sun itself lived inside him.
They were safe. Injured but safe. The man had let them go.
The wind buffeted against the car, and it rocked violently. She reached up and touched the back of her aching head. Sticky, warm blood smeared her fingers.
“Katrina,” Robert murmured, his voice grave.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she reassured him.
Katrina blinked a few times, ignoring the pain, and she looked around to see where they were. Robert was in no state to move yet, but if she could get out, she could find help. It was too dark, and she couldn’t see anything beyond the windowpanes.
Then the lightning flashed through the sky and lit up the surrounds. What she saw dropped her heart through the floor and sprung tears of terror into her eyes. The outline of the tops of trees sat a long way beneath them. They were perched at the top of a steep drop. Terrified, she looked across at Robert, the man she’d met in college and married a few years later. The love of her life, the father of their child. Her rock, and her soulmate.
The car teetered precariously.
She pressed back against the seat and cried out.
Robert grabbed Katrina’s hand and whispered, “I love you, princess,” for the last time as the car plunged over the edge of the cliff.
Chapter 28
Hospital
Light stabbed from beyond my eyelids. In the distance someone was calling my name.
“Amelia, Amelia? Open your eyes, Amelia. Can you open your eyes for me, sweetheart?”
I was too tired. I wanted to sleep. I wished the voice would go away. My chest felt like something heavy pressed down on it, and it hurt to breathe. My throat was sore and my leg throbbed painfully.
“We’ve lost her,” I heard another say, a heaviness to her tone.
I wanted to ask who, but I felt the sharp sting of a needle in my arm, then nothing.
My eyes peeled sluggishly open into the shadowy dark. I was half sitting, and a sheet covered my body. Light leaked from under the bottom of the door. Something hard pressed against my face.
