Reverie goes down hard.
The sound of her head hitting the floor is sickening. Hollow and wet and final. The kind of sound that makes your stomachdrop and your blood run cold. The kind of sound you hear in nightmares.
Her body crumples. The towel comes loose, falling away. She doesn't try to catch it. Doesn't move to cover herself. Just lies there in a spreading pool of bathwater, completely still.
Then everything goes silent.
No movement. No sound. Just the steady drip of water from the bathroom and the three of us frozen in her doorway.
She's not moving.
CHAPTER 15
Emergency Protocols
~GRAYSON~
Time slows down.
That's what they always say in books—in the romance novels I write under my pen name where the hero watches the heroine face danger and everything becomes hyperaware, crystalline, achingly slow. I've written this scene a dozen times. The moment of helplessness. The desperate lunge that comes too late. The sickening realization that you can't save them.
I never believed it was real.
Until now.
I watch Reverie slip backwards. Watch her feet lose contact with the wet hardwood floor. Watch her arms windmill in that universal gesture of someone trying to catch balance that's already gone. Watch the exact moment she realizes she's falling—eyes going wide, mouth opening in a scream that gets cut off when her head hits the floor.
The sound is hollow. Wet. Final.
Then she goes still. Completely still. The kind of still that makes your heart stop and your breath catch and every instinct you possess start screaming.
The three of us are frozen. Just standing there in her doorway like idiots. Like we've never seen someone get hurt before. Like we don't know what to do.
Three seconds. That's all it takes. Three seconds where my brain refuses to process what just happened. Three seconds where training and instinct are battling with shock and horror.
Then the paramedic training kicks in.
"Fuck!" I'm cursing and moving before I even realize I've made the decision. At her side faster than I could blink, my knees hitting the wet floor hard enough that I'll probably have bruises tomorrow. My hands are already reaching for her, checking for a pulse, for breathing, for signs of life.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please don't let this be serious. Please don't let me lose someone else.
Nash is the next to curse—a string of creative profanity that would make a sailor blush. He's rushing over, his boots splashing through the water pooling on her floor.
"Is she—" He can't finish the question. Can't say the word we're all thinking.
"Turn the bath water off," I order, my voice sharper than I mean it to be. Clinical. The voice I used to use in ambulances when every second counted. "Before this apartment gets more flooded."
Nash doesn't argue. Just nods and splashes toward what I assume is the bathroom.
I look up at Theo. He's still standing in the doorway. Hasn't moved. His face is a mask—completely blank, expressionless, the kind of nothing that's actually everything. The kind of face he gets when he's having a flashback. When his PTSD is being triggered by something he can't control.
Shit. Not good. That's not good in any way. Because when Theo goes into that headspace, he's not here anymore. He's back in whatever hell he experienced overseas, reliving trauma that he won't talk about even when we beg him to.
But I can't focus on whether Theo is spiraling right now. Can't stop to help him process whatever's happening in his head. I have to assign him something useful before he loses his shit completely and I lose mine trying to handle both situations at once.
I point at him, making my voice firm and commanding. The voice he responds to. The one that cuts through the fog.
"Theo. Follow the delivery guy. Figure out who sent the flowers. I need to know."
