I barely registered the distant beating of a drum coming up over the horizon, a humming sound that just narrowly cut through my clogged ears.
“I’m so sorry,” was all he replied with. “I should’ve been here. You wouldn’t have...”
I hated how hopeless he sounded. Distress and anguish were two things I never wanted to associate him with and up until now, I never had to.
What was he even talking about?
In no world could either of us have predicted a damn snake appearing out of nowhere from between a rock formation and deciding I was its next meal. Being here would’ve prevented nothing, and if I was being honest, it may have resulted in him going over the damn edge with me.
Twenty feet from us, something flared to light and quickly shot up into the air. When it popped, the entire sky exploded in a red, smokey haze, lingering long enough for me to turn to get a good look at the man sitting next to me.
He was looking up at the sky, his tear-stained face bathed in a morbidly red glow.
“Blake...”Come here.
I wanted to kiss those tears away. They weren’t right.
His gaze shot down to me, lips parting for a moment. The call from a nearby radio was a loud and shrill noise that cut through the quiet of the night. Three trills chimed off on it before being prematurely cut off from Talos speaking into it.
“Flare’s up,” he said. “ETA?”
“Two minutes out,”was the static-y reply.
“They’re going to transport you back to Ellington Heights,” Blake told me, brushing his hand along my cheek once more. Time was moving too quickly now and I was severely running out of seconds to grasp at. To stay here longer with him. “They’ll take good care of you. You’re going to be okay.”
“You’re coming with me.”
He forced a smile, his eyes brimming with unshed tears again. What a horrible expression on such a lovely face. “You’re going to be okay, Marlow.”
He can’t leave me. He can’t go back to his life and forget all about me.
The drums on the horizon were drawing closer—the unmistakable countdown to my life changing once more for what I would argue was the worst.
After this, I was never going to see him again. Banned from the property would be an understatement, along with whatever else I’d be forced to deal with once I was cleared from Wakefield’s air space and out of the Austin family’s hair.
And if not from Blake, there would definitely be imposed sanction from Silas and Avery.
I couldn’t let that happen. Not when there was still so much of him I needed to know.
“Blake.”
“Shhh.” A single tear fell down his cheek.
My anxiety choked me, crushing my voice into something small and childlike. “Come with me.”
Another flare shot off right as the trees around us hummed with a heavy force of wind whipping and beating against the thin branches. Dust kicked up from the ground, along with whatever fallen brush was littering the well-covered area.
Blake leaned over me to shield me from debris, his eyes forced closed while he curled his hands around the side of my face protectively.
“They’re sending down a stretcher!” Talos yelled over the noise.
I fought the blanket’s captivity, every single part of me screaming.
If this was the last moment I was ever going to get with Blake, I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to touch him one more time. To hold his hand like I wanted to before I was strapped to a damn gurney and catapulted through the air to where Silas was no doubt waiting in the ER for me at Ellington Medical.
My entire arm shook as I forced it up and out from under the blanket, the strain agitating whatever was wrong with my shoulder as I moved it. Even under the flare’s lighting, I could tell how swollen and heavily bruised it was—maybe it was even broken from trying to slow my fall.
None of that mattered the moment I grasped my disfigured hand around Blake’s wrist and held on tight. His eyes shot open the next second, surprise reflecting in them while he locked onto me.
