I step forward, my voice cracking. “Where’s Kai?”
Christian hesitates.
Sterling is about to say something, most likely about to tell me what happened. But I don’t listen.
Because I already know.
The hesitation was enough. That one, microscopic moment where he doesn’t answer right away. That’s when my heart drops.
But I don’t need him to say it.
Because behind him, someone is being wheeled out on a stretcher.
***
I can’t see clearly at first, the lights are too bright, the air too full of movement. But then the paramedics turn, just enough for me to catch a glimpse of the face.
Barely a face at all, really. It’s swollen. Bruised. Blood matting dark hair.
But the eyes.
One is nearly swollen shut, but the other is open. And it’s blue. Green.
And gold.
That gold ring in the centre. The one I’ve stared into in every impossible, unbearable moment.
Kai.
My scream gets caught in my throat. I try to run, but Christian grabs me. Holds me back.
“No! Let me go! Let me go!”
“Addie, you can’t—”
“He’s alive! I saw him! Christian, let me go!”
His arms are around me, and I’m thrashing against them, sobbing now, I think. Everything is burning. Everything.
“He’s in critical condition,” Christian finally says, and his voice is broken in a way I’ve never heard.
He doesn’t say the rest.
He doesn’t need to.
Because two black bags are already being zipped up behind him.
Paris.
Anderson.
Gone.
I don’t know how I got to the ground.
One moment, I’m staring at the stretcher. The next, the world is sideways and my knees are buried in wet gravel, my voice tearing out of me in a sound I don’t recognize. I hear its echo bouncing off the burning walls and the cries of strangers, but it doesn’t sound like mine.
Hands try to hold me. Lilia’s. Kym’s. I think Bea, too. But I’m thrashing against them now, wild and desperate, because all I can see are his eyes.
