“No,” I shout, interrupting Saint. “Devin can help her.” I put my attention on the doctor in the room. “She’s had one syringe of adrenaline. She just needs more.” She’s going to need a blood transfusion as well. I don’t know her type, but she can have whatever she needs from whoever she needs it from. I’ll slit throats if I have to.
“Kashton, it’s been too long,” Devin says softly.
“No.” I refuse to believe that. “The brain can live up to seven minutes after…” I can’t say the word. She’s not…gone.
A hand touches my shoulder, and I look to see its Haidyn. His bloodshot eyes drop to Eve lying on the table beside me. “I’m sorry, brother.” He clears his throat. “She’s gone.”
“No.” I turn and pick her up. “Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” I pull her into my arms and fall down into the chair in the corner. “Charlotte was given…something.” The same drug that Haidyn used when he pretended to die on us. “Adrenaline brought her back. It will work. She just needs more.”
My chest is tight as I rock her back and forth. Looking up, I realize he led me to the morgue. That lump in my throat gets bigger, seeing I had laid her on the metal slab that’s now smeared with blood. My chest tightens. It’s getting harder to breathe. I haven’t been in here since my mom’s body was in this room.
“Kashton?”
I blink at the sound of my name to see Devin standing in front of me. His eyes go to a blood-covered Eve and then back to mine. “Let me take her.”
“I…can’t…” I clear the lump in my throat and finish my sentence. “Let her go.”
I cradle her tighter to my body. My arms have gone numb. I can’t feel anything. Just the massive hole in my chest.
“Take as much time as you need,” Devin says and then turns, exiting the room.
I glance over her face. She looks so peaceful. How she appears when I watch her sleeping next to me. It’s the blood that reminds me of the truth. It’s my mind playing tricks on me. Refusing to believe she’s truly gone. That I’ve lost her.
“I’m sorry, angel,” I tell her, struggling to breathe.
Her body trembles in my arms because I’m the one shaking.
The door opens but I ignore it. Instead, I hold her tighter. Devin can’t have her. Not yet. I’m not ready. I was holding onto hope that he could do something that would bring her back, but deep down I knew it was hopeless.
My angel is officially an angel. I may not believe in heaven, but I hope that wherever she is, she’s getting the rest she needs.
She deserved to be loved longer. To know what it felt like to be important. To know that she was my world.
“Kash?” Haidyn speaks softly. “They’re here.”
“Who?” I ask, not even looking up from her, unable to recognize my own voice. I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
“Ryat and Sin,” he answers. “They found him.”
My stinging eyes meet his. “Who?”
Haidyn frowns and runs a bloody hand through his hair. “The guy from the cathedral?” He words it as if it’s a question.
He and Saint were talking in the SUV on the way here, but I’d tuned them out. Instead, I silently cried in the back seat while I held my dead wife.
“They’ve gothimin the basement.” His eyes drop to Eve before he looks away, unable to look at what’s left of his sister. Or maybe me. I’ve failed both of them. Because of me, he no longer has a chance to know her. “They’re waiting for you.”
“I…I can’t?—”
“I’ll take care of her.” I hadn’t realized Devin had returned. He gives me a soft smile. “I promise. I’ll stay here with her until you return.”
My vision blurs as tears fill my eyes, and I swallow the knot in my throat. “I can’t…let her go.”
Devin steps toward me and holds his arms out. “May I?” he asks.
Fresh tears fall down my face.
“Let me take her, Kash,” he insists. “I promise she’ll be here when you’re done.”
