My hands shake as my body begins to go into shock, but I push through it, my thumb swiping over and over until it finally unlocks, allowing me just the slightest flicker of hope that I might survive this. The heaviness begins to weigh on me, and I feel consciousness starting to slip away, but I grasp onto it with whatever willpower I have left as I type 911 into my phone.
The operator’s voice comes only a moment later, and I let out a breath, realizing I won’t have to endure this agony for much longer. “911. What is your emergency?”
Knowing the flood of questions that’s about to come my way, I do my best to give the operator everything she needs. “My name is Harper-Rayn Madden. I’m on the third floor of the Blackstone Private Hospital parking garage,” I say, my voice shaking as I tryto get the words out. “I’ve been attacked. Stabbed. Left side of the ab . . . abdomen. I’m bleeding out. Pl . . . Please send help.”
“Okay, Harper. You said you were in the parking garage of Blackstone Private Hospital,” she confirms as I hear her fingers tapping away on the keyboard.
“That’s right.”
“Hang in there, Harper. Help is on the way,” she says in a soothing tone that somehow makes me feel as though everything is going to be okay. That maybe I’m just being dramatic, and that bleeding out on the ground isn’t the worst thing that could be happening right now. “Is anybody around you?”
“No,” I breathe, my eyelids growing heavy. “I’m all alone.”
“You’re not alone, Harper. You have me, and I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“Attack . . . attacked walking to my car,” I say, not having the energy to get into the details of who did this and why.
“Is your attacker still there? Are you in any immediate danger?”
I shake my head as though she can somehow see me as I struggle to hold on to consciousness. “No. No, he’s gone.”
“Do you know him? His name?”
“No,” I whimper, my body starting to give out as my hand falls away from my waist, my arms too heavy to hold over my wound. “Please hurry.”
“Help is on the way, Harper,” she says. “The hospital has been notified of your location and an emergency response team is currently en route to you. Just hang in there, and they’ll be there soon. You’ve got this, Harper. Just keep talking to me.”
“I . . . I . . .” My words fall away as I close my eyes, but the sound of feet pounding against the ground cuts through the silence. I force my lids open again, frantically searching for whoever’s coming.
A flood of blue scrubs catches my attention, and I let out a relieved breath. As I watch my colleagues race toward me, I allow my eyes to close and the heaviness to take over. My last grasp on reality slips away, and the only thought left inside my brain is that losing me won’t completely crush Knight the way losing him would crush me.
The pain slowly fades into a cold numbness, and as the dark parking garage gently fades to black, my last coherent thought is of Knight and how close I was to having it all.
“Oh hell no. Not on my watch,” a familiar voice says as I sense someone crashing down onto the cold concrete beside me. Hands slam against my waist and bring the agony straight back to a fiery burn. My eyes spring open, finding the face of my good friend Amelia staring down at me with a haunted stare. “Keep ’em open, bitch. You’re not dying on me tonight.”
I try to focus on Amelia, but I’ve lost far too much blood, and I zone in and out, barely aware of how the array of doctors transfer me onto a gurney. Amelia climbs on top of me, straddling my hips as she puts her whole body weight against my wound, desperately trying to get control of the bleeding.
“You are not dying, you hear me?” she demands as the doctors rush me back through the parking garage to the emergency entrance, hopefully leading me straight into a surgical room where they can knock me the fuck out and put me out of my misery.
I grip her wrist over my wound, barely able to hold on. “Knight,” I whisper, my eyelids fluttering.
“We’ll call him,” she promises me. “But focus on me, babe. There will be time to scare the shit out of him once you’re stable.”
I nod as I start to zone out again.
“Harper!” Amelia demands. “Shit.”
And with that, my world completely slips away. Amelia’s horrified stare is the last thing I see before complete and utter darkness consumes me.
2
KNIGHT
Barging through the door of my home, I look around, expecting to find Harper waiting for me on her fucking knees like the good little vixen she is, only there’s no sign of her. I come to an immediate stop.
She should have beaten me home by at least ten minutes, and when her car wasn’t in the driveway or parked on the curb, I figured she had driven that old Honda of hers right into the garage.
“Morticia, you home?” I call out, my gaze sweeping through our home, but I’m answered with silence. Her shoes aren’t by the door, her bag isn’t spilling across the dining table, and her welcoming smile didn’t meet me at the door.
