I wanted to scream at him to listen, but each constricted breath only allowed me partial words that were little more than gasps.
Just as I began rasping what I could of the word, “Another,” Gray’s head snapped to the side as he fired three rounds. The heavy sound of a body sagging to the floor followed quickly after.
Gray’s chest heaved against mine, but I knew him too well to know it wasn’t because of the life he’d just taken. It was because he was going against protocol. For me. Again.
He wasn’t clearing my condo, when he needed to. He was holding me against him as his glassy stare shifted everywhere, searching for anything else that might be out of place.
My lips parted to tell him to go, but a blood-filled cough left me instead, prompting his grip on me to tighten as his stare shot back to me. His jaw strained under the pressure he put on it as he quickly searched my face.
“You’re gonna be okay. You’re fine,” he whispered, as if reassuring himself. “I love you.”
“The—”
“Stop talking,” he practically begged, his voice twisting with emotion around the words.
“Baby,” I finally managed to wheeze as tears slipped free. “The baby.” The last had no oxygen behind it and was nearlyinaudible, but it was enough to make Gray’s expression crumple before his forehead fell to mine.
“I know,” he breathed, grief apparent in those hushed words, his head subtly shaking against mine. “I know.”
And I felt that grief like a consuming wave. Not just Gray’s, so thick and final, wrapping around me as if he knew there was no way the baby could survive what he was clearly terrified I wouldn’t. But my own.
All over a baby I’d been horrified by the knowledge of when I’d seen those two pink lines.
I would’ve given anything to go back to this morning and have a different reaction. To enjoy that moment with Gray, at least for a few hours.
I would’ve given anything to go back a dozen minutes and yell for Gray, even though I’d been trained to never need anyone but myself.
I would’ve given anything to go back eleven years so I could’ve spent every minute with Gray, rather than pushing him away.
A weak, gurgled sob caught in my chest as the words, “I’m sorry,” tumbled from my lips like a drunken rumble.
“No, don’t do that,” he said through clenched teeth. Lifting his free hand to cradle the uninjured side of my neck, he pleaded, “Just keep breathing for me, Peach. I can’t lose you.”
I felt another hitch of Gray’s chest against mine when sirens could be heard in the distance and briefly wondered why it felt so out of place before forgetting about it altogether. “Need you to keep your eyes open, baby. They’re almost here. You’re gonna be okay,” he said as if he’d finally grasped onto the thinnest glimmer of hope.
I struggled to crack open my eyelids, unsure of when I’d even closed them, long enough to see Gray’s expression fall.
The same as it had when he’d first seen me after suddenly appearing in my kitchen.
But this fear? This was different.
This was loss and denial. This was a soul being torn apart, and being unable to prevent it.
“Mallory?” he whispered. Or maybe I just imagined that...“No. No, no, no. Mallory,breathe,” Gray shouted as he readjusted his grip on me. I hadn’t imagined that.
I wanted to tell him I was.
I wanted to prove I could.
Only to finally realize why the hitch of Gray’s chest had felt so odd.
Because mine wasn’t moving at all.
Icouldn’t stop replaying the events of this evening. From the moment I left Mallory in front of her condo door with herDavis, to the moment multiple nurses had to physically restrain me from following her into the sterile, stark white emergency operating room, while I’d fought and shoutedMallory, wake up! That’s my wife!like a man possessed by his grief. As if they hadn’t already known. As if I hadn’t already known I couldn’t go with her.
Withthem.
As if I wasn’t usually numbed to death from everyone we’d lost in the military.
