"My wife!" he bellows into the smoke and fire. "My wife!"
Julian falls to his knees, a raw cry of anguish pushing brokenly from his chest while Elijah holds him back from joining Florence's ghost in the flames.
"No…" he sobs. "Please, no!"
I finally make it to them and almost fall on my face when I try to bend to my knees.
Elijah cries softly into the back of Julian's jacket, holding him around his middle while he wails.
"We have to…" I cough, my throat burning like hell until I hack up a dark glob that tastes like blood and smoke. "We have to…get out of here."
Another coughing fit hits. Harder this time, and every barking sound comes with a nauseating dizziness that threatens to drag me down.
"Atticus?"
Ellie barks somewhere far away. The fire roars. It's hot.So hot. But everything is distant. Muffled. Fading.
Like I'm sinking underwater.
There's something warm in my throat. Something wet and thick that shouldn't be there.
"Atticus!"
Damn.
I was supposed to save her. I was supposed to save all of them.
The back of my head thuds on the ground, and I stare up, trying to draw in oxygen around the thickness clogging my airway.
"Dad!" Elijah's voice cracks. "Dad, help me!"
The soot-choked sky above is so dark I can't see the moon or the stars. It's just an endless expanse of darkness. It jars as my body is shaken and my vision fades.
"Atticus!"
Elijah was wrong.
We hadn't lost everything.
Not yet.
But as the dark swallows me whole and her face is the last thing I see behind my eyelids, I realize something that cuts deeper than any shrapnel ever could.
I never told her.
And now I won’t…
My throat closes.
Won’t…ever…
My heart thuds hard and slow.
…ever get the chance.
