Nothing about this was right, and I was terrified to open my eyes and fully face my shattered dreams.
Groaning, I cracked my lids, instantly slamming them shut again as I was greeted by stark, sterile brightness.
Where the fuck was I? And why did my entire body hurt like I’d been run over by a truck?
“Lane?” a soft voice asked, and I perked up, only to deflate again when I realized it was one I recognized but not the one I wanted to hear.
“Where’s Sutton?” I rasped. The words scraped against my throat on the way out, like I hadn’t had a sip of water in years.
Silence greeted me, and I dared opening my eyes again, slower this time, allowing myself the chance to adjust.
Mama stood over me, worry etched into every line of her face. She looked like she hadn’t slept in ages, and her eyes filled with tears when our gazes caught.
“Oh, baby boy,” she breathed, leaning in to press a kiss to my forehead, like she used to do when I was sick as a little kid. “You scared us.”
“What happened?” I asked, throat clogging with emotion to see her so scared. “Where’s Sutton?”
She hadn’t answered the first time, and suddenly I was desperate to know.
“You were shot,” she whispered.
I inhaled, gasping, so sharply it seared my lungs. Squeezing my eyes shut, I let the memories come back to me.
The farmhouse. Reagan and Lainey running for their lives. That piece of shit appearing with a gun.
Him pulling the trigger.
Then blissful nothingness until now.
No, not nothingness. Alife. Happiness. The kind of thing I’d only ever dreamed about but never thought I’d get.
Only to wake up and discover itwasjust a dream, and I was no closer to it now than the day I’d been shot.
“How long have I been out?” I asked, ignoring the tears escaping my eyes and streaking down my temples.
“Six days,” Mama said.
“It was bad then.”
There was no sense in beating around the bush. It happened, and though I was in more pain than I was sure one person could withstand—seriously, where the fuck were my pain meds?—I was alive, and that was all that mattered.
“Collapsed lung and a lot of internal bleeding. You fl-fl-flatlined,” Mama’s voice shook on the word, and she took a beatto compose herself. “In the helicopter on the way here. Sutton got your heart beating again. It was touch and go while you were on the table, but the surgeon patched you up, and they expect you’ll make a full recovery.”
Sutton saved my life.
Suttonsaved my life.
“Where is she?”
Mama smiled sadly. “I don’t know, baby. She’s been…scarce.”
I gritted my teeth against the wave of anger that crested in my chest, a welcome distraction from the hot poker lancing my lungs with each breath.
I wasn’t angry at Sutton—neverat Sutton.
No, I was angry at myself for being the reason she wasn’t coming around. Even though she’d saved my life and had every right to check in on me, she was steering clear because things between us were always so fraught with tension, she couldn’t stand to be around me.
And I certainly hadn’t done anything to make it easier in the last fifteen years.
