Something warm settles beneath my ribs despite the night we just had. “Yeah,” I reply. “You will.”
She hesitates another second, then finally turns and heads toward her apartment building.
This time, when the door closes behind her, I don’t stare after her. Mostly because if I do, I might follow her upstairs. And tonight isn’t about what I want.
I scrub my hand down my face and finally pull my phone from my pocket. The screen lights up immediately. Eleven missed calls. Fourteen text messages. All from Mason.
“…shit.”
I check the side of the phone. The ringer switched off accidentally. Probably during the chaos at the crash scene.
The second I call him back, he answers. “Jesus Christ,” Mason snaps. “Where the hell have you been?” His voice sounds tight with worry, way more worried than he usually lets himself sound.
“At the hospital.”
“Was it Liv?”
The question hits me straight in the chest. Because apparently that was his first thought too.
“No,” I answer quickly. “Not her ambulance.”
There’s an audible exhale on the other end.
“But she responded to it,” I continue quietly.
He goes silent for a long moment, then Mason’s tone changes completely. “What happened?”
I lean back against the bike and look up at Liv’s apartment window glowing faintly above the street trying to figure out how to explain a night like this. “Drunk driver didn’t stop for a code three,” I say finally. “Hit the back end of the ambulance.”
“Jesus.”
“One EMT dead on scene as well as the patient.” The words feel heavy in my mouth.
“And Liv?” Mason asks it carefully this time.
I glance up at the window again, still lit. “She’s wrecked,” I admit quietly. “Trying not to be.”
Chapter 13
Liv
The world doesn’t stop. I knew it wouldn’t but it’s hard to notice how obvious it is. The morning after the crash, the sun still rises. People still walk down the street. Cars still pass that spot on the highway like it isn’t still stained crimson red and riddled with a large char spot as big as the vehicles driving over it.
And I hate that. The world doesn’t feel different to them. The rest of the world just continues on like nothing’s changed.
Not for me. Not for our station. I’m different. We’re different.
I feel it in the way my chest is tight when I wake up. I feel it in the way my chest tightens even more when I remember I have to go to work. In the way every siren I hear makes my stomach drop before my brain catches up. In the way the station sounds quieter and feels darker.
Alice takes a few days off; Jett does as well. But Scott and I keep going in. We do what we can to give Alice and Jett time.
The funeral is three days later. It’s the first time the four of us have been back together since the day it happened.
The church is local and old. The kind of old where the stone is covered in vines that trailed up the cobblestone and out to the mausoleum.
I stand in the back at first, because I don’t think I have the right to be closer. I knew him the least in the station. At the time, that didn’t faze me. I figured I’d get that time later or that we’d just not get partnered together much if at all since I was typically partnered with Scott.
But there’s no “later” now. It’s over.
