I should have thought about Georgia.
Her ring.
Her yes.
Her mother’s tears.
Her father’s disappointment if I died before making her daughter a wife.
I tried to hold her face.
Tried to put her in the center of the dark.
But death, or whatever waited near it, did not care about what a man was supposed to feel.
The face that came was Destiny’s.
Fire behind her.
Blood on her lip.
Beautiful, haunted eyes.
I almost laughed.
Of course.
Of course it was her at the end.
The vehicle stopped hard.
Doors flew open.
Voices exploded around me.
“GSW, abdomen, unstable!”
“Second patient, shoulder and chest!”
“Move, move, move!”
Hospital lights hit me so bright I thought for one stupid second I was already dead and heaven looked a lot like fluorescent bulbs and panic.
Then pain brought me back.
A mask came over my face.
Hands cut through my shirt.
Someone pressed hard on my side, and I made a sound I would have been ashamed of if shame hadn’t floated somewhere above me, useless and far away.
“Stay with me,” a woman said.
That voice.
My heart stumbled.
No.
