Page 45 of Saving Wyatt

Mr. Rogers.

And Ari over him doing something with his hands.

What was he doing?

I blinked again and sat up. The world around me started to take shape. To make sense.

Ari was still over Mr. Rogers’ body. He was pouting.

No. Not pouting. Breathing.

Loud, heavy breathing that seemed to have a tempo that matched the movement of his hands.

“Shit!” I spat and crawled beside them both as Ari wrapped his lips around Mr. Rogers’ and let out a long breath.

Then he was back up, hands over Mr. Rogers’ chest and muttering under his breath.

“Staying alive. Staying alive.”

I stared at the unconscious body underneath him. The body he was trying to revive.

“Agh!” he shouted, and I fell back on my elbows.

Dread washed over me the more I watched the beautiful man lose his temper and composure.

On and on he went, singing under his breath, breathing into the unconscious man. Over and over again. A morbid anthem that sounded more and more macabre as the seconds ticked by and there was no response. No breath. No heartbeat.

Until someone reached him, pushed him out of the way, and put an oxygen mask around Mr. Rogers’ face, one last effort to keep the old, kind man that had done so much for me, for my men, for this whole island alive.

“We’ve got it,” the paramedic said. “Don’t worry. We’ve got him.”

SIXTEEN

WYATT

They didn’t, in fact, have him.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor had said in the hospital, and I’d squeezed my fists so hard I’d made my palms bleed.

The whole island was in shock for days after. Whole tributes were put up in town and online about the kind elderly man that had always been there for his community.

By the end of the week, the whole island fell into deep mourning. The day of his funeral, a mere three days later—it turned out Rogers had made arrangements, wanting to be buried next to his Luna who’d passed a couple years ago—the whole island, or what seemed like it, turned up at the church and the cemetery to pay their last respects.

I felt their stares with every step, every move, every involuntary twitch. Their judgment.

The people of the island might not have known what had happened or why, but they knew I’d been there. They knew I’d tried to save him and failed. They weren’t stupid. They could put two and two together. Wherever I went, trouble followed. Destruction. And on this occasion, death.

But I had to be there. I had to be there for Gregory. It wouldn’t make up for what I’d caused, but I had to apologize somehow. That man had helped me and my men on more than one occasion, he’d offered shelter to everyone at one point or another, asking for very little in return. An errand here, a repair there. He was always happy to be of help to a poor, unfortunate soul.

“You have to say something,” Autumn nudged me from beside me.

She, Donovan, and Elliot had moved into Duke’s sanctuary. The only other place that could fit them, even though Elliot had insisted on coming with me.

I shook my head in response.

I didn’t know what to say, and I feared if I went anywhere near the podium or a microphone, I’d say things that would get me into more trouble than I was already.

“Go,” I told her, and she stepped up.