Tender hands ran down my bare chest, and giggling lips pressed to my jaw. “Kale,” she whispered.

“Melody,” I murmured back, rolling on top of her, pressing her to my bed. “Melody.”

I stared down at her. Smiling at her trusting face, wondering how it was possible to feel this way.

Her sweet, sweet face.

It pinched in horror.

In pain.

Everything shifted, my room gone, cement under my feet.

“Kale,” she begged from where she stood at her car across the lot, the sun blazing down on her from above. She dropped to her knees on the cold, pitted pavement and clutched her chest. “I need you.”

Fear took me whole. Frantically, I ran across the lot and dropped to my knees at her side.

Her eyes rolled back. “Melody!” I shouted.

I searched for her pulse. For her breath.

Screams echoed through the air.

My shouts for help.

“I won’t let this happen. I promise, I won’t let this happen.”

I pressed my hands to her chest and began to pump.

Compression after compression.

Teeth grinding together, I worked over her, begging, “Don’t leave me. I won’t let you leave me.”

I fought and the sun spun out of the sky.

Darkness.

The world canted and tipped from its axis.

Everything shook.

Evan’s face.

His little, broken body beneath my hands.

That fucking flat line.

A scream. A plea. Hope on her knees. “I need you. I need you . . .”

A roar ripping from my lungs jolted me upright in bed.

Searching for nonexistent air, I gasped and panted, pretty sure the life was being squeezed out of me.

My eyes darted around the shadowy darkness of my bedroom as the images faded.

My skin drenched in sweat, and my heart beating like a motherfucking drum.

My shoulders dropped when I realized I was alone. That it was just another dream.

Which should have been a comfort, but the awareness of it just sent grief swooping down, shackling me in its chains.

“Fuck,” I gritted.

Hand fumbling through the dark, I reached over to flick on the lamp on my nightstand. The muted light broke through the night, and I pushed to sit up at the edge of my bed. The movement sent a wave of nausea crashing over me, sucking me down, taking me under.

Lost in the deepest, darkest sea where voices pleaded and moaned and begged.

I need you.

I need you.

I need you.

I knew I was losing it. Coming unglued. Standing at the edge of a cliff and getting ready to fall over the side into that abyss of nothingness.

Where I’d drown in dreams and torment and screams.

I’d never known a loss like the one I was prisoner to right then.

Losing them.

Hope and Evan.

But at least I’d gotten out before I could cause them more damage or pain. Because God knew, that was all I knew how to inflict. That didn’t mean I didn’t fight myself every second of every day not to go back to them. To ask for a fucked-up sort of forgiveness that I would never deserve.

If Hope knew what I’d done, the way I’d failed, she’d never look at me the same.

Hell, I knew it’d haunt her the same way that fucking text that had come in just after midnight nine days ago haunted me.

I need you.

I’d nearly succumbed. Broken down and crawling back on my hands and knees like a beggar, groveling, trying to find any excuse in my mind that would make it okay to be with them.

But I sucked it up. Refused the urges and the need and the sorrow.

Because I was staying away for them.

I need you.

Drawn, my eyes peeled open, and my already choppy breaths turned ragged.

By instinct, I reached for the sheet of folded paper sitting on my nightstand, my hand shaking like a bitch and my stomach threatening to spill onto the floor.

I’d found it sitting on the backseat of my car. I’d wanted to think it discarded. Nothing of importance, but I knew the kid had left it there for me.

A message.

Tonight, I unfolded it for what had to be the millionth time because I couldn’t help but torture myself a little more.

My chest tightened when I stared down at the drawing.

A fucking fantastic rendition because the kid was amazing. Clever and talented and smart.

Captain America and a tiny Hulk were holding hands.

My eyes traced what was written at the bottom in the same handwriting I’d come to know so well. Words I heard like a voice.

Regret drove into me like a blunt, rusted knife.

Gutting.

A remnant of Melody’s voice clashed with the power of Hope’s.

I need you.

I was a goner.

So fucking gone.

And there was no finding my way back.

* * *

Every time I’d driven passed A Drop of Hope over the last nine days, I’d gunned my engine and sped by. Refusing to look that way because it brought on more memories and regrets than I knew how to deal with.

But this morning . . .

This morning there was nothing I could do but slow and look that way. Because everything felt different.

An awareness that thundered my heart and twisted my guts in a million knots of need.

My spirit thrashed and screamed.

Because I caught sight of the girl for the first time since I’d left her broken in her kitchen.

Body lush, Hope wearing one of those dresses that drove me out of my mind, the best goddamned thing I’d ever seen.

Considering the fact I was sure my sanity was slipping, I thought for a second I had to be hallucinating.

But there she was. Leaning over and reaching into the back of her SUV to pull out a supply box. That red, red hair whipped around her delicate shoulders when she quickly spun around.

Like she felt me the same way I felt her.

Our eyes locked through the windshield.

The world freezing.

Time suspended.

The two of us lost to a place that belonged only to us.

Grief lined every inch of her unforgettable face, and there was a weight in her eyes that I hadn’t ever seen there before.

I could almost hear the plea in the soft part of her full, full lips.

I need you.

Every cell in my body reacted.

Want.

Need.

Regret.

Shame.

The last snapped me back into reality, and I ripped my eyes away from her and floored the accelerator. The coward who had to get away.

* * *

It was time.

The way I’d reacted when I’d seen Hope that morning was clear proof of that.

I’d gone astray.

Gotten distracted.

I was pretty sure the second I’d realized Evan was Hope’s child, I’d known.

Fate warning me to watch my step. Telling me it’d do me well to take one back.

And I’d just run forward. Careless.

Reckless.

Selfish.

Pushing and pushing for something I wanted, but knew, in the end, I couldn’t keep.

The workday had passed in a daze. Every second had been a struggle to focus. A fucking herculean feat to pass out those damned lollipops like every single one of them didn’t nearly drop me to my knees.

I finished with my last patient and stumbled into my office.

I sank down at my desk in front of my laptop.

I had to take care of this.

It’d been a constant nag at the back of my brain. Problem was, it’d been met with so much resistance from my heart and spirit that I’d been avoiding it like the goddamned plague.

Maybe I’d been holding out, thinking I might discover the cure before this feeling became a sickness.

Because that was what I felt.

Sick.

Taking this final step.

Snipping the last thread that tied us together.

I’d already spoken with Dr. Acosta about taking over Evan’s care. I’d told her there was a conflict of interest, and I’d be more comfortable with her seeing him for his general visits.

The whole time I’d felt like I’d been committing a betrayal. Not because I couldn’t be there for him as his physician. But because I couldn’t be there for him at all.

I need you.

My chest squeezed when that voice hit me.

I tamped it down and clicked into his chart so I could write up my final notes on his care and transfer them over. That and send Hope the anonymous note that would let her know her son had the same heart defect that his aunt did, even though I couldn’t dig deep enough to find the exact records that would confirm it.

Records that should have been there lost.

Purged or hidden.

I didn’t know.

Either way, Hope would finally know.

At least I could give her this.

His chart popped up.

Evan Quinn Masterson.

A shudder rolled through me.

Unease.

A shrinking awareness.

Something was just intrinsically . . . off.

I’d been feeling it for days, a disturbance that flamed and lapped on the fringes of my consciousness. No doubt, part of it was the guilt over just walking out of their lives without giving a reason or explanation.

The guilt that I’d left them thinking it might somehow be their fault when I knew I had to protect them from this. But there was something else. Something just out of my reach.

A light knocking tapped at my door, and my nurse popped her head inside. “I have those reports you were asking for. There is a reprint from two weeks ago that showed it’d been sent from the lab, but I didn’t see it come across my desk.”

“Who is it from?” I asked, looking at her from over my computer.

“The nuclear radiologist.”

“Okay, thank you,” I said, reaching out and accepting the small stack of faxes that had been forwarded from the lab and would need to be added to Evan’s EHR.

“Anything else you need tonight before I head out for the evening?” she asked.

“No, I’m good. I’m just going to stick around and catch up on some charts.”

She paused for a moment like she wanted to say something else. Clearly, she was worried about my state.

But there was absolutely nothing she could do for me to make this better.

I’d brought it all on myself.

She gave a slight nod. “Okay, then. I’ll see you in the morning.”

She clicked the door shut, and I turned my attention to the printouts, scanning the numbers and tests, trying not to break down in tears like a goddamned pussy.

But fuck.

I missed him.

I missed them both so goddamned much I felt like I was being torn limb from limb. Stretched so thin there was no chance there would be anything left.

I forced myself to move forward. I scanned one page and then another, moving onto the third.

My heart tripped the second my eyes started to move over the numbers.

It was the report from the nuclear medicine radiologist. The results of Evan’s cardiac stress test. The numbers that we should have received two weeks ago.

The walls of my small office started to close in.

While I stared at the numbers on the paper.

They were the only thing I could see.

Only interrupted by flashes of Evan’s trusting, sweet face.

The episode of severe shortness of breath at the park. The redness on his neck and cheeks that day at Rex and Rynna’s. The way I’d asked him if he felt okay, and he’d said he was just tired.

Tired.

Tired because his transplanted heart was not pumping properly.

His records from earlier in the year had shown the very early signs of coronary artery disease, which was to be expected.

But this?

This was accelerated. Progressing at an alarming, dangerous rate.

Panic shot me to my feet, my chair tipping over and crashing to the floor as I clamored to grab my cell.

Frantically, I dialed the number I’d promised myself I’d never dial again.

In the same second, I flew out the door.

You’re my favorite.

That promise roared in my ears.

Deafening.

My favorite. My favorite. My favorite.

Fuck.

This couldn’t happen.

I wouldn’t let it.

Not to him.

“Answer the phone, Hope,” I begged under my breath, agitation lighting a path through me as I listened to Hope’s phone ring and ring. On the fourth, it clicked over to voice mail.

That sweet voice hit my ear like a song. Mine was grating and hard when it finally beeped.

“Hope, I need you to call me the second you get this. I know you have to be pissed and confused, but this isn’t about us. It’s about Evan.”

Ending the call, I raced down the hall and out the side door toward my car, feet pounding on the pavement.

Adrenaline surged.

A thunder through my veins.

My car blipped and unlocked as I approached, and I already had the engine turned over by the time I had the door closed. I threw the gear in reverse and whipped out of the parking spot.

The second my wheels hit the road, I floored the accelerator.

I weaved in and out of cars, trying to keep it together.

I told myself we’d caught it.

He’d be okay.

But it was that sense I’d been feeling all week—the one that warned something was terribly wrong—that reared its ugly head.

This dark foreboding that crawled beneath the surface of my skin.

Ominous and grim.

Shouting at me to hurry. That this was bigger than I could see.

I flew by the coffee shop. All the lights were off. It was late enough she’d already be gone for the night, so I took a sharp left turn, tires squealing as I skidded around the corner and headed in the direction of her house.

I floored the gas when I approached a yellow light, barreling through, unwilling to stop or slow, zigzagging between cars, pushing it harder and harder.

I careened around a corner and allowed myself a breath of relief when I made the last right onto their street.

I just needed to get there. Needed to know they were okay.

I slowed when I neared their house.

A disorder rumbled in my chest the closer I got.

An awareness.

An unease.

A sixth-fucking-sense.

I didn’t know.

All I knew was the hairs prickled at the back of my neck, standing on end and sending a slow ripple of disquiet skating across my flesh.

It was different from when I’d seen the results of Evan’s tests.

This was cold.

Protective and harsh.

A midnight blue car sat in front of Hope’s house.

It almost blended in with the deepening twilight sky.

Almost.

All except for the fact it was one of those flashy bits. Not just nice. But the kind that screamed pretension.

The kind of car someone bought because they wanted you to know they were better than you in their own fucked-up, inflated heads.

I couldn’t see anyone standing around it.

But I knew. I fucking knew.

My chest spasmed. Heart threatening to beat right through my ribs.

I didn’t know how I’d look at him without pounding the bastard into the ground for what he’d done to Hope and Evan.

How I’d remain standing when I’d look at him and see her eyes.

This had to be the most savage, ruthless reminder of my failure.

But there was no consideration when Hope’s porch finally came into view.

No hesitation.

Because the fucker had ahold of Evan and was dragging him out the front door.

Hope screaming and trying to free her child.

Panic and terror rippled through the dense air.

And there was nothing but the base, fundamental need to protect these two.