The car ploughed into Cash, sweeping his legs from underneath him. His head hit the windscreen with a horrific hollow thud before his body crashed to the ground. The driver didn’t even slow down. Tally lost sight of Cash for a second as the car ran over him before speeding away down the road.

A scream ripped from her throat. With her legs barely holding her upright, she staggered across the road and fell to her knees. The flowers Cash had lovingly bought lay scattered around his lifeless body like a bizarre, cruel joke. His right leg was bent at an impossible angle, but it was the pool of thick, gloopy blood growing into a large circle beneath his head that had fear clogging in her throat, blocking her ability to breathe properly.

“Help me,” she croaked, glancing around for someone, anyone. “Please, somebody help us.”

She placed her ear close to Cash’s mouth. A faint puff of air told her he was still breathing. Barely. With trembling hands, she managed to take her phone out of her pocket. She dialled 999, before remembering they were in France. Oh God, what is the emergency number in France? She didn’t know. Why didn’t she know?

Sirens blared in the distance. What was she going to do? He couldn’t die. If he didn’t make it, she wouldn’t want to carry on. Not without him.

When a hand landed on her arm, she screamed.

It was the flower seller.

“It’s okay, madame. I have called for help. They are coming.”

Tally began to cry, her fear-soaked brain unable to cope with the enormity of the situation. Cash—her strong, handsome, perfect man—lying broken in the middle of a Paris street. He was dying. She knew it. He’d lost too much blood. She bent her head again, but this time, she couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. She didn’t think he was.

“Cash!” she screamed. “No, no, no. Don’t leave me. You can’t leave me.”

Strong arms wrapped around her, pulling her away—away from Cash.

“No,” she yelled, reaching for him, fingers splayed wide as she strained forwards. “Get off me!”

A man wearing an orange high-visibility vest appeared in her sight line, cutting off her view of Cash. He clutched her upper arms. “Madame, we’re here to help. Please, let us help him.”

Tally staggered backwards as he released her. “I’m sorry. He was buying me flowers.” She covered her face with her hands and sobbed. “Please don’t let him die.”

“We are doing everything we can.”

She couldn’t see Cash. He was surrounded by paramedics. Her throat constricted, and every breath she took was shallow and painful, her lungs burning with the effort. Fear, longing, and grief surged within her.

“Madame, we’re ready to go. Are you coming?”

She hadn’t noticed they’d loaded Cash into the ambulance. With a nod, she stumbled inside. The paramedic tending him pointed to a seat, and Tally sank into it. They’d strapped Cash to a backboard, his neck in a brace.

“Is he… is he…?”

The paramedic squeezed her shoulder but made no false promises. The kind gesture brought tears to Tally’s eyes again, and she let them silently fall as the vehicle sped away, sirens blaring.

The ambulance slowed to a stop, and the back doors flew open. All around her, people were shouting, pointing, gesticulating, and she didn’t have a clue what was going on. They rushed Cash inside, and Tally ran after him, but a nurse barred her way.

“I have to be with him.”

“I’m sorry, madame,” she said in perfect English. She touched Tally’s arm. “Let me show you to the waiting room.”

Tally wrenched her arm away as her vision blurred with unshed tears. Screw the waiting room. She wanted to scream. To punch walls. To break glass. To beg to a God she didn’t believe in to spare him, to take anything from her except Cash. But apart from clenching her fists, she did none of those things. Instead, she meekly followed the nurse into a sterile waiting room full of blue plastic chairs, with a water cooler and a vending machine serving warm drinks that offered cold comfort.

She sank into a chair and let her head fall into her hands. How could this be happening? There were so many if onlys running through her head.

If only they hadn’t come to Paris.

If only they’d stayed longer at the restaurant. Or left earlier.

If only she’d stopped Cash crossing the street to buy those stupid flowers.

One minute, her life had been perfect. The next, a stranger had ripped it apart. Fear came in waves so high she felt sure she was drowning. She needed to call Rachael but didn’t know what to say. She’d wait. For the moment. Until she knew more.

She lost track of time. An administrator visited her, asking questions she didn’t know the answers to. Was Cash allergic to anything? Was he on any medication? Any family history of medical issues they should know about? People came and went, a few with hopeful smiles, but most were like her with flat stares and blotched faces.

Still she sat waiting. A couple of times, she wandered into the hallway, but every time she tried to stop someone, they waved her away and rushed off to the next emergency.

The police questioned her, but she couldn’t tell them anything other than that the car had been out of control and the driver hadn’t stopped. She couldn’t even recall the colour or the make of the vehicle.

She rocked backwards and forwards as the police took notes and assured her they were doing everything they could to find the culprit. Tally couldn’t have cared less. She only had room to think about Cash. Her fragile mind couldn’t cope with anything else.

She didn’t know how long she waited, but as she began to drift into a fitful sleep, a warm hand on her shoulder made her start, and her eyes flew open. A young man wearing Harry Potter-style glasses and blue scrubs with streaks of red across the front was standing in front of her.

“Miss McKenzie, I’m Dr Girard.” His face had the weary, resigned expression of an accident-and-emergency doctor too used to carnage and death.

A sob caught in her throat. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive. His leg is broken in three places, and his right hand was crushed when the car ran over him. But these are minor in comparison to his head injury.” He gazed at her solemnly. “When his head hit the windshield, the blood vessels at the front of his brain ruptured, meaning the cavity between the skull and the brain filled with blood. You’re lucky the ambulance brought him here, because we have one of the best neurosurgeons in Paris. He’s managed to stabilise Mr Gallagher for now, and has removed part of the outer skull to allow the blood to drain away. This will help relieve the pressure, but the next twenty-four hours are critical.”

“Oh God.” She clapped a hand over her mouth and forced back a scream. Please, let me wake up from this nightmare. But she couldn’t wake up, because this was real. She wasn’t asleep—and this wasn’t a nightmare.

“Can I call someone for you?”

Tally shook her head. “I need to see him.”

“Of course.”

She followed Dr Girard out of the waiting room. They walked in silence. After a couple of minutes, the doctor pushed open a door and waved for her to go in.

When her eyes fell on Cash, a sharp pain in her chest sucked all the air from her lungs. She’d imagined being greeted by a bloodied, broken body. But the reality was much worse. His head was swathed in white gauze, and there were so many tubes sticking out of him that he looked more like a machine than a warm human being who loved her, had proposed to her, and had kissed her.

And bought her flowers.

She shuffled over to the bed, almost falling into a nearby chair. Cash’s right hand was in plaster, but his left was free. She covered it with her own. His hand was warm—the warmth of someone very much alive. She lifted it, placing his palm against her cheek the way Cash had, many times, of his own accord.

“Please don’t leave me,” she begged, rubbing his hand against her face. It didn’t feel the same as when Cash did it. “I waited ten years for you. And I’ll wait another ten, twenty, if it means you’ll come back to me. But we’ve got too much to do. I haven’t had enough time…”

Her voice broke on a sob, and it was only then she realised they weren’t alone. In the corner, a nurse was making notes on a chart.

“Will he live?” Tally said as another wave of fear gripped her stomach.

The nurse glanced up and smiled kindly. “He’s young, and he’s strong.”

“But will he live?” she said again, her body trembling, the idea of a life without Cash making her head swim and her heart splinter.

The nurse put the chart to one side. “I wish I could give you a straight answer. We got to him quickly, which is positive, but…” She shrugged. “All we can do is wait.”

Tally rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Will he be the same if he survives?”

“We won’t know anything until he wakes up.”

She blew out a shaky breath. “But in your experience. Please, I have to know.”

The nurse hesitated. It was clear she was struggling with the right thing to say. “He’s suffered a severe head trauma. Injuries like this do have side effects, even when the patient survives the initial incident.” She rose from her chair, crossed the room, and rested a comforting hand on Tally’s shoulder. “But youth is on his side.”

Tally nodded. “I need to tell his mum.” She began to cry, her shoulders shaking with the effort of desperately trying to hold it all together.

“Can I call her for you?”

“No. I’ll do it. I just need to think of the right thing to say.” She bent forward, rested her head against his hand, and closed her eyes. Rachael would be devastated. And Rupe. And what about Brad, Jamie, Em, Pete? Oh God, it was all too much. She didn’t have the right words.

Her head snapped up. Shit. She’d fallen asleep. How long had she been out? Her eyes sought Cash’s face. He was still sleeping. Was sleeping the right word when someone was being drugged to stay that way? The whooshing noise from the ventilator providing air to his lungs stole her attention. She was beginning to hate the sound.

“Hey, ace,” she said, kissing his cheek.

She glanced across the room. A new nurse sat in the corner, and she smiled warmly at Tally.

“How is he?” Tally said.

“No change. He’s stable but still critical. Perhaps you would like to get a drink? Something to eat?”

Tally rubbed sleep from her eyes. “I need to call his mum,” she said, digging her phone out of her bag. “I should have done it last night. Why didn’t I do it last night?” She covered her face with her hands as more tears began to fall. “I can’t handle this.”

She found herself enclosed in a warm embrace. “You’ve had an enormous shock,” the nurse said. “It’s understandable.”

Tally let herself wallow in the moment of comfort before she pulled away. She reached into her bag for a tissue and blew her nose. “Thank you,” she said, her voice hoarse from all the crying she’d done.

She slipped into the hallway and frowned at her phone. No signal. She headed for the hospital entrance. As she stepped outside, she shivered despite the heat of the day. Tally spotted a small garden with a couple of wooden benches, each one inscribed with a name and two dates—a memorial to people, like Cash, who’d been brought to hospital but had never left.

Her chest heaved, and she bit down on her lip, the coppery taste of blood spilling onto her tongue. She had no idea how to begin this conversation. What she should say first? It was all moot, of course, because it didn’t matter what she said. The news was going to tear Rachael apart.