Isabelle

Everything hurt.

It felt like I was buried under a heavy weight, pinned to my seat, as sirens screeched in the far distance. Were they getting closer?

But as my head started to clear, I was overcome with dread, realizing that the weight on my chest was Slater and he was no longer conscious. I tried to shake him awake, trying not to panic. “Slater.”

Had I heard gunshots? I could have sworn I had. Had Slater been hit?

No…this couldn’t be happening.

Yet I knew he’d been shot, no doubt while protecting me, shielding me with his own body.

“Slater! Wake up. Please!” Tears slipped down my cheeks as my chest tightened with the fear of losing him.

He couldn’t leave me.

I screamed out for help, while trying to get Slater to come around, rolling him off me so that I could try to stop the bleeding.

His chest.

I bundled the fabric of my jacket and pressed it to his wound, not sure if it’d help any, but at a loss of what else to do.

Then someone yanked open the door, panic hitting me like a punch to the gut as I got ready to fend off my attacker and protect Slater.

Yet it wasn’t whoever had run us off the road. “We’re here to help. We’re going to get you out of here.”

“You need to take care of my boyfriend first. Please. He’s been shot.” My voice cracked as I forced the words past the lump in my throat, trying to hold onto the hope that Slater would be okay.

I loved him, damn it. And I needed him in my life.

I couldn’t let death take him away from me.

Yet I was soon forced to let him go as they carefully moved him and took him away, my heart breaking with the fear that I may not ever see him alive again. With Slater as my only thought, I barely registered everything else that happened, my focus shattered as the paramedics asked me questions on the way to the hospital, my body strapped down to keep me immobile and minimize any damage from the accident.

But I couldn’t work my brain around their questions, and instead kept asking them the same thing.

“My boyfriend…I need to know if he’s okay. Please.”

But they had no answers for me. Not even once we were at the hospital. All they could tell me was that he was in surgery, and that he’d lost a lot of blood.

They cleaned my wounds, X-rayed me, poked, prodded, bandaged, and bound me as I was forced to wait for news. Yet I wasn’t waiting on my own. Slater’s entire family was here, filling my room and the nearby waiting room. And though everyone was solemn and quiet, at least I was no longer alone, especially since Colton and Slater’s mom sat by my bedside.

She squeezed my hand. “Don’t you worry, my dear. My boy isn’t going anywhere. He’ll pull through this just fine. Just you wait and see.”

“I hope you’re right. Because I love him, and I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose him.” I swiped at my tears as they fell, the lump in my throat painful to swallow down.

A knock at the door had me hoping that it was news on Slater’s condition, but instead it was the police. “If you’re feeling up for it, we’d like to ask you some questions.”

Despite the neck brace, I nodded and immediately regretted it, though my pain didn’t matter. “Whatever I can do to help…”

One of the officers, a woman in her early thirties, stepped to my bedside, her voice calm and soothing. “Can you tell us what happened, to the best of your knowledge?”

“Emerson Blackthorn called to let us know that Ray Billings, my mother’s killer, had somehow managed to convince a judge to release him on bail—which, no offense, was clearly an asinine idea, especially after he’d murdered my mother.” If they’d left him in prison, then Slater wouldn’t be fighting for his life. “We were going to get out of town, just as a safety precaution. But I wanted to go back…”

This was all my fault.

Tears stung my eyes as the other officer took a step forward. “What happened next? Did you remember something?”

“I asked Slater to quickly go back to my mother’s home. We had been there earlier in the day, and I had wanted to run back there to grab a few things.” I glanced over at Slater’s mom, silently trying to apologize to her before returning my attention to the officer. “We should have never gone back. Billings…he must have been waiting for us, because not far from the house, someone started ramming us from behind. Slater tried to keep us on the road. But it was so windy and narrow, and when we got hit again…he lost control of the car.”

I choked back a sob, struggling with my memories.

The officer jotted things down in their notebook. “Do you remember what happened next?”

I shook my head no. “Not really. I think I blacked out when we hit the tree. But…I remember gunshots. Slater must have been protecting me…shielding me so I wouldn’t get hit.”

He took the bullet meant for me.

The female officer flipped through her notes before turning her attention back to me. “We can confirm that Ray Billings was at the scene, and he was shot. A weapon was found near him, which likely confirms your take on what happened, though we’ll still have to go through the evidence.”

“Is that bastard still alive?” Because if he was, I’d murder him myself with my bare hands, and it didn’t matter that I’d never had a violent thought before this.

“No. He’s not. He was found dead at the scene.”

Not that it changed what Slater was going through.

The officers asked me to come to the station to give a formal statement once I was feeling up to it, and then took their leave, leaving me to wait once more for news on Slater.

Yet this time around, I didn’t have long to wait.

Slater was out of surgery—and he was going to be okay.

Yet when I finally got to see him, my heart shattered and I was drowning in guilt.

He was unconscious, hooked up to a breathing tube, with an IV and monitor lines running in every direction. And though the doctor reassured us that they’d be removing his breathing tube soon, and he’d likely be awake as soon as the sedation wore off, the realization that he could have easily died hung heavy on my conscience.

I could have lost him.

And it would all have been because I couldn’t think past trying to find my brother.