“At least I know you’re safe—”A grunt of pain shut him up. Internal pain I couldn’t see or stop.

Tears splashed down my cheeks. My chest cracked open. “Safe? I’m the opposite of safe. I’m heartbroken.”

“Don’t. Please, don’t—” His eyes flared as if internal twinges grew worse.

“We have to get you help. Get you to a doctor.” I flew off the bed, racing with my blanket dragging behind me. Hurry, hurry. “If we hurry, we can—”

“Eleanor.” His hand clutched his chest over his heart. “Ah, fuck.”

“No!” I bolted back to him. I dug my nails into his shoulders. “Sully, don’t you dare. Don’t you even fucking dare—”

His eyes met mine again, wild and full of regrets. “Jinx...I—”

He tipped forward, crashing off the bed.

Chapter Twelve

SO THIS IS WHAT it feels like to die.

Not at the hands of someone else.

Not through torture or torment, elixir or old age.

This was how it felt when your very body shut up shop and shooed you out the fucking door.

Christ!

I lay on the floor, vaguely aware that my broken leg had crunched in my fall. Who the hell knew if I’d broken another bone or at what angle it rested. I’d lost all sensation in my extremities.

“SULLY!” The floor shuddered beside me as Eleanor crashed to her knees and clutched me close. Her touch was ruthless and unforgiving, rolling me from my crumpled pile and lying me flat on my back.

I blinked, doing my best to focus on her.

I thought I’d have more warning.

I stupidly believed a clock would start, counting down my remaining heartbeats, giving me a heads-up to kill Drake, kiss Eleanor, and somehow make peace with my passing.

But no...the wall that I’d been running headfirst toward had appeared, smashed me to pieces, and left me for dead.

“Goddammit, Sully, don’t you dare do this to me!” Eleanor shook me. “Breathe.”

I couldn’t feel her.

I couldn’t feel her heat or her worry.

All I felt was the strangeness of having to fight with everything I had for another breath. A breath that refused to come because my heart no longer operated.

“Someone! HELP!” she screamed. “Anybody!”

It sounded as if she existed down a long black tunnel. A tunnel I could no longer travel through.

I choked.

My heart turned into a fiery pyre.

“Sully, God. Please!”

My back bowed in her hold, muscles overriding my nervous system in their quest to function.

I’d watched people die before.

I was even the reason for a few of those endings.

I’d read studies on death and was an expert on all manner of demises—thanks to my position in pharmaceuticals. However, this was new.

No one mentioned in the medical journals how a life was systemically snuffed out.

Two things happened.

One, your body went into preservation mode, shutting off sensitivity to all areas apart from the one thing killing you. It was like a suction. A numbing, erasing suction that forced all my attention to lock onto the scrambled thud of a breaking heart.

Two, your soul—if that was what we housed inside our mortal shells—detached. It no longer took ownership of a body it’d been birthed into but hovered free, unwilling to be associated with a rapidly failing machine.

“Sully. Fuck, don’t do this. Please, please don’t do this! Fight it! Stay with me.” She hugged my head on her knees and rocked over me. I couldn’t console her. I couldn’t apologise or tell her how much I fucking loved her.

I couldn’t feel the fierceness of her hands or the wetness of her tears.

All I could feel was the fading.

The pain and the coldness.

The inevitability of goodbye.

“HELP! For God’s sake, help!”

Her screams were muted now. My ears failing.

Her manic strength was feeble now. My body no longer reacting.

Her attempts to keep me with her useless now as my heart chased its last beat.

My hectic, harrowed pulse grew quieter, slower...gone.

“No!” Shoving my head off her lap, she bent over me and pressed her mouth to mine.

Breath poured into my lungs.

Bracing over me, she pumped my chest with two fists, performing CPR on a body that had already died.

She screamed words again, but I no longer comprehended such a tongue.

Her mouth on mine. Her fingers pinching my nose. Her breath filling my chest.

Her pummels on my heart grew fiercer, driving my spine into the floor.

Eleanor...stop.

She screamed and yelled and shouted incomprehensible things.

I loved her.

Please don’t be sad. It’s better this way.

She breathed into me again, delivering oxygen that my body no longer knew how to convert into life.

I had no way of begging for absolution. No words to beg for a second chance. No way to tell her how grateful I was for her. How I’d always be hers...even if we now had to exist apart.

I would wait for her.

I’d claim her again...if she ever fell to hell.

I’d wait for her forever.

My muscles seized in their death dance.

I jerked on the floor, sending another gush of screams from Eleanor.

My eyes popped wide as the final lance of pain stabbed clean through me. A lance directly into my heart and the useless non-thumping chambers.

Eleanor...

She faded.

Darkness gathered at my edges, spilling into my corners and descending over me.

It took my vision.

It took my soul-mate.

It took me.

Goodbye...

Chapter Thirteen

I WON’T LET HIM die.

I won’t.

You can’t die, Sully.

I forbid it.

Forbid it!

I alternated between forcing every drop of oxygen I had into his mouth and pounding his chest with furious CPR. Digging the heels of my fists over his heart, I wanted to crack apart his ribs and bury my hands inside him. I wanted to massage his heart and force it to restart.

Stay alive!

Please!

He felt wrong.

He felt...gone.

His mouth lax. His body prone. His life force and essence, his mercurial, wonderful spirit had abandoned me.

He can’t!

“God, please.” Feeding air into him, I sucked in another breath for me, driving my weight against his ribs. “SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

I ducked again, pinching his nose and breathing before returning to my war against his stopped heart.

“Sully!”

His head bobbed each time I dug into his chest. His lips parted and glistened from where I breathed into him. His skin was icy, the colour already receding from his tanned skin. His legs lay sprawled in painful directions, his arms useless beside him.

There was no vitality left.

No sinful smirk or savage power.

Just an empty puppet with no one to pull its strings.

“Sully, don’t. Come back. Please, please come back.” I breathed and pounded, breathed and pounded.

I screamed.

Tears began, breaking through my panic holding them at bay.

I breathed into his mouth, leaving his lips painted with wet disbelief.

I depressed his chest, leaving splashes of grief on his nakedness.