42
CLAIRE — ALMOST TWO MONTHS AGO
I’ve never been in more pain in my entire life.
My heart rips wide open watching the light leave Johnny’s eyes and the blood pool around our bodies.
I scream for help, but I don’t think anyone hears me.
I hold his body to my chest, begging him not to go. His last three words are a twisted lullaby I will never forget. If only there was a way to switch places with him. To sacrifice myself instead of him. I’d give anything, do anything, to give him a second chance at life.
Hands find my shoulders. Large ones. They threaten to tear me away from him, but I won’t go. I can’t. Not yet.
“Claire.” Bram’s voice finally comes through. He’s frantic, for obvious reasons. He kneels next to us and applies pressure to Johnny’s seeping wound. “Help is on the way.”
I don’t dare look up at Bram. If I take my eyes off Johnny, he might disappear forever.
Sirens appear in the distance and grow louder with their approach.
Tears roll down my cheek and onto the only man I’ve ever truly fallen in love with.
In a few months’ time, Johnny had shown me more kindness and compassion than I thought possible. He respected me and taught me what love between two people was actually supposed to feel like. In a way, he repaired the damage done by my past with each gentle and thoughtful thing he had done. He gave me hope that the world wasn’t really a terrible place like it seemed.
But watching such a terrible thing happen to such a great person, I’m not so sure anymore.
Johnny didn’t deserve this.
After everything he’s given up, his story should not have ended here.
How am I supposed to go on without him?
“Clear the way!” someone shouts.
A moment later, paramedics are in front of me. “What happened?”
Bram speaks up. “Gunshot wound to the abdomen.”
“Ma’am, we’re going to need you to let go.”
I blink and Johnny is out of my grasp, lying on a stretcher, blood all over him. I reach out like I can somehow magnetically bring him back to me.
They do their work on the move, taking him further and further away from me.
I snap out of my shock and hop up from the dirty ground, rushing behind them.
An older man holds his arm out. “Family only.”
Shock rattles my core. They didn’t seem to care when it was Griffin; why do they all of a sudden have rules now?”
“I—I.” My mouth seems to fail at forming a sentence.
“She is family,” Bram says from beside me.
When did he get there?
“Are you his father?” asks the medic while climbing into the big flashing vehicle.
“No, but she—”