Crashed (Driven, #3)(91)

“Colton! Colton!” Sammy’s voice pulls me from my hypnotic panic. I look up at him, the phone held up to one ear as I’m sure he’s getting instructions from the 9-1-1 operator, and am not even sure if I speak or not. “Where’s she bleeding from?”

“What?”

“Look at me!” he shouts, snapping me somewhat out of my fog. “Where is she bleeding from? We need to try and stop the bleeding.”

Holy f*ck! What is wrong with me? I open my mouth to speak, to tell him, and I realize that I’m so panicked I have no f*cking clue.

Sammy’s eyes lock on mine as if to tell me I can do this, that she needs me, and he’s able to break through my slow motion mental state. I immediately lay her down—as much as it f*cking kills me to because I feel like she’s so cold that I need to keep her warm. I start running my hands over her body, and I start shaking I’m so f*cking mad at myself for not thinking of this, so f*cking scared at what I’m going to find.

I cry out in fear as I realize blood is still running down her legs, and I can’t even begin to process why. “Her accident. Something from her accident,” I tell Sammy as I lift her shirt up her abdomen to show him the scars that mar her skin as if that will explain it. And then I grab her and pull her onto me again—her cold body against my warm skin—as Sammy starts talking again to whomever’s on the other end of the phone.

“Hang tight, sweetheart. Help’s coming,” I tell her as I rock her, knowing that there is no way I can stop the bleeding—hers or my heart’s.

I hold her tight and I swear I feel her move. I scream out her name to try and help her come back to me. “Rylee! Rylee! Please, baby, please.” But there’s nothing. Fucking nothing. And when I sob in despair her body shudders again, and I realize it’s me moving her. It’s my body shaking and begging and pleading that’s moving her.

“Oh God!” I cry out. “Not her. Please not her. You’ve taken everything good from me,” I scream into an empty house to a God I don’t really believe exists any more right now. “You can’t have her,” I yell at him, holding onto the only thing I can because everything else I hold true is slipping through my fingers. I bury my face in her neck, the sobs ruining me as my warm breath heats up her skin cooling beneath my lips. “You … can’t … have … her.”

“Colton!” A hand jolts my shoulder and I snap out of my trance, unsure of how much time has passed, but I see them now. The medics and the flashing lights swirling on my walls through the open front door. And I know they need to take her from me to help her, but I’m so f*cking scared right now I don’t want to let her go.

She needs me right now but I damn well know I need her more.

“Please, please don’t take her from me,” I croak as they lift her from my arms and I’m not sure who I’m talking to, the paramedics or God.



“How long, Sammy?” I shove up from the chair, nerves gnawing at me and my legs not able to eat up enough f*cking ground to make them go the f*ck away.

“Only thirty minutes. You gotta give them time.”

I know everyone in this f*cking waiting room is staring at me, watching the man with blood all over his clothes pace back and forth like a f*cking caged animal. I’m antsy. Restless. Fucking terrified. I need to know where she is, what’s wrong with her. I sit back down, my knee jostling like a f*cking junkie needing a fix and realize that I am. I need my fix. I need my Ryles.

I thought I lost her today only to know I didn’t, and then when I think she’s f*cking safe—f*cking protected in my arms as we fall asleep—she’s ripped the f*ck away from me. I’m so goddamn confused. So f*cking angry. So … I don’t even know what I am anymore because I just want someone to come out from behind those f*cking automatic doors and tell me she’s going to be okay. That all the blood looked a hundred times worse than it really f*cking was.

But no one is coming. No one is giving me answers.

I want to scream, want to punch something, want to sprint ten f*cking miles—anything to get rid of this f*cking ache in my chest and churning in my stomach. I feel like I’m going crazy. I want time to speed the f*ck up or slow the f*ck down, whichever is best for her, as long as I can see her soon, hold her soon.

I get out my phone, needing to feel a connection to her. Something. Anything. I start to type her a text, express to her in the way she understands best how I feel.

I finish, hit send, and hold on to the thought that she’ll get this when she wakes up—because she has to wake up—and know exactly how I feel in this moment.

“Colton!”

It’s the voice that’s always been able to fix things for me and this time he can’t. And because of that … when I hear his voice call out to me, I f*cking lose it. I don’t stand to greet him, don’t even lift my head to look at him because I’m so f*cking overtaken by everything that I can’t function. I drop my head in my hands and start sobbing like a f*cking baby.

I don’t care that there are people here. I don’t care that I’m a grown-ass man and that men don’t cry. I don’t care about anything but the fact that I can’t fix her right now. That my endgame superhero can’t fix her right now. My shoulders shake and my chest hurts and my eyes burn as I feel his arm slide around me and pull me into his chest as best he can and try and comfort me when I know it’s not going to do a goddamn f*cking thing for her. It’s not going to erase the images of her lifeless Raggedy Ann body and pale lips that are staining my mind.