Living Out Loud (Austen, #3)(83)

When I came to a stop, I dropped to my knees, my vision vibrating with my heartbeat, my heart fluttering so fast, too fast, the muscle spasming frantically. I fumbled for my phone with shaking hands, unable to draw enough breath, my lungs empty and scraping against my ribs. —I couldn’t call I couldn’t speak.

I pulled up my sister’s last message and fired off a text.

Need help. I’m in the park, sending you my location.

There wasn’t enough air, my limbs moving laboriously as a creeping blackness in my vision pulled me to the ground. And then I felt it—the jerk in my heart, like a string had been pulled. It was on fire, my heart in my chest beating so fast, so hard, so bruised, that I pressed my palms to my sternum in disbelief of the deep measure of pain, a hot slice of a knife through the very center of me.

And with a final gasp of air from the very depths of my lungs, I slipped away, onto the cold, icy ground, into darkness.



Greg

I hopped off my board and ran to the door of the bookstore, whipping it open, rushing inside, scanning the bar for Annie. I found Cam instead.

“Where is she?”

Alarm commandeered her, arresting her face and planting her feet on the ground. “She left with Will, not five minutes ago. He was giving her a ride home.”

I swore, pulling my phone out of my back pocket to text her again. She hadn’t answered my text from before, and my mind jumped from one conclusion to the next without taking a breath.

My phone buzzed in my hand with a text from Elle.

Have you seen Annie? Something happened. She’s in the park, but I don’t know where.

My fingers flew as I sent back three words.

I’ll find her.

I turned and ran back out without a word, throwing my board onto the pavement in front of me and jumping on without thinking about what I was doing or the cold or what would happen.

Every thought I had was focused on her.

My mind raced with my wheels, tracking the path he would have used to take her home, not certain why it was urgent, but knowing it was all the same. The temperature had dropped, my breath leaving me in bursts of burning cold, my eyes scanning the park around me, not knowing what exactly I was looking for.

And then I saw it—the flash of yellow between trees, the same sunshiny color of her coat.

I hopped the curb and jumped off my board, leaving it where it was, running full tilt for the heap in the frosted grass. And with every footfall, my hope slipped away, replaced by cold awareness.

I fell to my knees at her side and rolled her into my lap, my heart stopping when I saw her lifeless face.

Her skin was an unnatural shade of gray, her lips a deep shade of purple, the blue veins in her closed lids visible.

“Annie,” I whispered, my throat locking.

Her body was limp, dead weight in my arms, her head lolling. I held her cheek; it was cold as ice.

“Annie, can you hear me?” I pressed my fingers to her neck and found her pulse easily; it was beating double the time it should have been.

“Jesus Christ,” I breathed, pulling her into me, my face turning to the expanse of gray sky. “Please. God, please.”

She stirred in my arms, the smallest moan escaping her lips, and I held her, looking into her face as her lids fluttered open.

Her lips parted as if to speak, but only a soft Ah made it through before her eyes closed again.

“No,” I whispered, fumbling for my phone. “Don’t leave me,” I begged as the line rang. “Hurry,” I demanded after I gave the dispatcher everything I could.

And then it was just her and me, the birds in the park and my fingers on her careening pulse, the sirens in the distance and her life on a thread. And I prayed to every god I knew.





23





Waiting





Greg

The only sound in the waiting room was the soft, unintelligible conversation from the nurses’ station. A television was playing Planet of the Apes with the captions on, an empty gesture made commonplace by some psychologist somewhere who had determined that people waiting for bad news needed something to mark time in the room besides a clock.

Not that anyone ever watched it beyond a cursory glance or an empty gaze; in that circumstance, it wasn’t possible to offer anything more.

My eyes weren’t following Charlton Heston through his mysterious adventure—they were on my hands, clasped and hanging between my knees, the carpet beyond them blurred.

The deep, staggered lines in my knuckles caught the attention of my subconscious. They were surrounded by skin covered in infinitesimal cracks, barely visible, rarely noticed. But I saw each tiny one, thousands of them connecting to make a web spread across every inch of me.

I was reminded of a time that seemed to be a hundred years ago, most of that distance traveled in the last eight hours, when a thirteen-year-old version of my sister had become obsessed with reading palms. She’d sat with me on the rug in her room as I moaned and groaned and rolled my eyes, poring over the lines in the meat of my hand as she flipped through a book that would help her decipher them.

I turned my hand over and opened it, trying to remember what she’d told me, which line was which. I only remembered two—the love line and the life line.

The one meant for love was deep, running in a clear path from well off the side of my hand, curving up all the way to the point where my forefinger and middle finger met. It was supposed to mean that I would find true love, my soul mate, and that love would be as deep and true as that unassuming crease in my hand. Sarah had been starry-eyed and sighing at my luck. I’d thought it was nonsense.