Page 18 of No First Kisses

I swear. I’ll do anything you want if you let her live.

“Hurry,” I hear Bax say. “Let’s get this shit packed up. We’re following the ambulance.”

I don’t even give a shit what happens to our stuff. I just need Poppy to breathe.

When her heart stops eleven minutes after she collapses, I start compressions.

“Come on, Poppy,” I grunt between exertions. “You’re not doing this shit to me. Not again.”

“Where’s the ambulance?” Andrea’s question, followed by the pause, fills the space of five compressions.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if you can’t tell me exactly when. My daughter’s not breathing, and now her heart isn’t beating. Tell me where they fucking are!” Never, in all the years I’ve known Andrea, has she ever yelled like that.

“Five minutes.” She lowers her voice, disbelief coursing through the air. “Five minutes. Logan, you keep her alive for five more minutes.”

I nod, because I can’t speak. I can’t even take a deep breath at this point, because I’m too focused on keeping Poppy alive.

I can feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins, keeping the exhaustion at bay.

Every thirty compressions, I lean back and let Evie give her sister two rescue breaths. I can’t do both. Not with the way I’m struggling to keep my shit together.

We work like that, in silence, while my mom and Andrea cry. While Finn and Bax tear apart all of the tents and load everything into the backs of the cars.

Suddenly, it doesn’t matter how much we’ve had to drink or what our plans were.

The only thing that matters is keeping her alive.

When Emily moves to Poppy’s other side and nods at me, I fall back and let her start compressions.

Someone’s hand on my shoulder has me looking up, my chest heaving.

Dean, Poppy’s father, stands there with tears in his eyes and desolation on his face.

“She’s not going anywhere.” My broken words are the only thing I can think to say, the only plea I can make.

Once I catch my breath, I take over for Emily again and do my best to ignore the tears falling from not only her, but from Evie as well.

We stay that way, alternating every two or three minutes, for a lot longer than five minutes. Sweat pours down my face, mixing with the tears that I’m not trying to hold back anymore.

You can’t die, Poppy.

I scream the words in my head because I can’t force them out of my mouth.

Until the sound of sirens fills the air and there are paramedics shoving me out of the way to get to her seconds after they arrive on scene.

We watch, all of us together, while two medics pull a machine out and hook leads onto Poppy’s chest.

“What was happening?” the medic not currently shocking the love of my life asks. “Before she collapsed?”

“She’s been rubbing her chest all day,” I say blindly. “Since she got here. At sixteen, she took a bullet to the heart and survived.” My bullet, I add silently. “She’s thirty now.”

“Any medications?”

“None,” Andrea answers. “Wait. An inhaler. But nothing else.”

“Got a pulse,” the EMT performing the shocks says loudly. “Let’s load her and go before she codes again.”

They have her strapped on a gurney and in the back of the ambulance in a matter of seconds.

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