Page 115 of Heart of The Night

‘I don’t know. I’ve never met him before.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘If I saw him?’ His jaw clenched. ‘I thought I would kill him.’

‘What happened?’ I asked, dread threading through each word.

Andy swallowed hard, avoiding my eyes. ‘I walked in…’ He paused for a while, staring at the wall. ‘I… William was already on the floor, blood streaming from his arm. The man was kicking him in a furious rage, but not a sound came out of Will – he was already gone. I intervened, yelling to Chloe to fetch help, to fetch you.’ He shut his eyes, teeth grinding in suppressed fury. Drawing a shaky breath, his face twisted with the effort to hold back tears. ‘Security brought him out the back door just before you got here.’

My eyes flicked to the door at the end of the corridor, where I imagined the vile creature responsible for this horror being apprehended by the police. As I looked back to the scene of the crime, I saw two paramedics carefully position William onto a spinal board.

I couldn’t bear it. I folded over at the waist, my hands pressed tightly over my face as sobs racked my body, the tears streaming down my cheeks. I just couldn’t comprehend that it was him. But I knew it was. Even if I hadn’t seen his face yet, I recognised that body. I would have recognised it anywhere. His form was as familiar as my own heartbeat.

‘You should go with them,’ Andy said. ‘Chloe and I will meet you at the hospital. Don’t worry about letting the others know – I’ll call John and Jason on my way there.’

He pushed himself to his feet, his hand gripping mine to pull me up alongside him. My legs trembled, making standing feel like an impossible feat. Andy noticed my struggle and wrapped an arm securely around my waist, anchoring me to his side.

As I looked up at him, I saw the raw pain etched across his features, the immense effort it took him to hold himself together – for me, for William. More tears broke free, flowing down my cheeks as I clung to him, trying to return even a fraction of the solace he provided. The horror of finding William, his brother in all but blood, so cruelly beaten – it must have shattered him.

We held each other tightly as the paramedics emerged, carrying William between them. The sight of him stole the breath from my lungs. A head immobiliser and a cervical collar secured his head and neck, and his face – his beautiful, handsome face – was a map of bruises and blood, barely recognisable. Above a deep wound in his left bicep, a tourniquet was tightly wrapped, preventing him from bleeding out.

‘Excuse me,’ I choked out, staring helplessly at William. I could scarcely believe this battered figure was the man I loved. ‘May I please go with him to the hospital? I’m his girlfriend.’

‘Yes,’ the female paramedic responded. ‘What’s your name, Miss?’

‘Cara.’

‘I’m Bruna,’ she said, but I didn’t look at her. I feared that if I did, I might miss William’s last breath.

‘He’s sustained a severe injury to his left arm,’ Bruna informed me, her voice steady despite the urgency of the situation. ‘It appears the cephalic vein was severed. We’ve applied a tourniquet and stopped the bleeding for now, but he’ll require vascular surgery immediately upon arrival at St Mary’s.’

As her words sank in, tears blurred my vision, rendering William’s form almost indistinguishable.

She continued, ‘He’s got a steady pulse at the moment, and his breathing is stable, but he’s also suffered a significant blunt trauma to the head, which is why he’s unresponsive at present. He’s unconscious, but there’s hope it’s only temporary.’

Numbly, I nodded, following them mechanically into the ambulance, where I was granted the small mercy of sitting beside him. They told me I could hold his hand, and I did, cradling his cold fingers gently, terrified that even the slightest pressure might break him. He seemed so fragile, so unlike the strong and vibrant man who had laughed with me just minutes ago.

Slowly, I lowered my head to his hand, pressing my lips softly against it, each kiss a silent prayer for his return to me. My thoughts drifted to mere hours ago, when he had arrived to escort me to the gala, both of us unaware of the horror we had in wait. The way he’d looked at me, love radiating from every glance… If I had known then what I did now, I would have confessed my feelings for him. The regret was a sharp ache in my chest. Why had I ever held back? What I had with him couldn’t be replaced. There would never be anyone else for me – not like him. No one could ever compare – not in this lifetime, not in a thousand others.

‘Darling, please wake up,’ I begged as I kissed his limp hand. I leaned closer to his ear, my voice breaking with sobs as I whispered, ‘William, I love you.’

26 | not our boy

CARA

I’d always known that death was coming for us all. What I often forgot was that I didn’t know when. Between the mundane moments in life, I seldom gave pause to consider that our existence was but brief – that time had, as I perceived it, a beginning and an end. I took it for granted that I would get the opportunity to carry out most of my plans, that I would be able to realise most of my goals, before death showed up to wrest my last breath from me. By the same token, I had taken it for granted that, should we both want to, William and I had the rest of our lives to spend together. But I hadn’t considered that the rest could be cut so short. I had thought it would span decades, not mere weeks.

Now, with death skulking so near that I felt its presence like a cold draught, I was confronted with my own naivety. Death was impervious to any plea, immune to sentiment; it could, in just a fleeting moment, deprive me of the only man I had ever loved. The dread authority of that realisation made me fear it with an intensity I had never known before.

As I languished under the weight of its shadow, my desperation to repel it drove me to do something I had never done before. I closed my eyes, interlaced my fingers, and prayed to what I hoped was death’s master. I pleaded for William’s recovery, for the doctors to emerge with news that he had awakened, unchanged, and for death to retreat until I was ready for it to return.

We needed more time – William and I, us.

It seemed surreal that just hours earlier, I had behaved as if eternity lay before us, as if squandering a single moment bore no consequence because another would always follow.

I had been so utterly foolish, so painfully naïve.

There was no guarantee that William would ever wake up, and even if he did, no guarantee he would remain the person I knew.

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