Page 128 of Lost in the Moonlight

The door closed behind her, and I sank to the floor. I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked. It was over. It was over, but Lincoln had been shot.

He’s too stubborn to die from a bullet to the arm.The voice in my head had me whipping my gaze up. Sienna was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. I couldn’t see the wound at the back of her head from this angle, just the face of a surly, teenaged girl who looked spookily like me.

“I don’t understand,” I said, keeping my voice quiet so Mom didn’t come storming in and demand to know who I was talking to.

Sienna shrugged.Me either. I’m just here when I’m needed. He needed me a lot in the beginning. In those first few years, I was almost always around. The trouble he had sleeping got worse. I think he maybe got an hour or so every other day.

“Wouldn’t seeing you make that worse?”

She shrugged.I don’t make the rules. I’m just sent, so here I am.

“You saved him tonight.”

She looked up at the ceiling and back.I was sent to save you both.

“Thank you.”

She tilted her head, as if listening to something.That’s my cue. You’re good for him, Willow. Maybe even better for him than I ever could have been, because I took the love he gave me for granted. As a teen, when you receive that much love, you just think it’s supposed to be yours. That it’s always supposed to be that way. But you… You know differently. You know how rare and precious it is. How it can be gone in the blink of an eye. Make sure you live every day as if it might be the last.

Then, she was gone.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Lincoln

CHANGING TIDES

Performed by The Fray

I knew the moment I cameawake it had been drugs that had pulled me under rather than anything natural. I’d been on the receiving end of drug-induced sleep too many times in my life, and I hated it. It took me a few seconds longer to register the pain in my right arm and the smell of antiseptic that flooded my senses along with the steady beeping rhythm of the heart rate monitor.

A weight laying on me had me dragging my eyes open to find Willow asleep with her head on my chest and her lips slightly parted in sleep. She’d squeezed herself into the hospital bed along my left side. At least I hadn’t been shot in my drawing arm.

I raised my good hand and stroked her soft, moonlight-colored hair.

She stirred immediately, leaning up on an elbow as she said, “You’re awake!” She scanned my face, running a hand along the scruff on my jaw. “Thank God.”

“I told you I wasn’t dying,” I grunted. My voice was hoarse and scratchy.

She rolled out of the bed, and I tried to grab her hand to stop her, but pain shot through me. I must have let out a sound, because she whirled back around, eyes wide. “You’re hurting. I’ll get a nurse.”

“Water,” I rasped.

She pulled a tray over with a pitcher on it, poured water into a plastic cup with a straw, and brought it to me. I sipped at it, feeling like a five-year-old instead of a grown-ass man, which made me snap at her. “I don’t need you feeding me.”

Instead of being hurt or angry, it made her lips curve upward. “If you’re growling at me, I really know you’re going to be okay.”

She put the cup down, leaned in, and kissed me softly. When she went to move away, I put my good hand on the back of her head and held her there, deepening the kiss. I let relief and love wash over me. She was alive. I was alive. Aaron was dead.

I’d killed a man.

I didn’t feel an ounce of sorrow for having done it. I’d do it again to keep her safe. Do it again to keep any of the people I loved safe—but especially her. Still, the weight of it wasn’t something I took lightly. Scales would be balanced at the end of our time on this earth, and this would be something I owed.

When I tried to tug her closer, pain ripped through me again, and my grunt made her pull away.

“Let me get the nurse. You need more pain meds.”

“Don’t need anything except you.”

---