Page 1 of Ruthless Riches
1
Nate
Blood seeped through my fingers,soaking my shirt in sticky red patches as I cradled Alexis in my arms. Sirens wailed in the distance.
“Stay with me,” I muttered to Alexis, willing her to open her eyes. Her skin had taken on the pallor of a corpse. “Come on. You can’t leave me now.”
She remained motionless.
Despair wrenched at my soul as I held her. I’d never felt so useless and powerless in my life.
“What the fuck happened?”
I glanced up to see Laurel’s face appear in the doorway. One hand flew to her mouth when she caught sight of the blood on the floor, and she pushed past a guy standing in her way and hurried inside.
“Don’t!” Ruby cried out. “You’ll get fingerprints everywhere.”
But it was too late. Laurel was already on her hands and knees on the tiles, trying to help me with Alexis. “Does she have a pulse?” she asked, eyes wide.
I nodded. “Yeah, but it’s getting weaker by the minute,” I said. “She’s losing too much blood.”
Laurel told me to push my hands aside and use my right knee instead. More blood spurted from the wound on Alexis’s abdomen for a split-second, but it stopped entirely when I pressed my knee into it, using my entire bodyweight to stem the flow.
I swallowed thickly. “It’s working.”
“Good.” Laurel reached up to Alexis’s face and touched her pale cheek. “You’ll be fine,” she whispered. “Just hang on.”
Footsteps thundered down the hall a moment later, and the crowd at the door parted to let two paramedics into the room to work on Alexis. I hung back, watching listlessly as they put her onto a gurney, wheeled her outside, and loaded her into the back of an ambulance.
The front of the Skulls house lit up with flashes of red and blue as two police cars pulled up alongside the ambulance. I knew the cops would want to take everyone’s statements, but I couldn’t stand to leave Alexis alone, so I hopped into the back of the ambulance with her. The cops could wait.
When we reached the closest emergency room, a team of doctors and nurses rushed Alexis away. One of the paramedics directed me to a waiting room and got me a large cup of coffee, obviously feeling sorry for me.
I sagged into a chair and wrapped my bloodstained hands around the cardboard coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into me. If I closed my eyes for a few seconds, I could pretend Alexis’s hands were enclosed in mine and the warmth was from her soft skin.
Please let her be okay,I silently begged the universe. Please, please, please.
I wished I could rewind the night. Return to an hour ago, when Alexis was cheering and laughing and dancing. If I could exist in that moment with her forever, my life would be complete. No thinking. No worries. Just us.
But time wasn’t fair. It flooded past with no regard to anyone’s feelings, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. None of us could ever snatch it back. Not even one second.
“Nate?”
A feminine voice yanked me out of my thoughts. I sat up straight and opened my eyes to see a dark-haired doctor looking down at me. “Is Alexis okay?” I asked, heart pounding painfully fast.
“She’s still in emergency surgery. I just wanted to come and give you an update,” she said. “The knife didn’t hit anything inside her abdominal cavity. It went right between two organs. She lost a lot of blood, but that’s the worst of it.”
“So she’ll be okay?” I asked, brows shooting upward.
“Yes. She’s going to be fine.”
Relief flooded through me in waves. I put my head in my hands and let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I was holding until now. “Thank you.”
“The surgery will take another hour or so, and she’ll probably be asleep for a while after that, so you can go home if you want.”
I shook my head. “I’ll stay here and wait.”
“All right. I’ll let you know when she’s been transferred to her own room.”
