Page 111 of Audiophile

I shove her face to the side, striking her upper neck, cutting up and under her jaw with my elbow, just like Silla taught me. Kinley’s teeth clatter together, and pain radiates down my forearm.

Three of my fingers go numb, but I ignore it as she collapses to the floor. I flip her onto her stomach and pull her wrists behind her back. Kinley squirms underneath me, but I grab the roots of her hair with a strength that surprises me.

“Reed!” I scream. I can’t look away from her. “Please be alive. Please, please, please.”

“I’m here,” Reed says, but it’s faint through the buzzing in my head.

“I should beat the hell out of you,” I growl in Kinley’s ear. “You have no human decency. You willneverunderstand that you’re not good enough for him, and I’ll make sure you never touch him again. It’s done, Kinley.”

“Petra.” I finally let myself look. Reed’s lip is bleeding, his forearms bloody with fingernail tracks, and more blood dribbles out from where his hand is pressed to his leg. He tries to crawl toward me, wincing, but can’t move far. His hand is gentle when he stretches out to squeeze my ankle. “You did beat the hell out of her. I can’t believe you ran in here like that. Actually, I can. Baby, you okay?”

I’m shaking, my face hurts, and there is blood trickling into my eye. “I don’t know.”

Something hard hits my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. Reed’s hand slips from my ankle. My head slams against the floor, and the rest of my body follows. Sharp pain radiates up my spine, and it stuns me. My heart thuds, heavy and thick in my chest. It’s never been so loud before. It drums louder, faster. Like a countdown. It multiplies until it’s more like thundering footfalls.

Kinley’s forearm presses down on my throat while she raises the gun in her good hand. “Move and I kill her!”

“Please,” Reed begs, face ashen. He’s leached of all the beautiful color he brought into my life. “Please don’t do this. I’ll give you anything you want. You want Ecuador? Let’s go. Right now. Come on.” He reaches a hand toward her, pulling her focus away from me.

“I knew you’d see it my way,” she says with a giggle, and the barrel of the gun presses hard against my temple. “But I was just kidding, Daddy.”

Time stretches. I find Reed’s eyes with mine. His jaw tightens, no sign of his dimple. God, I miss his dimple.I love you.I don’t have enough air to get the words out.

I close my eyes, picturing sunlight and waffles. Reed’s laugh, Silla’s hugs, Tommy’s smile, Livi’s playful glare, Mama’s humming over the stove, Papa’s gentle touch as he brushes my hair back, and little Natalia. My baby.

When I open them again, Kinley’s smile disappears. “She was always going to die today.”

“No!” Reed shouts, lunging for her. The drumming quickens into a stampede of horses in my ear. The gun goes off with two pops, loud as the crack of lightning, and my ears ring and go silent. The sunlight I picture behind my eyes is doused to black.

But there is no blinding light to take its place. There’s no one waiting for me, or welcoming me home. I’m stuck here. A ghost.

Is this what I get for turning my back on God? I should’ve done things differently. Should’ve left Nate years ago. Told my family I loved them every day. Jumped in headfirst with Reed. Published my books—whether they did well or not. I should’ve done it all forme. How could I ask anyone to love me when I hadn’t loved myself?

At least there’s no pain. Kinley’s heavy weight still pins down my side. Any second now, I’ll rise out of my body to see my blood spread across the floor in the house that Reed and I were going to call home.

Tears well in my eyes, and it’s sostupidthat ghosts can cry, because death was supposed to bring peace.

“Petra!” Reed’s voice barely registers. The volume of the whole world has been turned down, but his voice is shredded as he yanks my body away from Kinley’s and cups my face. He turns my head to search the wound, and I wish I could tell him not to.

Great, heaving sobs bubble to the surface. It’s not fair. I wanted a whole life with Reed. All this time fighting it—terrified of what would happen if I let him in—what was it all for? I wasted weeks of sunshine with him.

“Pet?” Reed’s hands are everywhere, and he pulls me up to sit and cradles me to his chest. “You’re okay, love. You’re okay.”

He smells like I remember. Warm and comforting, and a little like me, which makes sense after the night we had. I reach up behind him to clasp his bare, cold shoulders, desperate to be close to him.

Wait. What?

Through my fuzzy hearing, there are loud thumps like footsteps, and voices all around me. I peel myself away, and there are uniformed officers talking to each other nearby. I search for where Reed pulled Kinley off me, but there are two people in the way. Reed puts a palm against my cheek and turns my gaze back to him.

“Don’t look,” he says. “Trust me.”

“I—she—am I not dead?”

Reed’s face is gray. “That’s not funny.”

I can’t control the way tears push up to the surface and claw at me. “It was a real question.”

“Oh, baby.” He pulls me in tighter. “You’re not. Thank God. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God. I don’t even know how the police are here, but I’ve never been so grateful. I thought I was going to lose you, but you’re not going anywhere and neither am I. I’ve got you, Pet.”

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