Page 164 of Past the Broken Bridges

The voices are getting farther and farther away.

There’s pain.

So much pain.

Everything gets fuzzy.

Grows warm. Comfortably warm.

Then there’s somebody above me. The boy who ran away from Marco. He’s kneeling above me, frantic. I think he’s saying something. Touching me. Trying to comfort me.

But he sounds so far away.

He’s got dark hair.

And dark eyes.

He doesn’t look like Paxton, but I pretend he is. Just for a moment. Just enough to say, “In a-another l-lifetime.”

The boy shakes his head, his mouth moving but nothing coming out. Nothing I hear anyway.

My eyelids get heavy.

Heavy.

Heavy.

Suddenly, the pain subsides altogether.

Until there’s nothing but…

Peace.

And when I close my eyes, I see Dawson.

Healthy. Happy. Himself.

He reaches out to me and says, “Thank you.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Banks

An alarm goes off on campus that I’ve never heard before, so loud it makes my ears ring.

Suddenly, Teddy is running out from the back room and lowering the cage door that locks the store up from the rest of the building. “Get in the back now,” he directs me and Lucy. “There’s an active shooter. A shot was heard fired somewhere on campus.”

I pale, doing what he says and pulling out my phone as soon as we’re both secured in the back.

Me: Don’t come to campus. It’s not safe

I want for her to text me back.

To see the bubbles.

She’s been sleeping a lot lately, so her silence isn’t that unusual. Her class doesn’t start for another couple of hours, which means she wouldn’t have a reason to be on campus until later.

Me: I’ll see you later

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