Page 49 of Anchor

“I wish it was,” Cass says, “but it’s different. Her accident caused her to have a brain bleed.”

Accident…what accident?

What happened to me?

Where’s Micha?

“What about brain activity? There’s been that, right?” Perrie pleads, and I can feel my pulse race with panic.

“Oh my God!” Perrie gasps. “What’s happening?”

“We need a crash cart!” Cassidy yells before everything fades again.

“How’s she doing, Trouble?” Steal asks, the beeping louder this time.

“She’s stable,” I hear Cassidy’s soft reply, “we caught the second bleed quick, I just hope it was quick enough.”

I hear a sniffle and a sigh before Steal rasps, “Come here, Cass.” I hear rustling over the beeping.

“She’ll wake up, Trouble,” he promises.

“You don’t know that, Colt,” she replies, “and even if she does wake up, there is a chance she may not remember whosheis, let alone her family.”

Oh God, what happened to me?

I try to move my hand, willing my fingers to move—but nothing.

“He’s drowning, Cass, he’s fucking drowning, and I can’t lose my best friend, Micha cannot lose his father. She needs to wake up, and be alright,” Steal says with so much emotion I feel it in my chest.

Travis…Travis is struggling without me….

“Momma?” a small whispered voice fills me, and my heart rate quickens slightly. “She knows I’m here,” Micha says excitedly.

“Yeah, little man, she knows,” Travis’s mom, Tina, says, “she would know your voice from a thousand miles away.”

I feel lips against my cheek before I hear a whispered, “Please wake up, Mom, we miss you….” And I feel my heart breaking as blackness takes hold again.

“We’re going to lose him!” someone snaps loudly, and I feel like someone is bashing my head into a wall.

“We won’t,” another voice states, a voice that sounds like Bowler, Travis’s dad.

Someone chuckles darkly and replies, “He’s fighting every fucking night, allowing the opponents to kick the shit outta him. He’s barely around unless he’s in here next to his wife; he doesn’t see his son much. He’s shutting down more and more, the longer she’s in the coma.”

“Art!” Bowler snaps, “don’t do this here, not in front of Heaven.”

Art chuckles humorlessly.

Wait—Art, as inJamesfromhigh school?

“Why not here? She needs to hear this because she needs to fucking wake up!” he shouts, and my pulse races, causing the beeping in my head to quicken.

Hang on…he saidcoma…. Huh, maybe it’s not in my head; perhaps I’m in a hospital bed….

But why?

“Fuck, do you want to get us kicked out?” Bowler growls before I feel a hand take mine. “It’s okay, Heaven, everything is okay….” He soothes me.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Bowler, I just, she is his everything, and I, fuck, I took his word when he said they ended things despite seeing how inseparable they were, how much she fucking loved him, and then the fucker cheats on her, he fucking cheats withGingerof all people. He kept her quiet, and he did her dirty!”

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