Page 197 of Phantom Mine

Every extra second is added pain.

Every breath, the difference between life and death.

I don’t let myself look at him just yet. Barbed wire strangles my throat shut—he’s not dead.

He can’t be.

The tears well even more thickly in my eyes, nearly blinding me. Through the sheen, I shove at the beam. Over and over and over again, I drive my palms into the glowing, flaming, red-hot wood, working to move it off his prone body.

“Matteo,” I sob brokenly, shoving the beam once more. “Hang in there, my love. Please…please. Please, just hang in there.”

It weighs a ton, but otherworldly strength slips into my veins and powers my forearms. The smell of Matteo’s flesh being consumed chokes my nostrils and crushes the air out of my lungs.

And then, I hear it.

Matteo groans.

It’s a thin, breathy sound, barely there.

I cling to it like it’s the last thing tethering me to this world.

My answering cry is crushed between anguish and hope. “Matteo!”

With a furious, vengeful roar, I ram into the beam once more. It rolls off of Matteo and onto the ground next to him.

Finally, I allow myself to look down at the love of my life.

His face is pressed into the ground, his eyes closed. His thick hair is disheveled and his features are untouched. When I drag my eyes down the rest of his body, fresh dread yawns in my belly.

His back is gruesome. The skin is charred raw in most places. It’s peeling and falling off of him in others, revealing cartilage and bone underneath.

Nausea shoots violently into my throat. Not in disgust, in realization that this is all my fault.

“Matteo,” I try again, laying next to him on the ground and clasping his face. “Matteo?”

He doesn’t open his eyes.

His breathing is pained and threadbare, hardly enough to feed his lungs.

“Len…L-Leni…” he utters with difficulty.

“Yes,” I nod, tears flying off my cheeks. “It’s me, my love. I’m right here.”

Matteo seemingly goes in and out of consciousness as the fire continues to grow and close in around us.

“Can you get up, Matteo?” I ask, unwilling to face the truth. “We’re so close, you only need to go a few more steps.”

Keeping the tears out of my voice is impossible. I hear them echo loudly, desperately, in every single pleading word.

Matteo’s mouth parts. I lean closer.

“Leave…me…”

I recoil like I’ve been struck, shaking my head furiously like he can see it. “No.”

“Len—”

“No. I won’t.” I tuck my arm beneath his and tug it as I get on my knees. “Get up, Matteo. Please, get up.”

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