Page 103 of Beneath Your Beautiful
I hauled the dead man’s body off Eden and checked her pulse. It was faint. I pressed my ear to her heart, needing to hear it was still beating. Pulling her into my arms, I sat on the floor, holding her. I looked down at her face. Bruised and battered. Her hair matted to her head, vomit clinging to her golden-blonde locks.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Killian?” Her voice was hoarse and so quiet, I strained to hear her. “Are we dead?”
All around us was a sea of blood and dead bodies.
“Baby…” Oh God. “Everything will be okay. Everything will be….” My voice cracked. She closed her eyes. I leaned my head against the wall and cried like a fucking baby. I’d cried twice in my life before this. The day my mother left, and the day Johnny was pronounced dead. All those times Seamus had knocked me around, I never shed a fucking tear. But now it felt like I would never stop crying.
An officer crouched in front of me and put her hand on my shoulder. I knew her. Officer Healey. “Killian, we’re taking Connor to the hospital.” I watched the paramedics get Connor onto a stretcher, his face so bloody and battered, it looked as if he’d been Mike Tyson’s punching bag, and the word SNITCH carved in his chest. “We’ll need your statement…” she continued, but I only heard half of what she said as she cut the ties off Eden. I rubbed Eden’s wrists and hands, trying to get the circulation back. “The paramedics will take her out—”
“I’ll carry her to the ambulance.”
She studied my face, then nodded.
I winced as I got to my feet, struggling to get enough air into my lungs. Getting shot at close range hurt like a motherfucker. At first, the adrenaline had blocked out the pain, but it was hitting me now.
Officer Healey eyed my T-shirt, riddled with bullet holes. I’d been shot three times, but I’d gotten so damn lucky they’d gone for the chest every time. “They’ll check you out in the ambulance,” she said. “You probably cracked a few ribs.”
* * *
Four, as it turned out. With bruises all over my chest. Other than taping up my ribs, there was nothing they could do. On the ride to the hospital, the paramedics hooked Eden up to an IV, explaining she was dehydrated after vomiting so much, and tested her vitals. I washed Eden’s face with a damp cloth and tried to get the vomit out of her hair the best I could.
“Can you tell me what your name is?” the paramedic asked Eden. He shone a light in each eye, checking her pupils.
“Eden,” she mumbled, her eyes closing.
“Good. Can you tell me what day of the week it is?”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds. “Sunday?”
I closed my eyes. Fuck. “We went to Zeke’s party on Sunday. Remember?”
“Yes,” she said, but it came out sounding more like a question.
“Four days ago,” I prompted.
“It’s…Wednesday. No…Thursday. Right?”
“Right.” I glanced at the paramedic, worried it was a bad sign she didn’t know the fucking day of the week. He continued asking questions, his facial expression giving nothing away as to the severity of her head injury. She didn’t get all the answers right. She wasn’t even sure why she was in an ambulance.
“It’s post-traumatic amnesia,” he told me, as if this should set my mind at ease.
“I can still smell him,” she whispered. “He’s suffocating me.”
Why hadn’t I gotten that man’s body off her immediately? She’d been buried under the weight of a dead man who weighed at least two hundred pounds.
The bruise on her forehead scared the shit out of me. It was raised and swollen. She whimpered as I pressed the ice pack on it. It looked as if someone had planted their fist in her face too, bruising her cheekbone. And the paramedics had cut open her T-shirt, exposing another bruise on her stomach.
“Tell me she’s going to be okay,” I said to the paramedic as the hospital came into view. My voice sounded strange. Like a desperate man, begging for a sliver of hope. A ray of sunshine on a bleak day.Shewas my sunshine. Didn’t they know I’d be lost without her?
He flung open the back doors of the ambulance. “We’ll get her in for an MRI.”
That didn’t put my mind at ease. Memories of Johnny flashed through my head as I walked into the emergency room, holding Eden’s hand. I’d never seen her face this pale. All the color had been drained out of her.
“Killian?”
I squeezed her hand. “I’m here, baby.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you. So much.”
