Page 130 of Whenever You Call

“Bella, no—” Hannah tried, but Bella just tugged her hand out of her mom’s grip anyway.

“Don’t worry, Mom. Mr. Logan is with me. Nothing bad can happen when he’s here.”

My heart cracked inside my chest as I took Bella’s hand and looked up at Hannah for her approval. I could see the war going on inside of her, but eventually, she gave me a nod of her own, folding her arms over her chest.

“I’ll wait here,” she whispered.

I turned and looked away from the pain in her eyes, and I led Bella across the road again, back to the tree to look for the cat she’d become obsessed with.

“He likes to play hide and seek as much as we do,” Bella told me. “So, we have to be clever about this.”

“I think it might be time for us to find a new game to enjoy once we get home, don’t you?”

We wandered around the tree, our necks craning this way and that, searching in nearby bushes, our backs bending to look through any small gaps it could have sneaked through.

“Wait,” Bella said with a gasp, dropping to all fours to peer under another bush. “I think I see its tail.”

I dropped to my hands and knees to take a look for myself, but before I could bend enough to peer underneath the leaves, the cat in question bolted out from beneath the greenery and took off across the road at such a speed, it had both our heads snapping to the right to take him in.

I didn’t have time to react and grab her.

Bella took off after him, her cries of “Mr. Cat!” filling the air until the world seemed to stop around me.

That chill of dread snaked down my spine.

The adrenaline coursed through my veins.

The roar of an expensive sports car filled my ears.

And Bella’s squeals of delight made me move.

Springing to my feet, I charged after her with all the power I had in my body to get me there in time.

The engine growled, and the car sped down the road, a siren of warning that burst into my eardrums and made me fly toward Bella, who had already stepped out into the road—her thoughts on nothing but that damn cat.

“Bella!” Hannah screamed. “No!”

“Bella!” I roared.

I fucking ran. I ran with everything I had inside of me until I got to her. The moment she was within reach, I jumped for her, my arms flying around her tiny body until I had her waist in my grip, and I was picking her feet off the ground. The sound of tires screeching had me scrunching my face tightly, and I used every ounce of strength I had to brace myself for impact before I threw Bella toward her mom, and I watched her roll on the sidewalk and into Hannah’s arms.

It was a split second of pure bliss.

A slowed down moment of time that made my lifemeansomething.

To finally know I’d learned how to love.

And when the car eventually took the legs out from beneath me, turning my whole world upside down, I ignored the pain and stared back at death, knowing it had all meant something because, in the end, I got to save the girl.

Both of them.

Chapter47

HANNAH

Ihadn’t stopped screaming his name.

Not even when sirens filled the air and men in a familiar navy uniform pulled me from Logan’s blood-soaked body and unrecognizable face, forcing me back on shaky legs into the crowd of strangers that had gathered around us, trying to console my daughter, and now me, as the earth fell out from beneath my feet.

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