Page 123 of I Promise You
I kick my heels hard against my porch. I scratch my attacker’s arms and I know it’s a man. He grunts in response and throws my body more arduously to the floor with revenge. His knee digs into my chest, pinning me to the icy floor, and he grabs my hair, pulling my head up off the wood, then smashing it back down so hard I’m seeing stars. I almost go unconscious. I groan through heavy breaths, and I feel like I’m moving in slow motion.
But then my adrenaline finally starts to kick in, and I shout again in excruciating pain.
“Help! Someone help!”
The closest neighbor I have is two miles away from here, but I’m hopeful by some miracle someone will hear me.
“Danny!” I scream for the love of my life. My protector. I hope I can hear his voice again, telling me that he’s fine. Butinstead, the last thing I hear before I black out and succumb to the toxic fumes forced into my lungs, into dark shadows that have me traumatized…is anothergunshot.
37
ARI
Ihear my brother’s guitar, but this time it sounds sad. He’s not playing our favorite song anymore. Cody Jinks plays softly, and everything is hazy, blurry, and white.
I see Danny in the same uniform he wore when he got out of the truck, with dead tulips in his hands and blood pouring out of his chest as he sits on my porch in the cold rain like day of our fight. Except, there’s no house. It’s just my porch in a blanket of black shadows.
I open my mouth to scream for him, but nothing comes out. I try to move, but I’m chained down.
He hangs his head low, looking at the flowers in his hands. Blood continuously pours out of his chest.
I hear a demonic laugh. It sounds familiar…it sounds like the Grim Reaper.
I bolt awake and jerk my body as if someone had pushed me.
It was a dream. But why am I dreaming of Danny? I only started dreaming of Paul like this when he died.
A horrifying sensation anchors down through me, straight to the ground.
This can’t mean he’s dead?
Oh, God.
Oh, no.
No.
No.
No.
My body hurts as if I was run over by a train. I’m conscious again but can feel a cold, hard surface underneath me.
“Ohhh,” I groan out loud in pain. The first thing I feel on one side of my body is burning pain. My eyes are closed, but I feel too tired to open them.
How did I get here?
My mind is still groggy, and I can’t remember anything, but when I see my scraped hands after a few hard blinks, it feels like someone just hit me with a baseball bat.
The memories of Danny holding me when he was about to say those three words make me choke up, and I’m sobbing.
The military ball.
Our time in his truck.
Two gunshots.
Danny was shot.
