Page 29 of Wicked Mercy

They’d known that they hit us —there was no way that they couldn’t have known.

But they kept driving.

There was something about that fact that was going to nag at me, but I pushed it away so that I could focus on Brett. No matter how bad it seemed that we’d been in a hit and run, the man I loved wasn’t waking up.

I’d just spent the most amazing night with him.

I wasn’t about to lose him now.

“Brett!” Screaming, I reached back out again, gritting my teeth against the pain that shot through my wrist. A bright light flashed before my eyes when I dropped my hand onto his face to try to wake him up. The pain was so bad that I knew I could pass out, but I had to stay awake.

I had to try to wake Brett up.

Again and again I yelled his name and hit him with my hand, the bright flash of pain growing more and more intense each time. I knew that one of the times that I did it, I wasn’t going to be able to wake back up.

The pain was all-consuming.

My entire body screamed at me for rest.

Chapter 17

There was a soft beeping sound that was beginning to drive me nuts. Every time that I thought I was going to be able to fall asleep and ignore it, it sounded again. It was just loud enough to pull me out of a restful sleep, but so soft that it was almost like a lullaby.

Except that some part of me knew that it wasn’t a sound I wanted to hear.

Where had I heard that beeping before?

The answer hit me as I was beginning to open my eyes.

The last time I heard those beeping noises I had been in the hospital. That was the day that I had woken up…but my dad hadn’t.

I gasped, sucking in a huge breath of air as I threw myself up from the bed. Immediately there was a stabbing pain that launched through my entire body, almost pinning me back to the bed, but I fought against it.

I was in a hospital. I knew that I was.

I just had to find out where Brett was and make sure that he was okay.

My eyes were blurring and I raised my hands to rub them. My right hand and arm were fine, but lifting my left one felt like lifting a bucket of lead. Pain throbbed from my wrist and the huge brace put on it was itchy.

I’d broken my wrist.

Slowly, the memory of our car accident began to come back to me, but the one thing that I couldn’t remember is whether or not Brett had ever opened his eyes. If he’d answered me when I was calling him.

If he had survived the accident.

I gasped, sucking in a huge breath of air and ran my good hand across my eyes, trying to rub the blurry look out of my eyes. I had to see where I was. It had to be a hospital. That was the only thing that made sense with the beeping.

But when I finally cleared my eyes enough to see, I wasn’t in a hospital.

Mrs. Dimitri was standing at the foot of my bed, smiling at me.

“Oh, Miss Bennett, it is so good to see you moving around! We thought that you might be out for a little while longer.” She reached down and lightly touched my foot through the blankets. I jerked back, unable to help myself, but it didn’t erase the smile from her face.

“Where’s Brett?” He was all I could think about, but while I waited for her to answer, I became very aware of tubes taped to the back of my hand. I was getting fluids, and the tape on my arm was suddenly very itchy. I reached over to scratch them, but the heavy brace on my left hand suddenly weighed me down.

I hadn’t realized just how exhausted I was.

Suddenly it hit me that I should probably be in a hospital. It didn’t make any sense for Taylor Prep to bring me here, rather than to professionals, after that accident. I was surprised that I walked away from the accident.