“Luke,” she breathes, tears threatening to fall.
“You went back to knitting… sixteen clicks of your needles, eight seconds, and my heart flipped. And I just knew. I knew I’d fallen in love for the first time. For the last time.”
I taste her tears on her lips when she kisses me, her arms around my neck, holding me tight. But then she pulls away, and when I open my eyes, I see it's not by choice. Cooper Kennedy is here, and his hand is on her shoulder, and he looks like fucking death—as if he hasn't slept for days, and going by what Laney’s told me, he probably hasn’t. He's shaking, twitching. “Lo, I need to talk to you. Just one minute, please.”
I separate them, step in front of her. “What the hell are you doing? Get out!” But he doesn’t see me; his scattered gaze is on Laney.
“Please, Lo,” he fucking begs, his hands clasped in front of him.
Lane steps beside me. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
Cooper looks around. “Not here.”
My rage boils, bursts. “Fuck off!”
“Fuck you!” he shouts, then looks at Lane. “I just want one goddamn minute! After everything we were, you can’t even give me that?”
He’s fucking insane if he thinks I’m going to let Laney go anywhere with him. “You need to leave!”
“Luke.” Lane’s hand is on my arm, forcing me to face her. “I’ll be back in—”
“No, Lane!”
“Please.” Those eyes, those eyes, they ruin me.
I look away. “Fine. Go.”
She blows out a breath, looks between us. To me, she says, “Please don’t leave.” As if I would. I let her go, and I stand in the middle of the dance floor, my hands in my pockets, watching my girl leave with another guy.
He asked for one minute with her.
It’s now been two.
Three…
And on the eighteenth second of the third minute, Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
You see it on the news. Read about it on the Internet. But you never think it’ll happen to you.
School shootings don’t happen in our town.
In our school.
Everyone runs, everyone searches.
And all I can think is LaneyLeoLogan.
I start shouting their names, shoving people out of the way.
“LaneyLeoLogan!”
Everyone’s screaming, crying.
There’s no fucking protocol for this.
My eyes dart everywhere all at once, my pulse thumps in my ears.
“LaneyLeoLogan!”
It’s a sea of people rushing out the door, teachers screaming, shouting to stay calm.
There is no calm.
Not here.
Not now.
I run one direction, then another, back again.
Always looking.
“LaneyLeoLogan!”
Someone shoves me from behind, their scream ringing in my ears.
“Lucas!” Leo shouts, running toward me.
I check his body, head to toe, head to toe. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
He shoves my hands away. “I’m okay. Where’s Logan?”
“I don’t know!” I shout. “LaneyLogan! LaneyLogan! LaneyLogan!”
People run again, back into the room, into me. “Lucas!” Logan cries, and I exhale, relieved. He falls to the floor, gets trampled. I run to him, shove everyone out of the way, and pull him toward me. “Leo!” he cries, hugging his brother.
His tears are fat, falling fast. He’s so fucking scared.
This shouldn’t be happening.
“What’s going on?” He’s crying so hard I can barely make out the words, not because he’s high, but because he’s fucking fifteen. He shouldn’t be experiencing this.
None of us should.
“Are you okay?” Leo yells. “Are you hurt?”
Logan shakes his head.
“Laney!” I’m on my toes, searching the sea of scared bodies. I look to my brothers, fear squeezing my throat shut. “Where the fuck is Laney?”
People line the back wall, sitting, hugging, crying.
I search for periwinkle, search for Laney. “Laney!”
“Preston! Get against the wall!” Coach Anderman yells. “Now!”
I turn to Leo. “Take Logan and go!”
“No!”
“I’m not fucking around, Leo. Go!”
“Luke!” someone shouts, but it’s not the voice I want to hear. Garray charges toward me, his body slamming into mine. He grasps my shoulders, gets in my vision.
“Laney!” I roar.
“Luke!” He’s pushing me back, his body blocking me. “Laney…” he huffs.
I can no longer see, blinded by fear. “Where the fuck is she?”
He wipes his eyes against his arm. “She’s outside, Luke… you shouldn’t go out—”
I push him away and run for the door.
Two seconds.
Seven steps.
My heart stops.
I drop to my knees.
“Laney!”
There’s no more periwinkle purple, just crimson red.
Blood everywhere.
Those eyes, those eyes, they ruin me.
I pick her up off the ground.
Blood everywhere.
Her legs, her torso, her mouth.
Blood everywhere.
“No! Laney! Please please please.”
She coughs blood.
Once.
Twice.
I hear, “I’m sorry, Lo! I didn’t want this. I love you. Fuck!”
Crimson red behind my eyes.
Rage.
Murder.
Cooper’s pacing the sidewalk, his hands behind his head, gun still in his grasp.
I don’t know how it happens.
How I rush toward him.
How I knock him to the ground.
Rage.
How I punch his face, over and over.
Kick him, over and over.
Murder.
Garray grips my arms, pulling me back.
Cooper doesn’t move.
Not an inch.
I run back to Laney.
Sweet, naive, innocent Laney.
I drop to my knees again. “Lane!”
Blood bubbles from her lips, tears form in her eyes. A single word: “Help.”
I pick up her hand, search for a pulse.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Those eyes, those eyes.
Are gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
LUCAS
In seven minutes, we went from moving, as one, under snowflakes made of silk and twinkling lights and disco balls to hanging on, as one, lost in a sea of red and blue lights.
In the back of the ambulance, I hold her hand, I plead, I bargain for her life—for her to stay with me.
I’m told to move, to let some guy in a uniform holding a needle do his job, and so I sit in the corner and I cower and I beg and I break down. Cry.
The driver speaks into the radio, says he has a “female, eighteen to twenty, multiple GSWs, pulse weak, eta: six minutes.”
Six fucking minutes.
It’s too long, we’re going too slow, and there’s blood everywhere, blood everywhere, on my hands, on my face, on my tux, on my shirt, on my periwinkle tie to go with her crimson red dress, and the uniformed guy is in my face, his voice the only calm in an ocean of riptides. “Talk to her. Keep her with us, son.”
I stand, hunched, my body not made to fit in such small spaces, and I take Laney’s hand and I choke. I look up at the man meant to save lives, and I ask, “What do I say?”
He answers, “Give her a reason to stay.”
So I look down at her face, a face I’ve loved before love had a meaning, and I ignore the blood trickling from he
r mouth, down her cheek, to her neck. I tell her, “You stepped out of your dad’s car in your denim shorts and bright red flip-flops and t-shirt with a picture of a cat that said Look at meow. I’m getting pay purr.” I wipe my eyes with my bloodstained hands and blink through the pain. “I thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t want to laugh because I didn’t want you to think I was laughing at you. When Mom introduced us all, you stood there and looked around and I could see you counting the kids in your head. I was counting, too. Counting down the seconds until Mom said my name and when you looked at me, you just stopped. You stopped counting the kids, and I stopped counting the time and I wanted to know everything about you.” I push through a sob cracking my open heart. “Our eyes locked and I think, in a way, they’ve never left. It’s been years, Laney, and I’ve never stopped looking at you, looking to you, and I don’t want to stop. Not now. Not ever. And I need to see your eyes and I need to hear your laugh and I need you. I need to love you. And I need to love you right.”
It takes seven minutes to get to the hospital. Not six. I go from twinkling lights and disco balls to a sea of red and blue to sterile, bright white, waiting room lights. They don't allow me to go farther, and I save what fight I have left for Laney's life, not for those who are trying to save her life. I sit by the huge swinging doors they rushed her through and grasp my hair. It’s so quiet now. Wonderwall changed to gunshots changed to screams changed to sirens, and now I'm here and it's too fucking quiet. Another gurney comes through the doors and it’s suddenly loud and it’s Cooper fucking Kennedy and I stand and I kick at the fucking gurney like I kicked at his head. I lose my shoe, but I don’t do any damage and he’s rushed behind the swinging doors, his life treated as if its value holds the same as Laney’s. It doesn’t. And then Brian.
He’s wild, frantic, just like I am on the inside. On the outside, I try to stay calm. For him. “What happened, Luke?”
I stand.
I puke.
On his clothes.
On mine.
Blood everywhere.
Puke everywhere.
And then I lean against the wall and I cry and I puke and I cry some more.
Leo and Logan are next and they try to pull me away from my tears and my vomit and try to force me to sit on the chairs, but I choose the floor while Brian paces. Questions.
My brothers don’t ask questions.
Brian makes a phone call.
My dad arrives. Lucy, Cameron, and my other brothers in tow.
Lachlan’s in his pajamas, dinosaurs shaped like numbers, and he looks at the blood and the puke and he ignores them both and sits down next to me, his tiny hand on my knee and his head on my shoulder and I cry. Then he says, “I thought it was you.” And he cries.
I cry.
Brian cries.
Lucy cries.
The quiet that was too quiet is now too loud because a woman just entered, wailing for her son. “Where’s my son? Cooper?” She gets ushered through the doors I’m forbidden from entering, and my heart throbs and my head throbs and everything throbs and it hurts. It hurts so fucking much, and I cry harder and Lachlan cries harder. I hold him tight, tell him, “It’s okay.” It’s not. No one knows what’s happening. Brian’s asking questions no one has answers to. And then blue and red lights from outside filter into the room and two cops march in, their footsteps heavy, their focus on me and I know why they’re here. I’ve been waiting. They say my name, and I slip on the puke and the blood as I come to a stand the same time Lachlan screams my name. The larger of the cops reveals a set of handcuffs and I shake my head, look down at Lachlan and like Laney’s eyes, his tears, his tears, they ruin me.
“Please,” I whisper. I cry some more. “I’ll go wherever you need, but please don’t cuff me in front of my brothers.”
They hear my plea, give me grace, and I walk with my head down to the backseat of the police cruiser, ignoring the cries and questions from my family.
Misty’s at the police station, in uniform, on duty. She stands just inside the door as if she knows, as if she’s been waiting for me. “Lucas,” she says, her voice hoarse. Then she looks at the two officers who escorted me in here, cuffs on. “I’ll do the processing.”
It's all a blur.
She speaks, but I barely hear her.
“Assault.”
“Remand.”
“Court.”
“Bail.”
“Hearing.”
These are all words she says and words I don’t care about.
She asks to take my prints. I let her. I have no choice.
She asks to take my statement.
I tell her I can’t. Not now.
She understands.
I look down at her desk, at the scattered paperwork and half-filled coffee cup. She’d recently been promoted to senior deputy, I remember Lane telling me. There’s a framed picture of her and Brian and a smaller one of her and Lane stuck to the edge of her computer monitor. I stare at the picture, at the life in Lane’s eyes, and I force myself to breathe. I don’t have control of my body, of my emotions. I’m dull, weak, and waiting. The tears well again and the puke rises, but I manage to keep it down. “Have you heard anything?” I ask.
She clears her throat, scoots closer, starts to uncuff me. “Four gunshot wounds. Three to her legs. One to her abdomen. The paramedics on the scene said she was lucky to be alive when they got there. She'd lost a lot of blood.” Misty chokes on a sob but maintains her professionalism. “Lois is strong. She'll fight this. She has you to come back to.”
“Where is she now?”
“They’re operating on her. It could be hours until we hear anything.”
I rub my wrists, now free of the handcuffs. “And Cooper?” I ask.
Rage.
Murder.
She sighs. “He’ll be fine, Luke. He’ll survive.”
Finally, my eyes lock on hers. “Do you believe in fate, Misty?”
She forces a smile but doesn't give me an answer.
“My mother believed so boldly in fate, and if this is my fate, I’ll wear it. But this can’t be Lane’s fate because the world isn’t ready to lose her.” I glance back at the picture of Lane. “Then again, the world wasn’t ready to lose my mom, either.
The blood on my clothes is still damp, but the blood on my hands is not.
At some point between the hospital and this waiting cell at the police station, it managed to become nothing more than red flakes on my palms and fingers. I can feel it on my face, too, mixing with the tears now soaked into my skin. I wonder how the others in the cell see me—barely a man, huddled in the corner of the room, bloodstained tux, and a missing shoe—and I imagine, for a moment, the thoughts and stories that run through their minds.
Maybe I was in a wreck, drunk.
Maybe I was in a fight, drunk.
Maybe I tried to kill someone.
I try not to think about it for too long, the repercussions of my actions beyond my mental capacity. So I stare down at the floor in front of me, the sole of my single bloody shoe print leading to where I sit, like a road map to my demise, and I think about the only thing that makes sense.
I think about her.
And I wonder if I’ll ever get the image, the feel, of her limp body in my arms out of my system.
Sixteen clicks.
Eight seconds.
That’s how long it took me to realize I’d been in love with her for four years.
Eight, life-changing seconds.
It’s also the exact length of time it took to lose her.
Chapter Thirty-Five
LUCAS
Lucy was three when I was born. I was the same age when Mom gave birth to Leo. A year after him, she had Logan. To say she had her hands full is an understatement. By the time Logan came around, Lucy was six and already at school so it was just the boys at home. To stop me from running around destroying everything in my path, Mom would pick me up and place me in Leo’s crib. I’d grip onto the bars and
watch through the gaps as Mom changed their diapers, got them dressed. When Leo was all clean, she’d put him in with me, and I’d find ways to make him laugh. Then Mom would bring us Logan, and she’d say, every time, “Be gentle, boys. He’s just a baby.”
Fifteen years later, I’m behind a different set of bars, but I’m doing the same thing: watching them.
A few seconds ago, I heard Leo yell, “Misty!” and found the strength to stand up and see what was happening. Part of a wall blocked my view so I couldn’t see everything, but I could see them.
According to the clock opposite the cell, I’ve only been locked in for five minutes. And the processing took less than an hour. There shouldn’t be any news on Laney yet. Unless… I couldn’t even process unless.
“Misty!” Logan shouts, and fear squeezes my insides.
A gruff, male voice tries to settle my brothers. “You boys can’t be here.”
“Misty! Misty!” Logan repeats, his voice carrying through the air.
A moment later, Misty walks past the cell, her eyes narrowed, first at me, then my brothers. She asks, once behind the front desk, “What’s going on here?”
Leo doesn’t respond. He just pokes her shoulder. She steps back, surprised. Then Logan yells, “Whore!”
Two officers appear from nowhere and start to kick them out, but Leo says, “That’s assaulting a member of the police, right? Shouldn’t we be detained or something?” His voice breaks, his tone desperate. “Right, Misty?” And through the haze, through the fog, it all becomes clear. My head drops forward, smacks against the bars, and I do it again and again because I don’t want them here and I don’t want them to see me. Not now. Not like this.
“I got it,” Misty tells the officers. She grabs my brothers by the arms and leads them to the cell where I let go of the bars and step back, waiting for them to slide open and for my brothers to join me. To me, she says, “I’m off for the rest of the night to be with Brian at the hospital. As soon as we know anything…” she trails off. The bars clank closed, echo off the walls, and I don’t know how long I stand there, looking down at the floor, shame and fear continuing to build inside me. I look at my hands, at the blood, and without a word, I sit back down in the same spot, drowning in the same fear. Leo’s the first to join me, sitting to my right. Logan’s next, sitting to my left, and I finally manage to speak. “What are you guys doing here?”