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 her 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.