Page 115 of Iced Up Love: Part Two

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“What?”

I lift my eyes to his.

And for the first time since we got her back, I can’t make my face hide what I’m thinking.

Something in his expression collapses the second he sees it.

“What?” he says again, louder now. “Zach, what?”

I look back down at her.

At the rise of her chest.

At the pause that comes after it.

Too long.

Then the next breath finally comes, thin and dragging and wrong enough that cold floods through me all at once.

No.

Not now.

Not here.

Not when we finally have her.

“Elijah,” Jackson says, and there’s panic in his voice now, raw and immediate. “Elijah!”

I press down harder without meaning to, my whole body leaning into the pressure as if I can hold her here by force.

“Come on,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m saying it to her or to myself. “Come on.”

The next breath takes too long.

twenty-six

Jackson

Time doesn’t move properly anymore.

It stretches, folds in on itself, loses shape somewhere between the moment we left that cabin and now, and I don’t know how long it’s been until I glance at the clock on the dash and realize it’s been almost forty-five minutes.

Forty-five minutes of this.

Forty-five minutes of her not waking up.

Forty-five minutes of blood soaking through Zach’s hands no matter how hard he presses.

Forty-five minutes of me talking to her without getting anything back.

“Lia,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to do, because if I stop talking then the silence will mean something I don’t want to understand. “Lia, come on, sweetheart. Just...just open your eyes for me. Just once. You don’t even have to talk. Just look at me.”

Her head shifts slightly with the movement of the car.

That’s it.

That’s all.

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