Page 303 of Forged in the Fire
Gunshots and dust and screams.
And the only thing I could do was throw myself forward, grabbing both my guns from the floor before I crawled for Brinley through the smoke.
My heart convulsed when I felt her skin against mine. The heat. The life. The light.
Her relief saturating. Burning through me like a thousand suns.
Wildfire.
While a barrage of shots continued to rain. I covered her with my body, desperate to keep her shielded while the battle seethed around us.
Dread slithered up my spine when I suddenly felt the abhorrent presence from the side.
Too close.
I shifted my head so I could peer out that way.
Kent was on his knees. A gun aimed at me from a foot away.
I curled myself tighter around Brinley.
“Brinley. Brinley.”
I didn’t realize I was chanting it aloud.
I just needed her to hear it.
My praise.
My belief.
The unending love that poured out of me.
Just as Kent fired three shots.
SIXTY-THREE
BRINLEY
Uncountable gunshots were going off,but there were only three that I really heard.
The ones I knew impaled Silas in the back.
I could feel his big, powerful body jolt with each one.
And God, I wanted to grip onto him. Hold him and protect him and shield him the way he was shielding me, but I couldn’t even scream through the shredding agony with the gag in my mouth.
Garbled sobs battering against the soaked, balled fabric.
My hands bound between us, heavy with the hopeless need to wrap them around him.
My voice silenced when the only thing I wanted to do was beg him to be okay. Beg him to forgive me.
Go back to the beginning and trust him with every molecule of my being the way he deserved to be.
It turned out, I was the one who couldn’t be trusted. I was the one who let her pain and wounds and traumas cloud what my soul knew was the truth.
And Silas was that truth.
