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Her squeeze tightened. “No, please don’t leave—”
“Someone needs to be inside with you while they cut the roof off. I’m going to be that person.” I nodded with reassurance.
“I’m scared.”
“I know.” I rubbed her cheek. “But trust me, the worst is over. This is just the noisy part. I will be with you every step of the way, so there’s no need to be scared, okay. Do you trust me?”
She cracked a smile, and I took that as a positive sign, so I quickly darted around the vehicle and carefully crawled into the passenger side. The moment I took her hands in mine to better comfort her, the fear in her eyes gutted me. It sparked a memory of a similar look in my sister Brooke’s eyes after we’d lost our parents.
It was the fear of the unknown and uncertainty of what was coming.
I softly brushed my knuckles over her tear-stained cheeks while holding her other hand out of comfort.
Emotion clogged my throat until unease formed in the pit of my stomach from the magnitude of the memories flooding my psyche. I hated seeing anybody in distress.
While Jameson and his crew worked tirelessly, I grew more frustrated with every passing minute. Having been on the scene of countless accidents, I knew the process of extracting someone from a vehicle impact took time and needed to be done right, but holy fuck, I just wanted her out of here as fast as humanly possible.
“Once we have you out of here, is there anyone I can call to notify?” I asked.
Her lips pressed together, and her face scrunched up as she squeezed her eyes shut, telling me all I needed to know and confirming my earlier suspicions.
She was alone.
Chapter7
Lakelyn
My mind hadn’t stopped racing since my rental vehicle was struck by the truck whose sole intention was to run me off the road. One of Boden’s coworkers took my official statement. Although there wasn’t much to tell: blinding lights came up behind me at an excessive rate of speed. The driver moved into the oncoming lane to pass, and I eased up on the gas, but instead of doing what I thought was their original intent, the truck slammed into the side of my vehicle, causing me to lose control and spin out.
It was the last thing I remembered until I came too and found Boden at my side.
However, the sudden relief was short-lived when just how close I’d, in fact, come to experiencing a similar fate as my sister materialized and suffocated any concise and clear sense of rationalization I had left in me.
Panic had rooted itself squarely in the pit of my stomach and sprouted like wildfire through my veins, causing me to desperately anchor myself to Boden like he was a vital piece to my survival and state of mind.
When the curtain on my cubicle in the emergency room pulled back, the doctor I’d been earlier begging to let me go home finally returned and entered, holding a chart in hand. “Miss Pearce.” He looked up. “Your scans came back all clear, other than the mild concussion and some minor cuts and scrapes. You certainly had an angel looking out for you tonight.”
My heart dropped, and my eagerness to head home suddenly felt inconsequential.
Whether I went home tonight or stayed and recovered for days or months—the key takeaway was I would walk out of the hospital in one piece.
I was alive.
I was miraculously spared.
And that earnest reminder crippled me. It propelled me back a year to when my sister wasn’t as fortunate.
The pain of not being there for her, feeling utterly helpless and useless from across the country after the fact, and knowing she took her last breath by herself . . . it was all too much that I’d completely tuned the doctor out.
“Miss Pearce, did you hear me?”
I wiped away my tears with my fingers before meeting two worrying sets of eyes staring back at me.
“I—”
“She has me, Doc. I’ll take her home and monitor her overnight,” Boden addressed the doctor.
“You don’t need to do that, Boden, I’m sure—”
