Page 114 of Promised to the Cowboy

One second they are fixed on my face—one blue, one green, terrified but there. The next, they’re empty.

“Gabe?” His body goes slack beneath my hands. “No.”

I press my fingers to the side of his throat. Nothing.

I move them, searching again because I must be wrong. Because a pulse cannot simply disappear beneath my fingertips. Because his chest was rising a second ago.

“Ethan.”

My voice doesn’t sound like mine.

Ethan is beside me instantly. His fingers replace mine at Gabriel’s neck. His face changes. “Cardiac arrest.”

My world shatters into before and after.

“Start compressions,” somebody says.

Maybe Ethan. Maybe me.

I put both hands over Gabriel’s chest.

Ethan catches my wrists. “I’ve got him.”

“I can do it.”

“I know. Move to his head and keep talking to him.”

“I’m not leaving him.”

“You’re not leaving. Move.”

His voice cuts through the panic. I scramble around Gabriel’s shoulder and cup his face in both hands while Ethan locks his palms over Gabriel’s sternum.

The first compression drives Gabriel’s body into the ground. The second jerks his shoulders.

“Come on,” Ethan says through clenched teeth.

He counts. Fast. Precise.

My mind refuses the sight of it. Gabriel flat on his back in the dirt. His face too still. Ethan’s hands forcing his heart to do what it has forgotten.

“I’m here,” I tell him. My voice shakes so badly the words break apart. “I’m right here. You hear me?”

The helicopter lands hard behind us.

Rotor wash tears across the field, flattening the grass and whipping my hair into my eyes. The pilot’s door opens before the blades have slowed, and Jacob jumps out.

He runs toward us. I have never seen the old man move that fast.

“What happened?”

“Taser,” Ethan says without breaking rhythm. “He arrested.”

Jacob looks down at his son and freezes. Recognition hits him first. Then terror. Then something older.

Then he drops to his knees. “Let me.”

Ethan looks up. “I’m trained.”