Plucking the thick card stock off the table, I drew in a deep breath. The smell of freshly baked brownies—or cookies, or whatever-the-hell concoction of deliciousness she had been baking all day—filled my nose. For a woman who had burned grilled cheese the first time she’d cooked me dinner, she had developed a real flair for baking.
It was one of the few things she enjoyed. And let’s be honest, during the ultimate battle of trying to claw our way up from rock bottom, a marshmallow-graham-cracker brownie was a nice reprieve every once in a while.
“Baby, I’m home,” I called down the hall.
Like the worst guard dogs in history, Clyde and Sugar finally realized that someone else was in the house and went nuts, barking and slipping on the wood floor as they raced down the hallway. Clyde was a brindle purebred mutt while Sugar was a black teacup poodle with the temperament of a Doberman. If either of them were ever going to put up a fight, you could bet your ass it would have been Sugar. Though Clyde appeared to have some Great Dane at the deep end of his gene pool, so he’d at least look intimidating while he invited a serial killer in to play ball.
Tucking the card under my arm, I squatted down to pet them. “Hey, guys.”
Oh, and yes, Sugar was a boy. Sugarbear Thadius Michaels to be exact. Sally had had quite a few drinks that night. I had just been so damn happy to see her laughing that she could have named him Princess Pineapple and I wouldn’t have argued.
As I gave Clyde a scratch behind his ears, Sugar bounced off my legs, his paws leaving mud on my khaki slacks. I shouldn’t have gotten frustrated, but they were new pants and I’d slept exactly three hours the night before. When it came to Sally, I was past the point of what was considered creepy anymore. Staying up and watching her sleep was my favorite pastime—my only pastime.
At least she was sleeping.
Breathing.
Not in pain.
Her mind was still for the first time in weeks.
“Oh, come on, Sug,” I grumbled, pushing him away as I tried to brush the dirt off my pants. While I loved the hell out of that crazy dog, he was still a puppy and I shuddered to think where he had found mud in the house.
Looking back, I’d have given my entire life—past, present, and future—for it to have actually been mud. However, there was no mistaking the crimson-red blood smeared across my thigh.
My heart stopped as I frantically scooped the dog up, begging and praying to any and every god in the universe that he’d cut his paw or broken a toenail. Anything that would’ve made the blood his—and not hers.
See, that was what made hope a drug. After two previous suicide attempts, combined with our fight and her overall deterioration that had led up to talks of an inpatient treatment facility to begin with, it being her blood was the most likely conclusion.
But hope clouded reality. It made me believe that anything was possible.
Like maybe she was feeling better.
Maybe I was jumping to conclusions.
Maybe the woman I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with would stop fucking trying to die.
All hope was gone when the blood on Sugar’s black fur covered my arm.
I didn’t remember putting him down or dropping the card.
Nor did I remember sprinting down the hall.
I shouted her name. I was sure of it.
At some point before I reached the bedroom, I dug my phone from my pocket and dialed nine-one-one.
As much as it destroyed me, I’d mastered the process of finding her like that.
She might not have wanted to stay, but I would have done anything to keep her.
“Fuck!” I boomed as I entered the room, finding her curled into the fetal position on the bed. My bed. What I had hoped would one day be our bed. The white sheets were covered in blood. My every nightmare playing out in front of me—again.
And just when I thought my scarred and tortured heart was unable to break any more, pain from the explosion in my chest rocked me to the core.
A female dispatcher spoke in my ear. “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
With long strides, I hurried to her side and immediately checked for a pulse. It was faint, but a surge of adrenaline cleared the fog of fear from my head. “I need an ambulance. Fourteen-eleven Millstone Drive. My fiancée… She tried to kill herself.”
There were going to be more questions. Her name. Her age. How she was injured. Where she was located in the house. How long ago it had happened. Only some of which I had answers to. None of those answers would save her.
But I could.
And no matter how much she hated me for it, I always would.
