Page 870 of Coal Hearts

My heart kept labouring. My lungs kept inflating.

Not dead.

Why am I not fucking dead?!

Pure fury roared through me that these cunts couldn’t even kill me right.

But then my eyes opened.

And death paused.

The white light summoning me snuffed out. The wooziness and weakness all vanished.

“I-Ily?”

A hallucination. A mirage. A pretty convincing one but not real.

Christ, how I wish you were real.

Grabbing her in my arms, I waited for the vision to puff into nothingness. I clung to her, begging her to take me with her.

Only...she didn’t disappear. She didn’t leave me like she had before.

I froze and tore back. With shaking hands, I cupped her cheeks and stared into her golden glowing eyes. “A-Are you truly here? How—how is this possible?”

She broke into sobs and crawled into me. “It’s me. It’s me. God, Henri.”

She kissed me with a million kisses. She shuddered in my arms and touched every inch of my bloody skin.

Q stepped out of the smoke behind her.

Behind him, a mountain of corpses hinted he’d been busy before I’d arrived.

For a second, every cell in my body touched pure happiness.

But then the darkness swooped.

And claimed me.

Chapter Thirty-Three

...............................

Ily

––––––––

IT TOOK FOUR DAYS FOR HENRI to wake up.

I didn’t like to think it was karma giving me a dose of my own medicine. Teaching me how helpless and lost Henri would’ve felt seeing me in bed, unable to be reached.

I never left his bedside. Q put him in the same bedroom where I’d recovered. The silver-and-white decor was so bright and cheery compared to the melancholy worry in my heart.

Once again, I found myself housed in a great château in France—getting in the way as doctors sewed up Henri’s leg and arm, gave him intravenous antibiotics, and anything else his body needed to stay alive. They removed his bloody cast, leaving the bump from his healing bone visible, adding yet another injury to his long list.

On the fourth morning with him mumbling in his sleep but refusing to open his eyes, the door opened, and a beautiful blonde stepped in. I’d met her before. Yet we hadn’t talked much.

Tess, Q’s wife, carried a tray with a delicious-looking club sandwich and some homemade fries. Placing it on the bedside table, she gave me a soft smile. “How’re you doing?”