Page 152 of A Wild Darkness

“Stevie, it’s me, Hayden!” Hayden shouts in my ear in an effort to calm me, but continues to hit, he needs to let me go.

My body trembles.

I can barely breathe.

I can’t think.

Everything around me goes black, as if someone turned off the lights.

CHAPTER FORTY

STEVIE

The pounding inside my skull awakens me in a dark room. An incessant beeping of what sounds like medical monitoring devices forces my eyes open. Above me is a tufted roof, and as my eyes drag down the side of lace pillars, I realize I’m in a bed. My back straightens, shooting me upright. My head whips around the dimly lit space, illuminated by red and blue buttons on an event monitor.

“Sebastian,” I mutter, spotting him lying still in a hospital bed a few feet away from me.

The memory of Silas shooting him comes racing back. My stomach clenches at everything that happened, and I thrust forward, vomiting into a tin bucket on the floor at the side of the bed. The bile from an empty stomach burns the back of my throat as it surfaces. After two dry heaves, I grab a cold bottle of water from the nightstand and chug it.

My eyes fly back to Sebastian.

I throw off the comforter and sprint to the side of his bed. He’s hooked up to machines monitoring his heartbeat, pulse, and oxygen levels. And from my very inexperienced assumption, I can tell he’s alive, but unconscious.

He looks peaceful, but a dreadful feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. I swipe the tears from my eyes and grab his hand. It’s cold and doesn’t return my touch.

“Oh, Sebastian.” My head falls, and I let my eyes leak with pain as my heart is shattered.

Suddenly, a door swings open.

“Hello, Stevie.” A man in a white coat walks in and approaches the bedside. “I’m Dr. Charles. River and Sebastian’s personal physician.”

I swallow hard, my mind is fuzzy, but I’m able to muster the strength to ask one question. “Is he going to be okay?”

Dr. Charles glances at the monitors, then to Sebastian. “A gunshot anywhere in the chest can be fatal. But in Sebastian’s case, the bullet went through the upper part of his shoulder, to the left of his heart, missing both the organ and a main artery that runs above it.”

My eyes blink rapidly, taking it all in. “So…he’s going to be okay?”

With his lips pursed, unsure how much he can confirm this early, he nods. “We need to wait and see how his body responds and heals, but if all goes well, he should make a full recovery.”

The doctor’s words open the floodgates and water streams from both my eyes. Dr. Charles pats my back while my body is racked with sobs.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

I sniff, lifting my head to look at him. “I’m fine.”

“Drowsy?”

“Yeah, actually, and a little fuzzy,” I admit.

He nods pensively. “That’s to be expected. You took quite the hit to your head and shoulder less than twenty-four hours ago, and then Hayden had to sedate you to get you back here safely.”

Wait. What?

“What?” My blood heats. “Why would he do that?”

“You weren’t yourself, and the guys worried that they wouldn’t be able to get you out of Moore Mansion in time for the security cameras to come back up,” he explains.

A dizzy spell washes over me, and I grip the railing on the side of Sebastian’s bed.