Chapter 151 My blood

Chapter 151 My blood
Cassie
The first thing I became aware of was sound.
Beeping. Rhythmic, steady, insistent. It pulled at me from somewhere far away, dragging me up through layers of darkness like a rope hauling a drowning woman to the surface.
Then came sensation. Weight. Pressure on my chest, my arms. Something in my throat, foreign and intrusive, triggering a wave of panic that my body was too weak to act on.
Pain came next. Dull, pervasive, radiating from my right side like I'd been split open and poorly stitched back together. Which, I would later learn, wasn’t far from the truth.
Before full consciousness, before the hospital room and the tubes and the machines, there were the memories. Fragmented. Disjointed. Playing behind my closed eyelids like a film reel with half the frames missing.
Standing in Greyson's living room, my heart in my throat, watching him look at me with those eyes—green and haunted and full of the kind of regret that could break a person in half.
“I love you, Cassie. I’ve always loved you.”
Hope, sharp and terrifying, blooming in my chest. The feeling that maybe, just maybe, we could find our way back to each other. That the wreckage of the past few weeks could be rebuilt into something stronger.
And then...
Glass. Everywhere. The window behind me exploding inward, a constellation of deadly stars catching the afternoon light as they flew.
Greyson’s face transforming, horror replacing everything else.
The sound. God, the sound. Not like the movies. Louder. Sharper. Each crack a physical assault on my eardrums.
And then the impact.
I hadn’t understood at first. There was no dramatic moment of realization, no slow-motion clarity. Just a punch to my side, hard enough to spin me partially around. I’d thought maybe I’d been hit by flying glass, that a shard had struck me.
Then I’d looked down and seen the hole in my sweater. Small. Neat. Wrong.
The red had come next, spreading like spilled wine, warm and wet against my skin. I’d touched it with my fingers, lifted them to see the crimson coating my palm, and that’s when my brain had finally caught up.
I’d been shot.
Greyson, screaming my name. The sound of it raw, primal, terrified.
His arms catching me. The floor rushing up. His hands on my side, pressing hard, so hard it hurt worse than the bullet.
“Stay with me. Stay with me, baby.”
His face above mine, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his green eyes, see the tears cutting tracks through the smudges on his cheeks. When had he started crying?
“I love you too,” I’d tried to say, but the words came out wrong, garbled. Or had I said them at all? Everything was getting fuzzy, the edges of the world going soft.
The blood. So much blood. I’d never imagined a body could hold so much red. It was everywhere—on Greyson’s hands, soaking into his shirt, pooling beneath me on the hardwood floor I’d helped him pick out two years ago when we’d thought forever was a given.
Cold. I’d been so cold. My teeth chattering, my whole body shaking despite the warmth of the afternoon sun still streaming through the broken window.
“Tell me what day it is.”
Tuesday. It was Tuesday. Wasn’t it? Or had time stopped? Was I already dying?
“What’s my name?”
Greyson. His name was Greyson O’Malley. The man I loved. The man who’d broken my heart. The man whose hands were the only thing keeping me tethered to the world.

“You’re going to be fine.”

But I wasn’t. I could feel it—my life draining away, seeping out onto the floor no matter how hard he pressed. My vision was tunneling, darkness creeping in from the edges.

“I’m sorry,” I’d whispered, though I wasn’t sure for what. Sorry for showing up unannounced. Sorry for getting shot. Sorry for bleeding all over his floor. Sorry for loving him when love had proven to be such a dangerous, deadly thing.

His face crumbling. “Don’t apologize. Don’t you dare apologize. This is my fault.”

No. Not his fault. How could it be his fault? But the words wouldn’t come. Everything was slipping away—sound, sensation, the green of his eyes, the warmth of his touch.

Sirens. Red and blue lights strobing across the ceiling like a nightclub, like a party, like celebration when all I felt was the terrible heaviness of goodbye.

“I love you.”

His voice, breaking. Or was it my heart? Both, maybe. Everything breaking together in a symphony of endings.

And then...

Nothing.

The nothing lasted forever and no time at all.

I floated in it, disconnected from my body, from the world. Sometimes I heard voices Greyson’s, mostly, his words a constant murmur I couldn’t quite make out but that I felt in my bones. Anchor. Tether. Home.

Sometimes I felt hands holding mine. Warmth against the cold.

Sometimes I tried to swim back up toward consciousness, but the darkness was so heavy, and I was so tired.

And then, finally, gradually, the world began to resolve itself into something solid.

The beeping took shape—a heart monitor, I realized. My heart, still beating, stubborn and insistent.

The pressure on my chest was a ventilator, breathing for me, each mechanical breath an invasion and a salvation.

The weight on my hand was fingers. Long, warm, trembling slightly. I knew those hands. Would know them anywhere.

Greyson.

I tried to squeeze back, to let him know I was here, I was fighting, I was coming back to him. My fingers twitched. Barely a movement, but it was something.

“Cassie?”

His voice was wrecked. Hoarse and desperate and disbelieving. How long had I been out? Hours? Days?

I forced my eyes to open. It took three tries, my lids heavy as stones, but finally, blessedly, I saw light. Harsh fluorescent brightness that made me want to close them again immediately.

His face swam into view, and everything else ceased to matter.

He looked terrible. Beautiful, but terrible. His eyes were bloodshot and ringed with dark circles. Stubble shadowed his jaw. His hair stood up in places like he’d been running his hands through it obsessively. His shirt,not the one I remembered, a fresh one—still bore faint rust-colored stains at the cuffs.

My blood.

“Hey,” he whispered, and his hand came up to cup my face with a gentleness that made my heart ache. “Hey, you’re awake. You’re really awake. Thank God. Thank God.”

I tried to speak, but the tube in my throat prevented anything but a muffled, panicked sound. My hands flew to my face, to the foreign object that was making breathing both possible and unbearable.