Lucas : A Preston Brothers Novel (Book 1)(51)
“The ones with the removable tip on the pointer finger so he could still play games on your iPad,” she remembers out loud.
I bite my lip, nod once. “You looked up at something on the television and laughed, and I remember staring at you, thinking that you had the power to change my mood with a single sound. Your laugh.”
“Luke,” she breathes, tears threatening to fall.
“You went back to knitting… sixteen clicks of your needles, eight seconds, and my heart flipped. And I just knew. I knew I’d fallen in love for the first time. For the last time.”
I taste her tears on her lips when she kisses me, her arms around my neck, holding me tight. But then she pulls away, and when I open my eyes, I see it's not by choice. Cooper Kennedy is here, and his hand is on her shoulder, and he looks like fucking death—as if he hasn't slept for days, and going by what Laney’s told me, he probably hasn’t. He's shaking, twitching. “Lo, I need to talk to you. Just one minute, please.”
I separate them, step in front of her. “What the hell are you doing? Get out!” But he doesn’t see me; his scattered gaze is on Laney.
“Please, Lo,” he fucking begs, his hands clasped in front of him.
Lane steps beside me. “What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
Cooper looks around. “Not here.”
My rage boils, bursts. “Fuck off!”
“Fuck you!” he shouts, then looks at Lane. “I just want one goddamn minute! After everything we were, you can’t even give me that?”
He’s fucking insane if he thinks I’m going to let Laney go anywhere with him. “You need to leave!”
“Luke.” Lane’s hand is on my arm, forcing me to face her. “I’ll be back in—”
“No, Lane!”
“Please.” Those eyes, those eyes, they ruin me.
I look away. “Fine. Go.”
She blows out a breath, looks between us. To me, she says, “Please don’t leave.” As if I would. I let her go, and I stand in the middle of the dance floor, my hands in my pockets, watching my girl leave with another guy.
He asked for one minute with her.
It’s now been two.
Three…
And on the eighteenth second of the third minute, Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
You see it on the news. Read about it on the Internet. But you never think it’ll happen to you.
School shootings don’t happen in our town.
In our school.
Everyone runs, everyone searches.
And all I can think is LaneyLeoLogan.
I start shouting their names, shoving people out of the way.
“LaneyLeoLogan!”
Everyone’s screaming, crying.
There’s no fucking protocol for this.
My eyes dart everywhere all at once, my pulse thumps in my ears.
“LaneyLeoLogan!”
It’s a sea of people rushing out the door, teachers screaming, shouting to stay calm.
There is no calm.
Not here.
Not now.
I run one direction, then another, back again.
Always looking.
“LaneyLeoLogan!”
Someone shoves me from behind, their scream ringing in my ears.
“Lucas!” Leo shouts, running toward me.
I check his body, head to toe, head to toe. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
He shoves my hands away. “I’m okay. Where’s Logan?”
“I don’t know!” I shout. “LaneyLogan! LaneyLogan! LaneyLogan!”
People run again, back into the room, into me. “Lucas!” Logan cries, and I exhale, relieved. He falls to the floor, gets trampled. I run to him, shove everyone out of the way, and pull him toward me. “Leo!” he cries, hugging his brother.
His tears are fat, falling fast. He’s so fucking scared.
This shouldn’t be happening.
“What’s going on?” He’s crying so hard I can barely make out the words, not because he’s high, but because he’s fucking fifteen. He shouldn’t be experiencing this.
None of us should.
“Are you okay?” Leo yells. “Are you hurt?”
Logan shakes his head.
“Laney!” I’m on my toes, searching the sea of scared bodies. I look to my brothers, fear squeezing my throat shut. “Where the fuck is Laney?”
People line the back wall, sitting, hugging, crying.
I search for periwinkle, search for Laney. “Laney!”
“Preston! Get against the wall!” Coach Anderman yells. “Now!”
I turn to Leo. “Take Logan and go!”
“No!”
“I’m not fucking around, Leo. Go!”
“Luke!” someone shouts, but it’s not the voice I want to hear. Garray charges toward me, his body slamming into mine. He grasps my shoulders, gets in my vision.
“Laney!” I roar.
“Luke!” He’s pushing me back, his body blocking me. “Laney…” he huffs.
I can no longer see, blinded by fear. “Where the fuck is she?”
He wipes his eyes against his arm. “She’s outside, Luke… you shouldn’t go out—”
I push him away and run for the door.
Two seconds.
Seven steps.
My heart stops.
I drop to my knees.
“Laney!”
There’s no more periwinkle purple, just crimson red.
Blood everywhere.
Those eyes, those eyes, they ruin me.
I pick her up off the ground.
Blood everywhere.
Her legs, her torso, her mouth.
Blood everywhere.
“No! Laney! Please please please.”
She coughs blood.
Once.
Twice.
I hear, “I’m sorry, Lo! I didn’t want this. I love you. Fuck!”
Crimson red behind my eyes.
Rage.
Murder.
Cooper’s pacing the sidewalk, his hands behind his head, gun still in his grasp.
I don’t know how it happens.
How I rush toward him.
How I knock him to the ground.
Rage.
How I punch his face, over and over.
Kick him, over and over.
Murder.
Garray grips my arms, pulling me back.
Cooper doesn’t move.
Not an inch.
I run back to Laney.
Sweet, naive, innocent Laney.
I drop to my knees again. “Lane!”
Blood bubbles from her lips, tears form in her eyes. A single word: “Help.”
I pick up her hand, search for a pulse.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Those eyes, those eyes.
Are gone.
Chapter Thirty-Four
LUCAS
In seven minutes, we went from moving, as one, under snowflakes made of silk and twinkling lights and disco balls to hanging on, as one, lost in a sea of red and blue lights.
In the back of the ambulance, I hold her hand, I plead, I bargain for her life—for her to stay with me.
I’m told to move, to let some guy in a uniform holding a needle do his job, and so I sit in the corner and I cower and I beg and I break down. Cry.
The driver speaks into the radio, says he has a “female, eighteen to twenty, multiple GSWs, pulse weak, eta: six minutes.”
Six fucking minutes.
It’s too long, we’re going too slow, and there’s blood everywhere, blood everywhere, on my hands, on my face, on my tux, on my shirt, on my periwinkle tie to go with her crimson red dress, and the uniformed guy is in my face, his voice the only calm in an ocean of riptides. “Talk to her. Keep her with us, son.”
I stand, hunched, my body not made to fit in such small spaces, and I take Laney’s hand and I choke. I look up at the man meant to save lives, and I ask, “What do I say?”
He answers, “Give her a reason to stay.”
So I look down at her face, a face I’ve loved before love had a meaning, and I ignore the blood trickling from her mouth, down her cheek, to her neck. I tell her, “You stepped out of your dad’s car in your denim shorts and bright red flip-flops and t-shirt with a picture of a cat that said Look at meow. I’m getting pay purr.” I wipe my eyes with my bloodstained hands and blink through the pain. “I thought it was hilarious, but I didn’t want to laugh because I didn’t want you to think I was laughing at you. When Mom introduced us all, you stood there and looked around and I could see you counting the kids in your head. I was counting, too. Counting down the seconds until Mom said my name and when you looked at me, you just stopped. You stopped counting the kids, and I stopped counting the time and I wanted to know everything about you.” I push through a sob cracking my open heart. “Our eyes locked and I think, in a way, they’ve never left. It’s been years, Laney, and I’ve never stopped looking at you, looking to you, and I don’t want to stop. Not now. Not ever. And I need to see your eyes and I need to hear your laugh and I need you. I need to love you. And I need to love you right.”
It takes seven minutes to get to the hospital. Not six. I go from twinkling lights and disco balls to a sea of red and blue to sterile, bright white, waiting room lights. They don't allow me to go farther, and I save what fight I have left for Laney's life, not for those who are trying to save her life. I sit by the huge swinging doors they rushed her through and grasp my hair. It’s so quiet now. Wonderwall changed to gunshots changed to screams changed to sirens, and now I'm here and it's too fucking quiet. Another gurney comes through the doors and it’s suddenly loud and it’s Cooper fucking Kennedy and I stand and I kick at the fucking gurney like I kicked at his head. I lose my shoe, but I don’t do any damage and he’s rushed behind the swinging doors, his life treated as if its value holds the same as Laney’s. It doesn’t. And then Brian.