Trapped (Bullied Book 4) (Bullied Series) Vera Hollins (best large ereader txt) 📖

And I’m going to die too.

The gunshot rang out, followed by a scream. I jerked, but there was no pain. I opened my eyes in confusion. Isaac fell to the floor and let go of the gun, blood flowing out of his stomach. I snapped my head at Blake and choked on air. The gun was raised in his hand, pointed in the direction where Isaac had stood a moment before.

“Blake!”

He was alive.

I knocked the gun away from Isaac, who was curled into a ball and holding his stomach as he whined in pain, and then I crawled to Blake, taking in the huge, gruesome wound on the top of his head. The sickening amount of blood trickled from it all over his face, making it unrecognizable. I thought I must have died and was seeing a fantasy. Blake was alive. Fresh tears streamed down my face.

“Blake, you’re alive,” I croaked, grabbing his shoulders.

He dropped his arm and looked at me with a faint smile. “You’re okay,” he whispered, his eyes fluttering shut. “Thank fuck.”

I dug my fingers into his shoulders, feeling like I was going to hyperventilate. “No, Blake. Open your eyes. Don’t close them.”

The front door burst open, and three officers appeared at the threshold with their guns drawn. “Police!” one of them said, but he stopped himself when he spotted us. “Miss? Are you okay?”

I took Blake’s hand in mine. “Please, call an ambulance,” I said quickly. “That guy”—I pointed at Isaac—“shot him in the head!”

The officer said something into his radio and stepped inside with the others, looking around the room. “The ambulance is already here.” His colleague went over to check Lawrence, while the other guy leaned over Isaac.

“Jessie…” Blake let out, his hand getting colder in mine. “I…I…”

“Save your strength and don’t talk,” I told him, smiling and brushing my tears away. “You’re going to be all right. Just hang on. The ambulance will get you to the hospital, and you’re going to be okay. I promise. I’m here with you.”

He struggled to open his eyes, and when he did, the warmth in them undid me, breaking my heart over and over again.

“You did great, Jessie…you’re so brave.”

I wiped more tears away, but they kept coming and coming. “Just like you. You saved me.”

His lips fought to hold his smile. He tried to squeeze my hand, but his grip was so weak. “I love you,” he said.

He loves me.

And that was where I lost it. I broke into more tears, sobbing, and I clutched him like he was going to disappear right this second. The paramedics rushed into the room with a stretcher and surrounded us, but I didn’t want to let go of him. I’d never even told him those exact words.

“I love you too, Blake,” I said with a heartfelt conviction, feeling it was too late. His eyes closed of their own volition, and his hand became limp in mine. My panic tripled. No, no, no, no… He had to be okay.

“Miss, you need to move so we can do our job,” someone said, pulling me away from Blake as the paramedics gathered around him.

“I love you so much,” I murmured, reaching out for him, but I grasped only thin air. “I love you, Blake.”

Don’t die.

He didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe.

“We’re losing him.”

No.

“He has no pulse.”

No, no, no.

“Start CPR.”

NO.

Someone made me sit on the couch and told me something, but I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t see anything but Blake, and it was like an eternal cold seeped into each part of me and I wasn’t living anymore. They kept compressing his chest, the motion repeating into forever as they placed pads on his chest that were connected to some small device next to him.

“Still no pulse.”

“Apply the AED.”

Everything became muffled, and as I watched them trying to revive him in the countless seconds that rushed by, I lost all hope. He wasn’t waking up.

He was dead.

It was like someone had drawn a curtain over me, and the world lost all sense.

I stared at the therapist across the desk as she wrote something on her clipboard. Each minute brought me little shards of ache. I’d been in her office for the past twenty minutes, but it felt like days, especially after that hour I spent with the emergency doctor as he examined me. I had a huge, ugly bruise where Isaac had elbowed me, but the doctor had determined there was no further damage, so I didn’t have to stay in the hospital.

He sent me to a therapist for discharge counseling, but not before I gave a detailed statement to the cops on what had happened in that house just a few hours earlier, and it was like a fresh round of torture.

Just recollecting everything was enough to suffocate me with pain, which felt like it would never end. I’d seen him die with my own eyes. Just like Emma.

“I need to see him,” I said to the therapist, anxious to get out.

She moved her gaze from her clipboard to me and offered a polite smile. “I understand, but please be patient. You need to go through a full check-up—”

“I’m fine.” I was close to bolting out and going to Blake’s room.

“There may be psychological effects—”

“There are none,” I insisted. To hell with pleasantries.

I couldn’t have cared less about niceties or whether she would see me as desperate or not. I couldn’t care after seeing the person I loved die and come back to life in front of my eyes. Not after having almost died myself.

Somehow, after all of that, all my previous insecurities and doubts seemed so trivial now. So unimportant. It didn’t matter when I was staring death in the face. It didn’t matter when my every second now was a gift—a gift from Blake because he’d saved me. He’d saved my life, completely disregarding his, and it felt like I would never be able to repay him for that. Not in a