Lost King Piper Lennox (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📖

trying to sit up. I shake my head and make her lie back.

“Stay still. I don’t think anything’s broken, but just in case. Okay?” I take off my sweatshirt and drape it across her. “Be right back.”

First, I go inside and shout at the phone system to activate. As soon as the 911 operator picks up, I pant the basics. My address. There was a break-in. People are hurt.

Ruby asks where I’m going as I slip past her on the deck, but I’m already halfway there—scrambling into the blood-tinged water, fighting every last instinct until I get my arms under Callum’s.

I push off at the bottom and bring us both to the surface, then drag him to the stairs.

“Oh, my God.”

I turn. Ruby’s right behind me, looking pale and sick as she takes in the massive wound on Callum’s head. Blood gushes across his face. We can’t see how deep it goes, but there’s no mistaking the strange change in profile. His skull is cracked.

“Give me my sweatshirt,” I tell her.

The rest feels slow-motion: her shaky, slipping walk back to where I left her; the tremble of her hands as she passes the sweatshirt to me; the careful way I wrap it around Callum’s head, trying to stop the blood.

The way she and I just stare at each other, breathless and silent as sirens grow close, and a wash of red and blue lights mingle with our pale green glow.

40

“Seven stitches, a little blood loss, concussion...” The doctor scans his clipboard again. “...and some soft tissue damage in the neck, right here.”

He gives a pitying smile when I flinch, even though all he did was graze my neck with his pen, and passes me the ice pack I’m supposed to be using.

“Ice and rest. A few weeks, and you’ll be good as new. You were really lucky.”

I nod, twisting the sleeve of my hospital gown between my fingers while he talks to a nurse. “How’s my...my friend?” It feels wrong, calling Theo that. I want him to be so much more, yet I know he’s even less.

He points his pen out into the ER. “Just sign these discharge papers and you can go see him.”

Without reading it, I sign everything they shove my way. I need to see Theo, even if he doesn’t want to see me.

Our moment by the pool feels too hazy. After hours in this bed answering police and getting examined, I’ve started to wonder if I dreamed the look he gave me when he saw I was all right.

Maybe I imagined it all—his lips pressed to my forehead. The happy cry of relief when he saw me open my eyes.

While I dress, the fear heightens.

There was no “moment.” Just a shared glance of survivors, a quiet and flickering pause when the worst of it was over.

Now, with the adrenaline fading, reality framed under all these fluorescent lights, he’ll remember. He can’t trust me.

I pause and rest against the edge of my bed, my winter coat making me sweat. My fingertips run up and down the zipper as I remind my hands we’re not allowed to touch him; I bite my bottom lip until it accepts we won’t be kissing him.

All I can hope for is that he’ll look at me with anything but that black-green stare. I need one ember of color.

I’m walking out of his life tonight, and I need just that little bit of comfort before I do: the knowledge I didn’t really break Theo Durham, after all. Not completely.

Outside his room, I draw a breath and touch the curtain.

I could just leave. A clean break is the only way I can even start to make all this up to him. I should leave without a trace, the way I did before.

Only this time, he’ll know better than to try and look for me.

“I see your feet, Ruby.”

I start, all the swirling thoughts in my head snapping to a standstill as I look down. Sure enough, there’s a six-inch gap between the curtain’s hem and the floor.

I open it and step inside.

His room is dimmer than mine, but not enough. The maroon stains of his eye socket and jaw, every fingerprint on his neck, stare back at me. There’s a brace on his wrist, and another on his ankle. His nose has a soft splint in place, and a cut rests in the center of his bottom lip.

“Theo….” I cover my mouth and step back, pressing my spine flat against a cabinet.

“I’m okay,” he says quickly. His voice sounds strangled. I keep picturing Callum’s hand, closing around his throat.

The gun, digging in so close to his heart.

“Don’t.” He sits up. It looks like it takes all his strength. “You didn’t do this, Ruby.”

All I can do is shake my head while the tears overtake me. Yes, Callum is to blame. No, I never predicted he’d do anything like this. But I’m the one that set it all in motion.

“Here.” Theo motions to the empty chair nearby. I don’t feel my legs take me there, but suddenly, I’m seated.

The crying won’t stop. My breathing feels out of control, and my hands shake like the entire night’s finally caught up to me.

It’s more than that, though. It’s every day since Thanksgiving. It’s every moment since that hardware store, and every year since I first found Theo Durham on the bathroom floor. All that time I spent, hating a boy I shouldn’t have.

“I’m sorry.” The words hitch with another sob. They’re so inadequate. I wish there were more ways to apologize than there are to hurt someone.

I look up when I hear movement, and the sharp sips of air he takes