Page 166 of Cara

The car. In the car.

I desperately want to scream the words, but they’re trapped in the back of my throat. My breaths come quick and shallow, each inhalation tightening my chest.

Xavier pulls me, broken and bloody, onto his lap, panting as I cry out, finally sensing the foreign object within me. He holds me as if it hurts him more than it hurts me.

His face becomes an eerie shade of pale. He clasps my face, the tremor in his hands betraying his fear. When he speaks, his voice quivers slightly, and though his head is steady, his eyes are swarmed with fright. They dart like a trapped animal at the emptiness around us. “Sophie, look at me. Fucking look at me. I need to get you out of here.”

My eyes are closing, too heavy to resist.

His hair is drenched to the scalp as the steady rain mingles with the blood of the dead. “Sophie, no. No, open your eyes!”

I’m able to recognize the precise moment I begin to lose my senses, and that’s when terrified words begin spilling from my trembling lips. “I can’t feel my legs. I can’t?—”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Xavier hysterical. Terrified, yes. Panicked, many times. But this?

He can’t catch his breath, choking every time he looks at the weapon lodged in my stomach.

I’m slipping right through his fingers.

“I’m dying.” I lose track of how many times I say it.

“No, you’re not. Don’t say that. You’ll be okay. I… I can fix this. I can?—”

When the words he’s muttering under his breath plummet to chilling silence, rendering him speechless, gaping, trying to find a way to change what’s happened, knowing all the while that he will fail, that’s when I know this is bad. Really bad.

“I’m sorry.” The apologies I whisper won’t change the fact that I’ve replaced his death with mine, his sacrifice. Aware that will destroy him, I can only say, “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” A cry rips from his chest, as if the pain is splitting him in two. “Whydid you come here? Why did you do this? Not you. Notyou.”

My lips are going numb, yet I find myself gasping out the desperate words he must hear, even as he pleads for me to stop, his fear creeping in to shatter him.

He grasps my face, imploring me to keep my eyes on him.

Framed by a stormy sky, he embodies the dark angel who shadowed my every move over the past four years.

He is beaten, bloody, bruised—andalive.

He’s alive.

The man I love more than life itself is rocking back and forth, unable to breathe. “We dietogether. Together, you hear me? Don’t do this to me. Youcan’tdo this to me!”

When my eyes fall closed, Xavier shakes me hard enough to pull me back, forcing me to confront the reality that resides in his eyes. That he isn’t going to board that plane without me. That he’ll meet his fate right here with me if I don’t fight hard enough.

I watch despair turn into blistering rage, his eyes darkening with uncontrollable fury.

“Youwon’tdie,” he growls, his voice a chilling whisper, as if he’s ready to deny the universe one more soul.

He says it again, sharper, before he hauls me into his arms, no time to be gentle. Every time he moves, the blade twists a little deeper. That’s what finally takes me under.

As darkness descends, his fierce refusals fill the vast void.

Fuck no.

You’re not going to die on me.

Not today.

Nottoday.