Page 5 of Not Her Day to Die (Star-Crossed #2)

M y throat hurts. It burns.

It is on fire.

Whoosh. Whir.

“Sunday?”

My eyes are sticky, sealed so tightly that for a terrifying moment I think I’ve gone blind.

A distant memory of a harmonica flitters around my subconscious.

“Get the nurse, she’s moving!”

My toes flex out, but my legs are weighed down.

Whoosh. Whir.

A cough forms in my lungs, but it’s trapped.

Panic shrouds me, the darkness creeping in.

“Her vitals–”

“Then take that fucking tube–"

“Oxygen–”

Warmth wraps around my left hand, grounds me in this instance. It squeezes a tight, comforting hold.

“She’s ready. On three. Two. One .”

My insides are being tugged violently. I attempt to squirm and thrash about, but I still can’t physically move.

Pain .

My shoulder throbs. My lungs are in agony as I cough and cough and cough .

***

After the nurse leaves, I remain still for a bit longer, adjusting to the empty hollow feeling in my throat. I do my best not to fall back into another coughing fit, swallowing down the discomfort.

My mouth tastes like paint thinner and I nearly gag.

“Here.” Axel moves closer to me, presenting a water cup with a straw. His shaggy hair is unkempt, in disarray. There are thick heavy bags under his eyes. The exhaustion I feel radiates from him in crushing waves.

“I died.” My brain isn’t fully operational, but my memories are slapping through my mind in rapid succession.

“Not this time.” Grayson leans against the hospital door. Taking up his spot as a sentinel. If Axel is exhausted, then Grayson is on death’s doorstep. His face is gaunt, his beard thicker than I have ever seen it, his shoulders slumped downwards.

Guilt eats into my gut as my eyes flicker up to him. Even past his fatigue there is a wariness in his gaze that I don’t remember. He is uncomfortable , shifting from foot to foot.

Unwelcome memories churn deep in my belly, a fork twisting and turning.

We kissed. I took his keys. I drove to my own demise. He called me.

He told me.

“But I did before. Ninety-nine times. ”

Grayson jumps forward, his attention flashing to me. “So, you do remember.”

“Just this lifetime. What you told me before, I took your car and–” I cut myself off, the memories of Julia’s body scrape their way into my mind.

Axel pulls the water away, setting it down on the table beside us. He regards me with his typical intensity as he carefully brings his hand up to my cheek. He moves languidly, slowly, as if to not startle me.

“The hundredth time is the charm,” he says.

And then the rough hot pads of his fingers are gripping my face, tugging me to him. His mouth pressing against mine, his lips scorching me, marking me.

He is consuming me, like I am the little lamb he has established me to be.

Distracting me from my own internal turmoil.

He is everywhere. Lighting my skin on fire, replacing the trauma of one hundred lifetimes, searing into my nerves. He is everything I didn’t know I needed in this instance.

A small, tiny oasis in an otherwise chaotic state.

“Cut it out,” Grayson growls.

Startled, I jerk back from Axel and cast a look over his shoulder.

Grayson has stepped closer to the bed; he reaches over it and physically tears Axel away from me.

I turn behind me waiting for Darius to break them up.

But he isn’t there.

“Darius?” I am not sure if it is the concern or the word itself, but either way, it causes the brothers to separate and turn to me.

Grayson offers an almost imperceptible head shake, and Axel clenches his jaw .

“Tell me the truth.” I need to hear it. To know what has happened. “Is he okay?” I swallow around the gravel in my throat. Reaching over, I take the water from the table and gulp down a few sips.

Grayson watches me and waits until I am done to answer. “He’s safe and alive.”

But I can tell there is more to it than that. “How can you be so sure? Where is he?”

Axel lets out an exasperated grunt. “Fucking stop beating around the bush.” He whips his focus to me, his hands clenching into tight fists. “Darius is in jail .”

My heart beats louder, faster in my chest. Each thump echoed by an eerie beep on the machines I am still connected to. “Why aren’t you rescuing him?” For the first time since I came to, I try to get up, but my body is weak and my legs are stiff from disuse.

“Darius made his choice.” Axel leans over me again, his bright eyes boring into mine. “He’s going to be fine. Can’t you fucking trust us? It’s you who almost died. You were shot.”

My vision blurs as tears form. “I’m sorry.” My emotions are a thousand broken chords, each more choppy than the last. And all of them play the most disgusting song together.

I am raw.

Grayson swears under his breath. Almost as if in a trance, he settles carefully onto the bed next to me, gathering me in his arms. “We’re here. You’re going to be okay now. Everything is going to be fine. Darius will be safe, they won’t kill him.”

“But how can you know?”

They already killed Auggie and Tripp, what would stop them from doing the same to Darius ?

I am a blubbering mess. Now that the tears have started, I can’t turn them off. I feel as if I am mourning some part of myself. As if, right now, I am letting loose the emotions of ninety-nine lives that I lived.

I try to turn away from Grayson, but then Axel is slipping carefully onto the other side of the bed. Both men are hanging precariously over the edges, using me as the anchor to hold them in place, but even still, they are gentle, aware to not jostle me.

And then Axel begins to hum a familiar tune from my childhood. It is the same one from our ride home from the river party.

“How do you know that song?” I wanted to ask him before, but I forgot.

One of probably a million things I have forgotten.

Axel nuzzles further into my side, inhaling me. Even over the harsh acrid of chemicals I can smell him. Smoke and leather.

“I learned it in an early timeline, I found that it always calmed you down. Helped you sleep.”

I shift uncomfortably in the small bed. For just a single instance, I feel as if I might suffocate, but then Grayson wraps around me further. His arms securing me in the here and now.

“Do you understand now? Why all I wanted was to keep you safe? We watched you die so many times,” Grayson grumbles into my ear.

His hot breath tickles the skin there, invades me, enters my bloodstream, ventures its way to my gut. All of the brothers have slowly filtered into me.

Except it wasn’t slowly at all.

“How long have you lived through this?” The question slips out on its own.

“Years.” Axel’s arm wraps over me, above Grayson’s. “Now you need to get some rest.”

“But Darius– ”

“His lawyer spoke to Grayson earlier. His bail hearing is in a few days. We can’t do anything until then.”

I want to argue, to scream and shout. Darius needs us. How many days has he been alone in a jail cell?

I have hundreds of swirling emotions, thousands of questions, millions of prickling stabs of anxiety.

But I am exhausted. Even though I haven’t been awake long, my body is not cooperating with me.

Axel‘s arms tighten, tugging me closer to him, my face burrowing into his chest.

My throat is still raw, my mouth dry, my body a mess, but here, wedged between the two brothers, I allow myself to relax.

I can’t do anything if my body isn’t healed.

My eyes flicker over Axel’s shoulder to the door of the hospital room. To the large glass window in the middle.

There’s movement, and I think perhaps the nurse will come in and separate us, but then it’s gone. My blinks are longer and longer as Axel continues to hum.

And just as unconsciousness takes hold, I see a shimmer of light leading from me to the hospital door. To the person that is, once more, standing on the other side.