Page 2 of Splintered Security (Aspen & Evergreen #2)

upside-down snow angel

Anni

I feel like I’m underwater when I come to. My head might as well be a lead ball, weighted and thrumming. The throbbing between my ears is the pound of blood flowing. I can hear my pulse thumping against my eardrums. There’s pressure inside me only a scream will relieve. Or I wish it could.

I scream. I hear it in my head but I don’t hear it otherwise. I’m trapped inside a muted silence and unable to escape the pressure in my skull.

Blackness surrounds me as I lie face down, my cheek smashed against the wet tile floor, fighting to open my eyes. When I do, I’m met with confetti drifting around me.

Acrid burning metal and ash fill my lungs and I cough, trying to expel what’s foreign from them, only to suck in the sludge from the floor. I wish I weren’t awake. If I were unconscious, I couldn’t smell the tang of singed… is that flesh? I would be able to hear, to see, to move.

Panic sets in hard and fast when the numbness in my body registers. I can’t move. Why can’t I move ?

I scream again. And again, no sound escapes me.

I flail, but my arms and legs won’t budge. My ears buzz, my skin feels anesthetized, and my limbs won’t move. Everything in me feels wrong, disconnected, and my fear ratchets to levels I’ve never felt before.

And believe me, I know fear. I’m living with a terror that hangs over my head as sharp as the blade of a guillotine. The last month has been held together by anxiety, panic, and the sheer will to live like no other time in my life.

And in this moment, it all comes to a head.

The tears escape, rolling from my eyes, over my cheeks and nose, and onto the cold, wet, slime-covered floor. My chest heaves, and my body wracks with the force of trying to breathe through the dread.

He’s found me.

Or he’s killed me.

That last one can’t be right. I’m alive.

Alive enough to scream and to cry.

Alive enough to fear.

Alive enough to know that I have to move or I’m fucked.

I arc my arms like I’m making an upside-down snow angel, seeking the most available space, and scramble. Using everything I have and everything I am, I pull my body to slide out from whatever has me pinned. My shoulder wrenches in the worst possible angle, and I groan at the pain.

It doesn’t matter .

I can cry and keep going.

I can hurt and keep moving.

Pull, push, slide.

Roll, shimmy, jerk.

Aside from slicing my own legs off, nothing is off limits.

The sweat pouring from me brings me back to reality. It’s slick and sticky on my back. I heave, trying to slide out from the source of what pins me, but my hand skids on the sweat, and I slip.

“Fuck. Shit. Dammit.”

“Mouth.”

Um, what? I’d be insulted, but I’m so relieved I can hear that the tears flow again. I reach up to brush them away, but red fills my vision and everything stops.

Blood.

“So much blood.”

Talking to myself is nothing new, but hearing a response is utterly unexpected.

“Yours or mine? And, are you okay?”

“Ren?”

“Yeah, Squirt.”

“Oh my God, Ren.” The sobs come again in earnest. “Are you okay?”

“I asked you first.” His voice is muffled and far away.

I pause before answering. I need the time to reassess. The weight above me is solid as his warmth suffuses my clothes in a cocoon. There’s a rhythm to the rise and fall at my back.

“I’m…. I don’t know. I thought I was dead. Then I realized I was pinned and started fighting to free myself. I can’t see much, and my shoulder is screaming. The blood is new. You?”

“Well—” There’s a grunt, and cool air hits my back like air conditioning on sweaty clothes. “Don’t move,” he says as a hand roams gingerly across my back.

I try to roll, only to have a hand clamp down at the base of my neck.

“Don’t. Move.” The words are growled out with a violence I’ve never heard from my brother’s best friend. Well, his former best friend.

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Bossy.”

“Not that you’ve ever listened.”

Oh, I listened. I listened to every last word he ever said. The Squirt s, the she’s my best friend’s baby sister s , the like a sister to me s. I heard every word. And each one struck my heart like an assassin’s blade.

And regardless of me listening, regardless of me agreeing to stay away and honoring all the bullshit he spewed, I came for him. Unfortunately, I need him now. I need him to save me from myself .

Again.

Ren

I skim my hands over her body, and not in the way I was desperate to when I was a horny teenager. This time it’s clinical, strictly to search for contusions or cuts. I’d be shocked if the blood is hers.

My back took the brunt of the ceiling caving in.

The remnants of what were the walls of this place are everywhere, bricks smashed into pieces the size of green peas.

My back feels like someone sprayed gravel into it with an air gun.

No doubt I’ll be a pulpy, bruised mess by the time I get home tonight.

I glance at my watch, wondering what time it is and how long I was unconscious. The timepiece is dead, and my phone is shattered.

“I don’t feel any open wounds. On a pain scale of one to ten, how does your neck feel?”

She twists toward me.

I sigh, “What part of ‘don’t move’ did you not understand?”

“The part where any man tells me what to do or not to do. That part. And two, maybe three. I’m not comfortable by any stretch, but I don’t feel any pinch, pain, or pressure anywhere I shouldn’t.”

I slide my hands to her lower back. “And here? ”

She exhales in exasperation. “Same.”

“And here?” I slide my hands over her perfect ass and down her legs to her ankles.

I refuse to notice when a shiver reverberates down her slight frame.

“Same.” Her response is less vehement.

“Last one.” I place my hands on her head and gently feel for anything that’s out of place. “Anything hurt or sore? Tell me honestly, Anni.”

Instead of responding verbally, she shakes her head. Ornery woman.

Sitting back onto my already-bruising ass, I scrape a hand down my face. That was too close. Way too fucking close.

“I don’t think you have spinal damage. But don’t even think about leaving here alone. I’m waking you up every hour to check for a concussion. Unless your man?—”

“Wai—”

I throw up a hand before she can interrupt.

“I’m happy to take you to the hospital if you’d prefer.

If I do, I’m calling your mom. She’ll be here faster than you can say Fuck you when she hears you refused to leave the site of an active bomb threat, opting to hang out in the women’s bathroom with a lady doing blow instead. ”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“In a heartbeat, Squirt. In a single fucking heartbeat.”

She pinches her eyes shut and anger burns up her neck and into her face. I’ve always loved that I could read everything on her face, even when I didn’t want her to be feeling certain things.

“I hate you,” she seethes in a whisper.

“No, you don’t. Now, can you walk out of here on your own? Or do I have to carry you?”

I don’t have to tell her that carrying her out guarantees a trip to the emergency room. No first responder—much less the entirety of the Denver PD—is going to forego medical care if she needs to be bodily removed from the rubble.

Her muffled sniffles are my only reply.