I lunged between them, intending to push my father out of the way, to save him. To save Dominic from doing something he’d regret for the rest of his life.

But it never worked that way in real life either. Never like the movies. The heroes didn’t walk away, arms raised, triumphant.

More often, they got hurt.

They got killed.

I did knock my father out of the way. Landing on him was softer than the damned marble floors I always hated. A second later, and I’d have been too late.

Or maybe I already was.

Lucia screamed again, dropping to her knees, her hands bloodied, her face splattered with it. Her crutches clanked to the floor near my head as she grabbed my face, looking over her shoulder, shoving someone away. Her tears kept dropping on my face, and she kept wiping them away again and again, talking, I think. Her mouth moved, but no sound came. No sound. Only pain. Only fire in my side.

When I put my hand to the place, it felt warm and wet, and when I reached to touch her pretty, pretty face, I covered it in red, smearing it down over her jaw, her neck, down until she faded from view. The last thing I felt was her hair tickling my face, her body pressing against mine, the movements desperate.

22

Lucia

“Salvatore, no!”

I held his face with one hand and pressed my other hand to the place on his side that wouldn’t stop bleeding. I kissed him. Kissed him and kissed him. When I tried to push the hair back from his forehead, I left blood in its place. His blood. God, there was so much of it. Too much.

“Don’t die.”

He hadn’t promised me that. He’d made me three promises, but he’d never promised me he wouldn’t die.

I’d never asked him to promise that. I’d never…

“Don’t die,” I whispered just to him.

He was too still, and when my sister touched my shoulder, and I looked up at her through the blur the haze of my tears caused, I sucked in a trembling breath. Her face, the look in her eyes, telling me it was bad.

“There’s a helicopter on its way to take him to the hospital,” she whispered, kneeling down beside me, holding me when I turned my attention back to him.

They would take him away. They would take him away, and I would never see him again. Why did they do that? Why did they take them away? How could you hold an empty space? How could you say good-bye?