Everything slowed down, with the sharp, dark quality of a nightmare, but I couldn’t stop it.

The sound of the gun firing ricocheted throughout the warehouse.

The silence was suddenly, terrifyingly vast. I opened my eyes and looked down. There was no pain. No blood. Nothing.

Nothing but Nate.

The bullet had struck him when he’d leaped in front of me. Blood bloomed in a scarlet rose on his chest.

Nate sank to his knees and slumped onto his back.

“Nate!” The two-by-four in my hand clattered to the floor.

I scrambled to Nate’s side and pressed my palms to his chest. My hands were instantly warmed by his blood, pulsing from the raw open wound. “No, no, no, no, no!”

Gabe dropped the gun, shocked. It fell to the cement floor with a horrible thud. And then he turned and ran.

Blood gurgled from Nate’s mouth, spilled out of his lips and down his chin as he tried to speak.

“Baby, stay with me!” I cried.

But he was already leaving me. I could see it in his eyes, the way they were fading. I’d seen it before when my dad died, his head propped on my lap the same way Nate’s was.

“No! No! Please! Nate, I love you! I love you so much.”

Nate squeezed my hand, pressed something cold and smooth into it. Slowly, ever so slowly, he drew an X over his heart.

And then his arm went limp. His eyes rolled up to the ceiling.

I pressed shaking fingers to his throat, but the reassuring thump of my husband’s pulse was no longer there.

“Come back!” I screamed. “Nate, come back to me!”

But he was gone.

CHAPTER 42

I SAT WITH NATE’S head on my lap, tears streaming down my cheeks. A horrible, surreal sense of déjà vu draped over me. Shock had left me numb but reeling, unmoored from everything.

My insides turned to liquid.

Nate was dead.

And it was my fault. If only I hadn’t started selling these drugs with Gabe. If only I hadn’t lied to him about Josh. If only, if only, if only, Nate would still be alive.

Grief squeezed my guts so viciously I almost threw up. I wanted to lie down in the pool of his blood, to curl myself around Nate’s body and never get up.

I told myself to stop crying. Nothing good came from crying. Hadn’t I learned that long ago? Only helplessness, and that didn’t change a thing. But I couldn’t stop. The tears kept falling, dripping onto Nate’s perfect face.

I became suddenly aware of something in my left hand. It was the object Nate had pressed into my palm. It took me a few seconds to place it. When I did, a horrible tightness cinched in my stomach, looping and squeezing until I could no longer gasp a full breath.