I’ve got burn cream smeared up my arms from helping a volunteer whose fingers blistered open trying to haul buckets of water before the firefighters arrived. My clothes reek of singed cotton and sugar. My throat tastes like grief.

“You okay, Doc?” someone asks behind me.

I don’t turn to look. Just nod. A motion that feels disconnected, like a puppet on its last thread.

Then I hear Malerick’s voice crackle through the walkie clipped to someone’s shoulder. “We’ve got something off Route Seven. Wreck. Might need medical—send Simone.”

My head lifts slowly. I blink once. “Now?”

Footsteps scuff behind me. Mal appears a second later, weaving through the haze, sweat, and noise. His uniform’s streaked with soot, his brow furrowed, and there’s a tension in his jaw I don’t usually see—like something about this call already feels wrong.

He nods. “Yeah. Car looks like it got twisted into the trees—like it was dropped from the sky. It’s bad. Just one person inside. They’re trying to get him out, but they’ll need someone to stabilize him.”

“The driver?” I ask.

Mal shakes his head. “There’s no driver. But they found someone locked in the trunk.”

I go still.

My stomach flips.

“In the trunk?” I repeat, my voice catching.

“Yeah.” Mal’s mouth tightens. “Alive, but barely. They’re figuring out how to get him out because it’s an old car with twisted metal. Go in the ambulance.”

I glance back at where Del used to be huddled into Cassian’s chest, face buried, hands shaking like she doesn’t know how to stop. However, the spot is empty now.

“Where is she?” I ask. “I can’t just leave her.”

It feels wrong to leave. Like I’m abandoning her.

“Don’t worry, Cass took her home. We got her,” Mal says, reading the hesitation all over my face. “Go.”

I nod once and walk toward the ambulance, even though every step feels as if I’m walking through concrete. My heart’s still back there, curled beside Del on the sidewalk, wishing this was all some horrible dream that we could wake up from.

But it’s not. And something tells me it’s only going to get worse.

PREORDER MIDNIGHT BETWEEN US TODAY

Afterword

I hope you enjoyed WHEN LOVE FOUND US as much as I enjoyed writing Atlas and Blythe’s (Henrietta) story. I loved writing about Blythe’s journey and though she has a happy ending, she’ll have to continue working on her healing.

Atlas . . . he’s just a guy who wants to protect everyone because he learned that at a very young age. I think the two of them are just perfect for each other.