He was through the hall and throwing open the front door before I could even force myself to move.
“Lissa!” he shouted, not to stop her, towarnher and the sound of screeching tires and a scream made my entire body go cold.
Fear unlike anything I had ever felt slowed me like molasses stuck to the bottom of my shoes.
She was dead. I knew she was. She had been distracted and ran onto the street without looking. I’d killed her.
There was an air of tension outside. As I reached the door, I could feel it before I even saw it. People were talking in frantic voices. I could hear Ryan saying something soothing. When I finally saw the scene outside, relief hit me hard because Melissa was alive and awake.
But she was on the ground. The driver of the car who had hit her was standing on the side walk, speaking frantically into her cell phone, calling an ambulance by the sounds of it, and Ryan was crouched down next to Melissa, holding her hand tightly in his own.
And just like that, the fear shifted into a frantic need to keep her here with us and I ran to her, dropping down on her other side.
She was crying outright now, clinging to Ryan's hand and not moving.
“My leg,” she sobbed.
“The ambulance is on the way,” Ryan said, his voice strong and calm. Thank God for that because I was crying now too.
“Melissa, I'm so sorry,” I wept. “I wanted to talk to you. I didn't want to hurt you.”
Her face, already constricted with pain, twisted with even more.
She wouldn't look at me, wouldn't even open her eyes again until the ambulance and police arrived. They started taking statements at once.
“She just ran onto the road,” the driver was saying frantically while they put Melissa onto a stretcher.
“It was my fault,” I found myself saying over and over to anyone who would listen. “I upset her and she ran without looking.”
Ryan's hand landed on my shoulder, offering me support, but for the first time, I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything.I was pretty sure I was suffocating.
“Is she going to be okay?” I demanded of the medics.
“Are you family?” one of them asked me.
“I'm her husband,” I said and they waved me into the ambulance with her.
“I'll meet you there,” Ryan was saying, but I could barely hear him.
I didn't even look back as the doors shut between us.
Melissa was writhing in pain. A needle was being put into her arm, probably pumping her with morphine.
I watched as she passed out of consciousness, the pain and betrayal finally smoothing from her expression.
What had I done?
EIGHTEEN
Ryan
It felt like something heavy and immovable was resting on my chest.
There was the shock over what had happened to Melissa, but then when the doctors were working on her, Kamran had randomly went outside, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and smoked three in a row without saying a word to me.
I had known he was under stress but apparently he had been handling it even worse than I’d thought if he was smoking again.
From the start, I’d wanted to be a comfort to him but now, sitting in Melissa’s room with her unconscious in the bed, the truth was glaringly obvious; all I had done was complicate things even more.
