Page 20 of Knox
Kelsey.
She had begun to thrash, her screams ricocheting around the rubble. “No, no—”
He let go of Tori and scrambled back to Kelsey, not sure what to do—
He lay down beside her and pulled her back against him, his arms pinning her tight, his legs around hers, his mouth in her ear. “Kelsey, breathe. Breathe. You’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
He kept his voice low, like he had with Hot Pete, but mostly because he, too, wanted to scream, to unloose the coil of panic in his chest.
But if he did, he might never tuck it back inside. So instead, he began to rock her, to hum the first tune he could find…
She stopped screaming, as if listening, her breaths hitching, her body twitching in his embrace.
“Shh,” he said. “You’re going to be okay…”
Please, God, let us be okay.
She wasn’t lying in a bloody pile of soggy loam, the night lifting around her, leaving its moist tongue on her grimy skin. Wasn’t broken, shattered, wounded, and violated. Her head wasn’t spinning, throbbing, and coaxing her back into the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.
Kelsey wasn’t fourteen again, a victim of a terrible, random crime.
“Shh. You’re going to be okay…” A low tenor slid over her, something familiar enough to reach in and tug away the confusion. To yank her back from the abyss, to silence the screaming inside.
The voice settled into her ear, her bones, and found the tremor inside. Clamped down on it. A hot, solid hand of safety that gripped her from the inside out.
Knox. Of course it was Knox—and now everything rushed back to her. The thunder that shook the building, him lunging at her, his arm snaking around her waist. Falling.
Then she was lying in the forgotten tangles of Central Park, fighting for every breath through cracked ribs, a broken wrist, her body torn, her blood saturating the earth. Trapped underneath the echo of her own screams.
Until Knox. Until he reached through the nightmares and pulled her against himself, solid, warm, safe, and held her body until she stopped shaking.
Shh.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Light splashed across a girder, the chaos of broken cement, glass, and debris.
“What—?” Her voice emerged weak, and the arms around her tightened.
She curled her hands around the forearms, thick and muscled, and the warmth of him holding her shucked away the last of her shaking.
“There was an explosion, I think.” The arms loosened, and she just wanted to hang on for a moment longer, but he moved away. “Are you hurt?”
She lay for a moment, assessing. She hurt, but nothing deep and slicing, nothing fractured, and the pain throbbed low, as if her body might be rebounding from a body slam.
But she wasn’t shattered. Wasn’t wishing to die.
“I don’t…I don’t think so.” Bruised, for sure, but she knew whathurtfelt like.
No, definitely not.
He held a cell phone, the light flashing on the debris, then turned it up so it reflected down upon them.
Dirt layered his face, white eyes around grime. A fine layer of sweat slicked his brow, his eyes thick with concern as he met her eyes. He seemed to be testing her words.
And why not? Seconds ago, she’d been screaming, ungluing right before his eyes. If he didn’t think she was crazy before, she couldn’t imagine what he thought now.
It didn’t matter what he thought of her.
Right now, she just needed to stay alive.