"Delilah, you need to stay awake." The voice echoed in my ears.
I opened my eyes as someone was pulling me out of the car. Everything rolled through my head like a fast slide show. The crash. The man who framed me for murder. Kason.
Gavin's face appeared above me with his eyes wide and his expression full of panic. "You're going to be okay," my brother assured me as he helped someone carry me away from the car.
But I didn't care. I didn't care if I would be okay. There was so much going on that me being okay seemed pretty far down on the list of priorities.
I turned my head back and forth, despite the slight pain in doing so to look for Kason. The black Charger was beaten up and totaled, now a pretty good distance away from me. There is no way that the car could recover from that state. Just a second later, I spotted Kason laying down about ten feet away from me. His eyes were closed, and he wasn't moving, making tears well up in my eyes.
My head was pounding as I leaned my head up to evaluate myself. Cuts and fast forming bruises were already showing on my skin. My body was splattered with blood, and there was a lot of it, but I knew it could've been worse. Closing my eyes and leaning my head, I groaned as my ribs and legs ached. I focused on the sounds going on around me.
Aria sounded like she was on the phone with an ambulance. Holden announced he was calling Daniel. I could hear Chad and Brandon talking to Kason, repeatedly trying to get him to respond. "Delilah, I'm serious. Keep your eyes open."
I did as my brother said, though I found it difficult to fight against the urge to just close my eyes and take a short rest. "I'm not dying," I told Gavin, looking him in the eye and choking on some blood in my mouth. Whether he believed it or not, I was pretty confident in my words. I couldn't die right now. We had to catch Charles. I for sure wasn't going to let him win this.
"I wouldn't be so sure," Gavin told me, seemingly trying really hard to control his trembling.
"I'm sure," I spoke clearly.
He took a deep breath. "What hurts?"
I took a second to breathe and think about it. "Everything."
"My point exactly."
"Are you two seriously arguing right now?" Brandon's voice echoed in my ears.
"Yes," we both answered.
Brandon entered my line of vision and knelt down beside me. "How's Kason?" I questioned immediately.
"Alive," he answered vaguely. "How are you?" His eyes scanned me up and down.
"Alive," I answered, making him send an annoyed look my way.
"An ambulance is on the way," Aria told us. "Yes, I'm still here," she spoke into the phone. "They are close."
As Aria explained more of our current situation to whoever was on the phone, I ended up blocking out all the noise around me. Why would the cars target the Charger instead of the car with Gavin in it? Or why wouldn't they try to hit both of us? They had two cars. They definitely could've at least injured the both of us, so why didn't they?
"The guy who hit us was the same guy who framed me for murder," I announced, reaching up to wipe the blood from my mouth.
Everyone around me seemed to freeze for a long moment. "What?" Brandon spoke up.
"It was the same guy," I repeated. "The one who killed the cashier and framed me for the murder. It was him and some other guy." I exhaled and tried to stay focused on the conversation and not on how tired I felt in the moment.
"So, this was Charles," Holden spoke up, holding his phone away from his ear to listen to us.
"Of course, it was," Gavin told him, spitting the words from his tongue out of frustration. "You shouldn't be surprised."
"I'm not surprised that it was him. I'm surprised he found us already," Holden returned.
A loud moan sounded from beside me and I jerked my head in my boyfriend's direction. "Check on him. Make sure he's okay," I said immediately, trying to sit up to go see for myself.
My brother gently pushed me back to the ground and wouldn't let me back up, which was for the best considering the amount of pain arising up in my torso from the movement. "Don't move. You might worsen your condition."
"My condition is fine. It's Kason's that isn't," I retaliated.
"Stop, Delilah. Kason wouldn't want you hurting yourself any more than you are."
His words stopped me because I knew he was right. So, I waited for Chad and Brandon to check him out some more and held back from saying anything while they observed him. And it wasn't until I heard sirens in the distance when I heard Chad say. "He's alive and breathing but he needs help now."
That is when I closed my eyes and silently pleaded for someone to save him as paramedics arrived and we were both surrounded.
***
I know, very short chapter... just really know yall wanted an update and I just keep deleting and rewriting everything after this point. Another chapter will be up soon though. And hopefully a full-length one!
~Emily