Determination replaced confusion as she lifted the gun and leveled it at me even though I knew it was my mom she was seeing. So many images flashed before my eyes and every one of them was of Bastian. In the final moments of my life, he was all I could think about: how much I loved him and how devastated he was going to be when he came home expecting to find me and instead learning I was...

I begged at that moment, would have gotten on my knees if I could have. “Please, I don't want to die. Please, don't do this. I'm not my mother. I found the love you felt for Uncle Eddie. Please don't take me away from him, don't do to him what you believe my mother did to you.”

The hand that held the gun shook but a calmness settled over her. For just a moment, I thought it was over, that she had finally stepped back from the edge of madness. And then she turned the gun on herself.

“No!” But my voice was drowned out by the shot. Her head jerked back before her body crumpled to the floor. Her face, what was left of it, landed facing my direction and her life-less eyes seemed to stare eerily into mine. I threw up, twisting my body, I vomited until my stomach cramped.

Shock had settled in, a welcomed numbness that sort of blurred the reality of what I had just witnessed. I crawled to Reaper, felt him breathing, and couldn't help the tears of relief that rolled down my cheeks to feel him breathing. I needed to call my dad but my limbs were growing heavy and I knew unconsciousness loomed. With the amount of blood I had lost, maybe it wasn't unconsciousness but something far worse.

The thought of leaving Bastian wrenched me more than even the gunshot wound—him having to pick up the pieces alone, having to watch as I was placed into the ground, his knowledge that a full lifetime would be stretched out before him where he would have to learn to live without me.

My head filled with visions of him, his face, his smile, his voice, his body over mine as he moved so deeply inside of me. And those eyes that had the power to see past all of my defenses. I wanted to see him one last time, wanted that more than I've ever wanted anything in my life.

And then I heard the familiar sound of my car moments before the front door opened and I heard him call, his voice sounded oddly worried.

“Lark!”

He ran into the room and then I watched as his face paled. He reached me in two strides and dropped down right in front of me, looking both fierce and terrified, as he pulled off his shirt and tried to staunch the flow of blood.

“I don't want to die.”

His expression turned harsh, “You are not going to die. Do you hear me, Lark? You are not going to die.” He grabbed his phone from his pocket and called 911. “I need a fucking ambulance.”

“I wished for you, Bastian, I've wished for you my whole life.”

“Goddamn it, Lark, stay with me.” He was holding me so tightly against him, I could feel his voice rumbling in his chest. “Don't leave me, don't you fucking leave me.”

“I'll wait for you.”

“Don't you dare leave me!” His command ripped from his throat in a broken sob.

I studied his face, took in every one of his beloved features, then I breathed my last breath.

***

The day I died, I did so three times, but in the end my will to live seemed stronger than what the Fates had planned for me. The doctors claimed it had been medicine that brought me back, but I knew it had been Bastian who willed me back.

Two days after I died, I was no longer hooked up to the various tubes and was able to move around on my own.

My dad told me Bastian had not left my side from the moment he found me. Even during the surgery, he was able to observe, with precautions, of course. It was very unorthodox, but apparently Bastian would not be dissuaded. In a big city hospital, the cops would have been called, but not in the small clinic where everyone knew everyone by their first name. Bastian got his way. He even volunteered to donate his blood when he learned his blood type was a match for mine.

For three days he did nothing but hold a bedside vigil to the point that he almost physically burned himself out. Dr. Wright and Poppy were forced to drag him from the room to get food into him.

I couldn't even imagine the emotions he went through watching me flatline and not once but three times. The thought was so horrific, I immediately pushed it from my mind.

A movement at the door caught my attention to see him standing just inside my room. He made his way over to me and I shifted on the mattress to make room for him. He climbed in and immediately pulled me against him.

When I looked into his eyes again, I saw an emotion so deep and consuming, I immediately understood, because I felt the same way about him. “I love you, Lark, but could we please avoid meeting like this again? The only time I want to see you in the hospital is when you're delivering our children.” He then shocked me when tears started filling his eyes and rolling down his cheeks.

“I wasn't coming home. I had intended to do as you suggested and wait until morning but from the moment I woke up, I felt an urgency. I really can't explain it except for that the feeling grew so persistent that I bagged out of work early, climbed in the car, and broke several laws to get to you.” His fingers brushed lightly over my cheek. “My siren. I heard your call. I never believed in a higher power, but I think I may be wrong on that account.”

There were some things in life that could not be explained and this was clearly one of them.

His expression changed again as a devastating sadness swept over his face. “I held you in my arms and watched you die. Every time I close my eyes I'm haunted by the sound of you taking your last breath. Fuck it, I'm going to handcuff you to me because I won't be able to stop hovering for a long fucking time.”

“If it's you hovering, I'm all for it.” It was me who needed to touch him. “I'm sorry.”

Fury replaced sadness as his expression turned thunderous. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“Poor Uncle Eddie and the girls.”

“They'll heal, Lark. We all will.” He pulled me closer and brushed his lips over my forehead and together we drifted off into sleep.

***

A week passed since my aunt had shot me—a week since she had taken her own life—and I was back at the little Cape on the bay. The image of my aunt lying in a pool of her own blood, was always right there in my head. The house had been cleaned, my dad hired a team to scour it, but still she haunted it, at least for me.

I hadn't fully come to terms with what had happened. A part of me wasn't sure I ever would. My aunt had been twisted; her hatred, and I'd like to believe guilt, warped her. That night, so long ago, when I found her sitting in the kitchen all alone. She'd been alluding to what she had done to her sister when she spoke about going to hell and so there was a part of her that, at one time, knew what she had done was wrong.

What I tried to take from the ordeal was that her treatment of me hadn't really been about me, but about her and what she had done. It wasn't much but I did find some solace in that fact.

The reunion with the Wrights, Caden and Sophia wasn't what I had planned. They arrived to find me in the hospital, recovering from a gunshot wound. We had missed the swordfish festival too and I felt bad about that knowing how much Saffron and Logan loved that festival. Under the circumstances, they thought I was crazy for even thinking about it.

My dad, I don't think I'll ever forget the look on his face when I woke after my surgery. If I doubted his love for me, I would no longer. He'd aged, in those few hours, he had aged and I felt badly about that too.

Bastian and my dad had moved the sofa from the living room into the garage and brought out one of the beds since I was ordered on bed rest. Lying on the bed with me, at my insistence, were Hunter and Reaper, the latter who thankfully was healing very nicely from his own surgery. My dad vowed that Reaper would eat steak, every day for the rest of his life, for the heroics he had shown.