“Stay with me,” Theron said, shaking her shoulder.
She dragged her eyelids open.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Keep watching me.”
Unconsciousness threatened to take her under, but she refused to let it.
“Yes, I need the police and an ambulance. My girlfriend is hurt. There’s a girl here who tried to kill her.” He turned back to Asher. “She’s out cold at the moment. We’re behind the Hampshire Co-Ed College, in the bushland.” He continued to give more specific instructions on how to find them, but Zoe couldn’t make much sense of the words as Theron’s voice drifted in and out of focus.
The world around her blurred a little, that endless tug from the deep wanting to swallow her down into its depths. But she knew if she let it, she wouldn’t be allowed to come back.
“I’ll meet the ambulance on the road. It won’t get in here,” Theron said. Zoe understood that, as some of the clouds had separated with her new determination to stay present.
He pressed his phone back into his pocket and lifted her up under the arms. Zoe tensed her muscles to stand, attempting to assist him, but there was no power in her legs. He didn’t need help anyway, not with strength like his. He lifted her into his arms, and she cradled against his chest. “Stay with me, Zoe. You hear me?”
“I’m here,” she managed, though it was softer than a whisper. “I love you,” she said because she didn’t know how tonight was going to end, and she wasn’t going to take any chances by not letting him know how she truly felt. “I love you.”
A kiss at the top of her head and a pleasured sigh. “I love you too. So much. So you need to keep your eyes open. Help is on its—”
A sound blasted through the forest, so loud it vibrated Zoe’s ears and heart, leaving in its wake a tinny ringing in her ears. And then she was falling out of Theron’s arms to the ground, and he was falling to his knees.
She looked at him. His hands gripped his stomach. Blood was pulsating from the wound, marking his skin. When Theron’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he fell sideways onto the ground beside her, only then did she realise what had happened—he'd been shot.
Another shot rang out and Zoe bit down her lip to stop herself from screaming. Her body was shaking, from the shock, from the blanketing cold.
“Theron?” she said, crawling on her hands and knees. She pressed her hands against his chest. “Theron?”
His eyes remained closed. She leaned her ear against his chest, listening for a heartbeat like she heard after they made love, feeling that rhythmic thump against her face.
But there was nothing.
Fear shook her, trembling through her body, turning her muscles rigid, her stomach sick. “No, no, no, no, no! Theron! Theron!”
Zoe shook his shoulders with what strength she had left, ignoring the pain in her broken fingers as she did, but he didn’t move.
No. This cannot be happening. Not Theron. No.
Tears streamed down her face, clouding her vision, dripping onto his chest. She could barely breathe through the sobs. His eyelids flickered.
“Theron!”
But blackness was creeping in around the edges of her vision, dragging her down so fast she could no longer stop it.
Not this time.
◆◆◆
Zoe swam upwards from the darkness, met lights, yellow, blue, and red, illuminating the night. Voices, barking orders, rushing requests, milled around her.
Under her back was a firm mattress. The shadowy canopy above skirted by while four unknown faces peered down at her.
“She’s conscious,” said a deep male voice.
“What’s your name?” said a frowning woman at her side, slightly breathless from carrying the gurney Zoe was on.
“Zoe,” she whispered.
The woman was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear. She was looking up ahead at the gurney being pushed into the back of an ambulance. Two paramedics rushed into the ambulance, one man leaning over and pumping hard on the body’s naked chest.
Theron. Anguish squeezed her heart the moment before blackness clawed at her mind again and swallowed her whole.
Chapter 33
The scent of sickness and antiseptic reached Zoe’s nostrils as she woke and opened her eyes. It took a moment for her pupils to adjust to the dimness. The room was cloaked by creeping shadows. Pain throbbed in her head. Each muscle was weighted, felt pinned to the mattress beneath her back. Her throat was parched.
Zoe peered around the room, to the chair beside the bed, then the curtained window shielding the space from all but a few filmy flickers of fluorescent light.
Hospital.
Memories trickled back, of Asher, the cut to her wrist, Delia…
The gun shot!
Zoe sat bolt upright and gasped, “Theron?” Her throat was so tight she could barely breathe. Her chest ached, was painfully contracted.
A voice sounded from the darkness. “I’m here.”
Simply hearing the deep bass of his voice brought the greatest relief—loosened each taut muscle, transformed the rigid angst into a long airy sigh. “Oh, thank goodness.”
Theron came to stand beside her bed, his body swathed in darkness. Now that she knew he was well, she was eager to find out what had happened after she fell unconscious. “I saw you get shot. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said in a soothing voice. “I was so worried about you. The doctor’s had to revive you twice. And gave you so much blood. Asher had sliced that vein deep.”
Zoe shook her head, her mouth gaping to hear of such things. “I can’t believe it. Any of it. Asher? Who would have ever thought she could…” her voice cracked, so she didn’t say any more. “I’m so glad you’re okay. When I saw you in that ambulance, I thought you were…” She stopped herself.
After everything she’d seen tonight and over the last few weeks, she couldn’t utter that final word aloud. She was sick to death of death.
Peering up at him through the darkness, she traced his outline with her gaze, wanting to take him in visually, mentally, to confirm to herself that he was really here and really okay.
He was still shirtless. Zoe blinked and squinted, trying to adjust her eyes. On his abdomen, the gunshot wound was stitched but uncovered. His skin was so pale it glowed.
Zoe’s heart thudded erratically.
No. No. No.
She crawled up the bed until her back hit the headboard and the IV ripped from her hand. Pain seared. Blood splashed on the white starched sheets. She peered into Theron’s eyes again, and even through the shadows, she could see the light behind them had dimmed, the green had faded.
“No. Please, no,” she moaned. “Theron, no.” She sought breath but found none. “No. This isn’t real. It can’t be. You can’t be dead. You can’t be. Help!” she screamed. “Someone, help me. He needs help!”
Two nurses raced into the room. The lights flicked on overhead, temporarily blinding her. When her eyes adjusted, she searched through the shiny haze for Theron.
He was pale; his lips, hands and feet were mottled with blue. “No!” she screamed before a sob burst from her throat. “No, Theron, you weren’t meant to die!”
A nurse jabbed the sharp head of a needle into her leg, all the while uttering soothing words, but the meaning was lost as Zoe attempted to rationalise and refute the situation. “Theron!”
Zoe’s mind tipped sideways, the room slanted and dimmed on the outskirts of her vision until it filled everything, and she floated away into unconsciousness.
Chapter 34
Zoe’s heart was bruised with sorrow. She had never known how heavy heartbreak could feel. The sun was shining through the sole window, and her parents and brothers were at her bedside.
She cuddled them more fiercely than she ever had before, then sobbed against her mother until she couldn’t cry anymore.
From the corner of the room, Theron watched with a solemn frown permanently on his face. But Zoe couldn’t look at
him again, not yet, unable to bear how all the life behind his eyes had died.
“I am so glad you’re okay,” Mum said, stroking the hair from Zoe’s forehead. “I’ve never been more scared in my life. I’m still in shock. I can’t believe this happened.”
“I told you Asher was no good,” Dad said.
Zoe realised she hadn’t heard what happened to Asher. Did the police get her? “Where is Asher?” It burnt her tongue to say the name of the girl who had killed the one person who meant the world to her.
“She killed herself before the police arrived,” Dad said with little emotion.
“Good thing too, crazy fucker,” Seth hissed.
Mum rolled her eyes angrily. “Language.”
Dad turned to face his son, frowning. “Watch your language, Seth.”
“Well, she is. She nearly killed Zoe, and then shot herself because she was too weak to face the consequences.”
“All right. All right,” Dad said, holding a hand up. “It won’t do anyone any good getting angry.”
“And who’s the boy that died?” Mum asked.
Zoe’s heart squeezed to hear her mother talk about Theron as though he was some random person they’d heard about dying on the news.
Theron was her everything. She loved him. He deserved more than that.
Tears stung her eyes. Her heart burned with the pain of remembrance. How would she ever be able to go about her life without Theron? “He has a name,” she said, words loud and sharp. “Theron. He was an amazing person…” she pressed her hands to her chest as a sob cut her words off, unsure if the scalding ache in her heart would ever cease. “He was my boyfriend,” she finally managed.
Her mother sighed. “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know that. We thought he was a friend of the girl … the murderer.”
“I knew the moment I saw Asher she was no good. But I never thought she’d be capable of this,” Dad said. “You should have listened to us right at the beginning.”
Perhaps Zoe should have. If she knew all this was going to happen, she would’ve run from Hampshire and never looked back.
Theron would have lived.
Two men walked into the room. Her stomach lurched seeing the black pants and white long-sleeved shirts and ties. Detectives.
“Excuse us,” said the elder detective with a thick, black moustache. “We’d like to speak to Zoe. Are you feeling up to that?”
Zoe didn’t know if she was ready to relive the night yet but seeing the two men taking position beside the bed, she didn’t have much choice. Their question was a polite front.
Dad turned to his wife. “You take the boys down to the café for a snack. I’ll listen in on this.”
Mum didn’t object, instead ushered her boys out the door.
◆◆◆
The detectives stayed with Zoe for nearly two hours, going over every detail from the night before. Grief kept bubbling up to the surface, and Zoe would stop talking until the wave had knocked her over, battered her around and she could find her feet again.
By the end of the interview, she was exhausted. Her eyes were red and swollen, and her nose and throat felt blistered.
Some time after the detectives left, her mother and brothers came back. Mum settled beside Zoe on the bed, her arm wrapped protectively around her. Seth and Braith sat on the end of the bed while Dad excused himself to grab a coffee.
She pined for this closeness and comfort, and, at the same time, her family’s presence was suffocating. No one other than Theron, alive and in the flesh, would alleviate this pain inside.
“I don’t know what you were doing in that bush with Asher anyway,” Mum said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I keep going over and over it in my mind and can’t understand why you’d even agree to that. Why? Why were you in that bush alone with her?”
Zoe sighed. She was so utterly exhausted, she didn’t have the capacity to lie. “We were trying to capture on film a spirit that was drowned in that location last year.” And Asher was the one who had killed her.
“How much does it take before you stop this ridiculous questioning—”
Braith stood. “Leave her alone! You always do this, and I’m sick of it.”
Mum rolled her eyes and sighed, but ignored her son’s attack.
Zoe felt pride and gratitude both and did her best to let her brother know that through a shaky smile.
“You’re coming home with us,” Mum said.
Zoe nodded. She wouldn’t be able to stay in this town now, not with all these memories, not without Theron. “Fine. I’ll come home.”
Mum stroked her hair. “I think that’s the right thing to do.”
“Me too,” Seth said, squeezing her foot.
Braith agreed. “Me too.” His brotherly love brimmed in his smile.
As Theron stood in the corner, watching from a distance, Zoe could feel his attention as tingles across the skin of her face and neck. She didn’t look at him, still unable to face him again yet.
But she knew the longer she ignored him, the dimmer he would become, and that thought trampled her heart, snapped the strings completely into pieces.
◆◆◆
Later that evening, when a nurse asked Zoe if she would like a sleeping tablet, she swallowed it down without hesitation. She managed to maintain a peaceful obliviousness until she woke, and the memories hit her like a boot to the stomach.
Moaning, she rolled onto her side, trying to ease the pressure around her heart, the intense heat that wouldn’t cease as though a hot poker was branding her there. “Theron,” she whispered, through a tear-tightened throat. “Theron.”
Theron came to her side, frowning down as he stood over her.
Seeing him this way, a hazy mirage, meant she had to admit that what happened that night in the forest had truly happened, and she was now expected to live the rest of her life without him in it.
Zoe shook her head. That thought alone was enough to undo her completely. The thought of not just one day, but many days upon many more days, without Theron, of missing him with incredible intensity was utterly unbearable and inconceivable.
As a tear rolled down her cheek, Theron wiped it with his thumb. She felt it, as though it was real, but the tear wasn’t removed, merely kept on its channel down her face.
Zoe could never have dreamed that the price for involving Theron in her life could be his death. “I’m so sorry.”
Theron shook his head. “No. Don't.”
“But I am. I should’ve known. I did know, deep down, that including you in my life was not going to turn out well. I should’ve gone home when Mum and Dad said to. I should have listened to them. Then none of this would have happened.”
“No,” he said. “Because we would never have met. You mean everything to me. And knowing that I have spent the last few months with you is worth more to me than anything else. And knowing that you are blossoming as a person and embracing your true self … I couldn’t be prouder or more impressed by that. With or without me, you must keep doing that. Above all else, that’s what I want for you—for you to be content in your own flesh.”
How could he be so selfless, so rational? Then the answer struck her: he had nothing left to lose.
And it was her fault.
“But you’re dead. And I killed you.” A sob choked her. She palmed the tears from her face and turned away from him as she cried.
He held her shoulder. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for what happened. Asher was the culprit. She was psychotic. You weren’t to know that. You were a victim of her as much as I was. Look at me.”
She slowly turned to face him and peered into his pale eyes. Even in death, he was the most handsome boy she’d ever seen.
“I love you so much,” he said.
She nodded. “I love you too.”
“I want you to take me.”
Her eyes widened.
“Prolonging this is only going to make you suffer more.”
She shook h
er head, unable to find breath for a moment. “I can’t. I need you. I’ll always need you.”
He smiled sympathetically. “But it’s not the way of things. You know that. You taught me that with Barkley.”
She thought of what her mother had said when Nan had died, that her father was sad but understood that death was the way of things. Why was Zoe the only one who couldn’t come to grips with that?
A wash of emotional anguish swarmed her senses, greater than she had ever felt before. It was grief. What a horrible, painful emotion—so much more powerful than physical torment; the worst form of torture.
Having the strength to intentionally inflict such pain upon herself by taking Theron’s hand and accompanying him to the Afterlife would be the hardest thing she would ever have to do.
Yet, she knew it was inevitable.
Chapter 35
The hospital was dim and quiet. It couldn’t be much later than midnight. Zoe had been dreaming again—of Marcus. This dream, however, was more akin to a nightmare.
Instead of feeling desire for Marcus, she was consumed by an abominable hatred. A sense of being betrayed, used, and discarded buzzed in her soul like bolts of electrical shock.
She flicked back the blanket.
“What’s going on?” Theron asked.
She frowned. “There’s a piece to all this that’s missing. One second I’m dreaming of loving Marcus, and now I’m dreaming the opposite. There is a big fucking missing piece to this puzzle that will help me understand who and what I am. I need to find it.”
Zoe rolled out of bed and stood upright on the spot until the dizziness in her head righted itself. “I can’t just lie here and let life happen to me—I need to go out and make things happen. It’s the only way I’m going to find out the truth.”
Barefooted and dressed only in a hospital gown and pair of knickers, she headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Theron asked.
“I’m going to talk to Asher.”
Zoe headed down the halls of the hospital, stationed by a few nurses here and there, but she hid in alcoves and darkened rooms to avoid being seen.
After Life Page 21
