“Grey! Grey! What’s happening?” someone shouted, followed closely by someone else’s yell, “Has anyone called an ambulance yet?”
My screams had ended, only to be replaced by a hyperventilation so extreme, I was waiting for the moment when it would become too much for me to handle. I hung, hunched over in someone’s arms, clawing viciously at them as I tried to steady my breathing, but the panic only seemed to rise.
“B-Ben!” I shouted through rapid breaths, and I heard the person behind me sigh sadly.
“Poor girl still isn’t over what happened.”
“You need to try to breathe, Grey,” another voice said soothingly. “Calm your breathing. Big, deep breath in. Hold it as long as you can, and then let it out.”
No matter how many times she said it, my breathing never changed.
“Graham’s already on his way, I called him a few minutes ago. He’ll be here soon. Big, deep breath in, Grey.”
I looked back up at the girl, and even though I knew I’d grown up with her, I couldn’t focus on her face, I had no idea who she was. All I knew was Ben.
Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben.
Forever, Grey. Forever, Grey. Forever, Grey.
Another scream tore through my throat before my world went blurry with tears. I placed my hands on the sidewalk below me, allowing the person behind me to continue holding me up as I sobbed toward the ground until I heard my brother’s voice above everything else.
“What’s happening?” he asked loudly to everyone surrounding me before pulling me out of the man’s arms, and curling me onto his lap. “God, Grey, it’s okay. What’s wrong? What happened, kid?” he crooned. “Talk to me.”
I sobbed into his chest as the people around me spoke to him.
“Grey, you gotta tell me what’s wrong. The ambulance is almost here, do you need to go to the hospital?”
It was then I heard the sirens, and I shook my head fiercely as I tried to back away from him. My breathing was ragged again, and I tried to look past the crowd circling us, toward my car.
“B-Ben. H-h-he . . . vows.”
“Grey,” Graham whispered. “No, it’s okay. He’s—kid, he’s gone.”
“He’s not!” I screeched, and tried to scramble from his lap, but he didn’t let me get far. When I looked back at his face, I saw a look conveying thoughts I’d just been having. He thought I’d lost it.
“What the hell is going on?”
I turned quickly at the sound of Jagger’s frantic voice, and Graham helped me stand in time for Jagger to wrap his arms around me.
“I’ve been getting calls for the last ten minutes. What’s happening?” he asked Graham, but then cupped my cheeks and lowered his head to ask me, “Are you hurt? Why is there an ambulance pulling up?”
Even if I could say anything in that moment, Graham would’ve beaten me to it. “From what everyone’s saying, she isn’t hurt, but I think the medics should check her over.”
Jagger’s green eyes bounced over my face before looking over at Graham. “Why? What’s going on?”
The EMTs started parting the crowd, making their way toward us, but Jagger just tightened his grip on me until Graham said, “She thinks Ben is here.”
I felt a jolt go through Jagger’s body, and he slowly pushed me back so he could look down at me again. “Grey, you . . . you think that—what?”
“Is this who we were called for?” an EMT asked, and reached for me.
“Don’t touch me! I’m fine!”
“Grey,” Jagger and Graham said at the same time.
Tears were still falling down my cheeks, and my chest was still rising and falling too erratically, but the last thing I wanted was to be checked over by these men. Despite the body-numbing terror that had filled me when I’d seen the note and the message, I needed to see it again to know I wasn’t insane. I needed Jagger and Graham to see it to confirm my sanity.
“Ma’am, are you—”
“Please! I’m fine. I don’t . . . I don’t need help.”
The three medics looked at each other before shrugging and asking around if anyone else had been hurt in the “incident.”
Graham was busy getting people to back away from us when Jagger tilted my head back again. “Talk to me, baby.”
“There was—he left . . . I don’t know how it happened, Jag,” I cried, and pressed my forehead into his chest.
“Mrs. Reil said Grey kind of freaked after she pulled something off her car,” Graham said when he came back. “She said she tried to get Grey to talk to her because she looked like she was panicking, but Grey got in her car, and when she did, she just started screaming and wouldn’t stop. They had to pull her out of her car and she kept screaming.”
“What’d you pull off your car?” Jagger asked quietly in my ear, but fresh tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t force anything from my mouth. “Where is it, Grey?”
I shook my head against his chest for long seconds before whimpering, “I can’t be crazy. I know what I saw.”
“Babe, look, you need to help me here. I want to help you, but I can’t if you’re not giving me anything to go on. What did you pull off your car, and where is it?”
I stepped back from him, and looked from him to Graham’s worried expression before glancing at the remaining people on the sidewalk. I didn’t want them there; I didn’t want an audience. Because if I was wrong—if I hadn’t really seen what I thought I’d seen—I didn’t want a dozen people who had known me my entire life to witness my loss of sanity. And if the letter and message were still there, I wasn’t okay with anyone else getting a glimpse of something so personal.