He Came Back Running (Maya and Mason) novel Chapter 133

Chapter 133

Maya’s POV

The garden went wrong in the space of three seconds.

I would replay those three seconds for a long time afterward…. not because replaying them changed anything, but because the mind did what the mind did with the moments that restructured everything before and after them.

The figure….

Alex’s head turning.

The weight of him against me as the sound tore through the ceremony.

The ground was cold through the dress

My knees, through the fabric, against the garden path. Alex’s weight beside me, half-sitting, one hand still near my arm from the movement of putting himself between me and the direction the barrel had been pointing.

“Alex.” My voice, hearing itself from a distance. “Alex, look at me.”

His eyes were open.

Focused on my face.

“I’m here,” he said.

“I know….” I had my hands pressed against his side. “Stay here.”

The garden was chaos in every direction

Screaming. Movement. The security team pushing through the overturned chairs. Olive’s voice, high and specific, calling for someone. Catherine’s voice, lower, a sound rather than words. The officiant on his

phone.

And here, in this piece of ground, the two of us.

“You’re shaking,” Alex said.

“I know,” I said.

“Don’t,” he said.

“I’ll stop when you’re not shot,” I said.

The corner of his mouth moved.

Not fully

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Crane was there in under a minute.

He had been at the edge of the garden, the bodyguard position, the professional distance

He was on

his knees beside Alex with the functional urgency of someone who had training that applied directly to this situation and was applying it.

“Move your hands,” he said to me.

“No,” I said

“Maya.” Alex’s voice, quieter than before. “Let him.”

I moved my hands.

Crane’s took their place….. more efficient, better positioned

I kept hold of Alex’s other hand.

The ambulance was seven minutes.

I know because I counted.

Catherine reached us during the fourth minute

She dropped beside Alex… arriving at a situation she could not manage into anything better. She put her hand on his face. Said his name. Said it again.

He looked at her.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“You’re not fine,” she said.

“I’m going to be fine,” he said.

She pressed her hand to his cheek.

Olive was beside her, on the phone, giving the address in the clear and efficient voice of someone who had bypassed panic in favour of usefulness

Richard stood three metres away.

He was looking at his son

The expression on his face was not the one he had been wearing all week….. not the cold assessment, not the certainty. The expression of a man who had been certain about a great many things and was standing in the garden watching his son on the ground and finding that certainty had left the room.

He didn’t come closer

He didn’t need to.

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The expression was enough

The ambulance came

The paramedics moved with the focused efficiency of people who did this and had learned not to perform efficiency but to embody it.

They had Alex on the stretcher before I had processed the transition from ground to equipment.

“You’re coming,” Alex said. Not a question.

“Obviously,” I said.

I climbed in

The ambulance was loud and the medical team was working and I sat in the narrow space available to me beside his head and held his hand and watched his face.

Still open. Still focused.

The monitors communicating things in the language of numbers that I understood just enough to find frightening.

“The bullet was meant for me,” I said

“I know,” he said.

“You didn’t have to…..”

“Yes I did.” His voice was thinner than it had been in the garden. The effort of it visible. “Don’t argue about it.”

“I’m not arguing,” I said. “I’m saying….”

“I know what you’re saying.” He turned his head slightly toward me. The pale quality of his face under the ambulance light. “It doesn’t change what I was going to do.”

I held his hand

Pressed his fingers.

He pressed back

Less than before. But present.

“The wedding isn’t finished,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“We’ll finish it,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

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His eyes were on me

The monitors continued their language.

The sirens outside.

The paramedic saying something to the driver.

His eyes, still on my face

“Alex.” My voice, holding something together that was trying to come apart. “Stay with me.”

He looked at me.

His mouth opened.

Something…… a word, or the shape of one, or the attempt at one. His lips forming something I was close enough to see and not close enough to hear over the sirens and the monitors and the ambulance

moving through the city.

Then his eyes closed

His hand, still in mine, went still….

“Alex.” My voice, different now. “Alex.”

The paramedic moved past me

“He’s still with us,” she said quickly. “Stay back…. let us work.”

I stayed back.

But I kept hold of his hand.

And I sat in the ambulance and felt the cold space where his voice had been and thought only one thing,

on a loop, the way the mind simplified itself when complexity became impossible:

Stay

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