Page 62 of Fuse

Emma’s scream echoes through the freezing darkness behind my descending eyelids…

As the bitch inside my mind lets out a long, victorious hiss.

Oh, yessssss.

Chapter One

Emma

“Wake up. Please, please, wake up!”

No matter how many times I whisper it, the man I love is cold as ice and still as death where he lies on a steel medical bed, covered in nothing but a hundred medical leads and one small loincloth.

And me.

I lean over farther, press my cheek to the indent between his unnaturally chilled pecs, and listen for the slow, faint thrum from within. With gritted teeth, I shove everything else in the room out of my awareness. The bleeping machines, ticking monitors, plain gray walls, rubbing alcohol smell—none of it is as important as the organ pumping the lifeblood into his body. Not that it’s a difficult feat. Despite this mini hospital and the attached command center being located just across the driveway from the broad steps of the home we’ve built together, I’ve always tried to deny their very existence—but now, my existence is centered on everything that’s right here. As his heart thumps, so does mine. Every lift of my chest waits for the rise and fall of the broad plane of his beneath my hand. I stretch my aching spirit into the darkness he’s fallen into, fighting to make him see my light. Our light. The connection, like a pair of colliding comets, that only we know. That only we share.

“I’m here, you beautiful man.” You magnificent hero. My hero.

I press a fervent kiss to his sternum. “You know me, Reece. And I know you can still feel me. Damn it, I know you can. Lightning needs the earth.” My breath hitches. My senses sting. “And damn it, the earth needs her lightning.”

Despite the savage battle I’ve waged against myself, the tears escape. Drip between my fingers. Drive deeper stings behind my eyes. Blur my blinking vision.

“Come back to me, baby. Please…come back.” It’s a rasp from my lips to his skin. “I…I can’t lose you like this. Not like this, damn it!”

As my gut-deep sobs splash into the salty puddle I’ve created in his chest, I realize irony is intent on making me her bitch today. Emmalina Crist, the girl who swore she’d never be so weak as to “need” a man, has become the idiot blubbering all over her fallen hero.

Because I’m not that girl anymore.

Because I’m a woman fully changed.

Because I’ve learned about the transformation of true love.

Because I’ve realized that in needing and loving, the real lessons of strength and courage are found.

Because even if that weren’t the case, no way in hell am I’m stopping any of this shit—until one thing alone occurs: this man opens his eyes and looks at me with the full strength of his soul again.

“Reece.” His name becomes my pleading mantra, the only bond I still seem to have to him since he collapsed on the home-office floor three hours ago.

Collapsed.

I shake my head in sharp disbelief…but also to confront another piercing truth. If his proper name is my mantra for everything I love about his masculinity and humanity, his public name has come to have meaning as well. In twelve months of living with Bolt the superhero, I’ve watched the man cripple bad guys in three different cities, in a thousand different ways, brandishing his power at eighty electrical settings. I’ve also been the focus of that force in ways no other woman has dreamed of, let alone experienced. I’ve even seen that strength ripped away from him by a custom EMP wielded by his own father.

But never did I think I’d witness what I did three hours ago. The man willingly giving up. Telling me he was sorry. Right before surrendering to darkness.

What kind of darkness?

What the hell has happened to him?

Like fate tossing salt into my wound, everyone reenters the room. But I can’t let my exhaustion and fury get in the way of my compassion. They’re just as tired and mad as me, but they’re all determined to help. So despite every pore of my skin aching from the effort, I push up and face the semicircle of friends who now comprise Team Bolt. Wade, his dark-ginger brows hunched over his deep-set eyes. Fershan, with his black hair disheveled and his fingernails bitten to their beds. Sawyer, just as tumbled, looking ready to go out and raid a Caribbean village in his brigantine. And then Lydia, saved for last because she’s worried more than all of the guys combined—though my walking planner notebook of a big sister does not do worry well. That just means I can’t look at her for very long.

I will not lose my shit again.

I will not lose my shit again.

For the time being, that needs to be my new theme song. Just to get me to where it’s even possible to form some cohesive thoughts and understandable words.

“A virus.” I’m stunned the syllables actually sound the way I want them to. Composed but furious. Grasping the concept but still refusing to believe it. Still thinking some director beyond the walls is going to yell “cut!” before telling everyone to go take a break while the scene is reset. Still hoping Reece will rise up with a laugh while a cute babe in hot pants flits in, cooing and brandishing makeup brushes while I decide which of her lip piercings to rip out first.