Lost Heart √

Twenty Nine

Skylar's POV

I woke up feeling like someone had carved neat little obscenities into my skull and drilled them inside my brain. Because fuck, the pounding in my head was awful.

It was probably a concussion. I knew what concussions were like. And since I had this strong urge to vomit way before I even got to open my eyes, I just knew. I'd had my fair share of concussions to recognize what this dreadful pressure in my head meant.

I groaned and felt myself grabbing something, anything that was near me, which happened to be soft sheets that were draped over me, and when I blinked open my eyes, even the light was too much.

"Ow...fuck," I groaned again and sat up, everything visibly getting dizzier until I closed my eyes shut again. 

"Hey, are you all right?" A voice came from somewhere beside me and I cringed, to which he added, "Sorry."

Looking over, it took me a moment to recognize Adrian staring at me with a worried gaze, sitting on a chair beside the bed. The bed I was on. Why was I on a bed? I looked back up at him, a little too fast, and the whole room seemed to spin.

"You should probably lie back down." He suggested somewhat sympathetically.

It really is Adrian, my mind seemed to catch on slowly, and did he really have his right arm inked with those tattoos too, or had it just been the left one? "What..." I trailed off but didn't lie back. Not when my head was throbbing and I couldn't understand why. "I'm fine. Is this...Where are we?"

Adrian paled. Or maybe he didn't. "You don't remember?"

"I don't remember?" I moved my arms sluggishly and noticed my muddied, dirty clothes. I couldn't help but frown. "I probably might if I knew what I'm supposed to remember."

He nodded and glanced over his shoulder, at the massive windows behind him. The entire room was strangely bare of any furniture. A guest room? "We found you at that abandoned spot. We couldn't at first, but then we saw this entire chunk of ceiling on the floor and you were under it. Not entirely, but you got hit on the head."

"Oh." I stared at him, and then slowly, gradually I did remember. I remembered everything a little too perfectly. "Oh. Fuck, where is he? Where's Caden? If you found me, you must've found him too. He was just--"

"We didn't." Adrian looked worried now. And when he glanced over his shoulder again, back at the windows, it took me a moment to notice that one of them was pulled up--open--and someone was sitting out on the slanted roof, his back facing us. "I was hoping you could tell me where he is."

My shoulders slumped with the sudden wave of dread that washed over me right then. "You didn't find him," I whispered in horror. They hadn't found Caden.

Adrian only shrugged, dark eyes widening just a bit.

"He was..." I tried swallowing past the suffocating lump in my throat. "Maybe you missed him. You didn't go upstairs and look for him! He was right there, Adrian. I swear--"

"We did, Sky." He cut me off, his voice reassuring and worried at the same time. "I promise. And I know he was there with you. He'd instructed me pretty clearly to get ready with backup if he called. I didn't think he would, but then you called me and we got there as fast as we could've, but..."

When Adrian fell silent, my head started crowding up with all kinds of terrifying thoughts and scenarios, and I started thinking of all kinds of things that could've happened to Caden when he ran up those godforsaken stairs. He could've been injured. He could've been left there bleeding. And god, I'd heard that sound--a loud gunshot--just before that ceiling had collapsed on me, hadn't I? What if--