The Night We Fell Extended Sneak Peek

The Night We Fell  

E.M. Lindsey

Copyright © 2025

All rights reserved

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This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover by: SleepyFoxStudios

Content Information and warnings: Drunk Driver (Not MCs), car accident, severe injuries, unrealistic portrayal of EMTs. Content is unproofed and errors may be present before final publication.

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Atlas

Singing to this crowd felt like I was bleeding out.  It was better than all the ugly crying I’d done—not out of missing Raleigh because any love I might have had for him had dried up years ago.  The crying was the loss of what should have been. 

Of all the time I’d wasted on waiting for him to become a better person.

And maybe some of the tears were from the anger I held for myself for letting it go on as long as I did, knowing that Raleigh would always be the man he was.  That nothing I did would ever change him.

I felt like a fool, but the moment I picked up my guitar knowing that it was me—and just me—on that stage, there was a punch of relief so profound, I almost felt sick from it.

I had books and books of songs I’d written that I had never shown any of my bandmates because the words weren’t for them.  They were about them.  Their apathy and narcissism and the joy they took out of thinking they were better than everyone else was killing me.  Like death by a thousand cuts.

How quickly they forgot the nights we spent freezing our asses off in unheated garages, scraping together what little rent money we could so we could afford to survive before fame happened.  Before someone paid attention and realized that, in spite of us being vaguely terrible people, we were talented.

I was talented.

Tonight felt like I was releasing all of that pain.  The words spilled out like a broken dam and I was able to let go, my throat raw from holding back my sobs.  It felt good though, the healing kind of pain I’d needed for a while now.

And Alice’s bar was the perfect spot for it.

It was crowd full of strangers, people who had no idea I was going to be there until I sat on the stage with my guitar in my lap, watching recognition blooming on most of their faces.  But the energy picked up, and as I sang, I noticed phones recording me.  I noticed people speaking frantically to people on the other line.

There were probably livestreams after a few minutes.

And then there were people were banging on the bar doors because someone had enough social media reach to tell the world I was here.

On stage, there were no regrets, but I also knew I had to end the set quickly.  There were already demands to play songs from Tender Fracture’s latest album—something I wouldn’t do for any money in the world.  But the mood of the crowd was starting to sour and I wanted to bail before it got bad.

I was able to break free after my fifth song, and duck down the hallway before anyone could follow.  Alice squirrelled me away in the storeroom with Fred standing guard.  I’d known him from long before the band had any fame or notoriety and that was in the half-smile he gave me as he looked down at my heaving chest.

“Call an Uber,” Alice said, throwing a parka over my back.  “Have them get as close to the alley as they can and Fred will get you out.”

I would probably be noticed at some point during my escape, but Alice was right.  This was the only way I’d be able to get out without resigning myself to sleeping in the bar until the crowds got bored and left.  I had a dummy account on the app, so I ordered the car, then watched the slow progression of the driver because the snow and ice had only gotten worse since I got to the bar.

It was nearly midnight and I could feel the energy of the crowd ramping up.  People were drinking, fighting, falling in love, falling apart…everything I’d ever sung about but had never quite had the luxury to feel for myself.

Fuck, I was tired.  I was so, so tired.  Something had to give.

“I see a car pulling up,” Fred called from behind the door.  “Come with me.  I’ll get you out.”

Pulling the hood up over me, I took his arm and bowed my head and let him lead me into the frigid air.  It was biting and cruel, but the back door to the car was open and the heater was blasting.

The driver said nothing as they pulled forward, the tires slipping on the ice for a moment before they found traction in the piles of salt.

“Holy fuck.  It really is you,” the driver eventually breathed.  It was a young man—barely twenty-one I guessed by the roundness of his face.  He was staring at me and that was when I realized his eyes were red and glazed, and when he spoke, his words were slurred.

And from the smell wafting off him, it wasn’t from the cold.

Panic rushed through me and I pulled my phone out, tapping on the app to see the driver’s progress.  My heart sank down to the bottoms of my feet. The driver still on his way.  This person was not an Uber.  He was a stranger. 

Fuck, why didn’t I check first?  This was fucking amateur hour for me, apparently. 

I took a breath, then leaned forward.  “I need to get out of the car.”

The guy laughed.  “Relax, bruh.  This’s fine.  Iss fine.”

“You’re drunk.”  I tried the door handle, but it was locked and there wasn’t a button on the side to fix that.

He snorted.  “I’m not even buzzed.  I had, like, three shots.  Max  And dude I’ve been drinking sinnnncceee…I was a toddler.”  He burst into laughter, then suddenly slammed on the gas and the car lurched forward, throwing me into the back of his seat.

I pressed my fingers to my aching nose, checking for blood.  My rage was boiling up.  After everything that had happened over the last week, I was not in the mood for this.  “Let me the fuck out or I’m going to have you goddamn arrested.  You have no idea how badly I will destroy you.”  I tried the handle again, but the door didn’t budge.

“Bruhhhh.  Chill.”  Then he slammed on the gas once just as the road tipped down in a hill. 

My heart leapt into my throat.  “Hit the fucking brakes!”

“Bruh, I am!”  But he wasn’t.  He was still pushing on the gas and combined with the ice and snow on the roads, we began careening down the hill.  The car turned sideways after a moment, and then it began to spin.  I had no idea how close the crowd was to us, but I said a little prayer that if we hit anything, it wouldn’t be them.

I couldn’t seem to make a sound.  The moment was surreal as the car stopped spinning but kept sliding toward a building.  A restaurant, I realized, because I could see the horrified faces of the people scrambling to get out of the way.

There was a sound—high pitched and desperate—and it took me a moment to realize it was coming from me.  I was finally screaming.  And I felt, just for a moment, like I was outside of my body.

Then the tire hit something and the car began to flip, everything going upside down.

For a just a second, it felt like we were flying, and as I saw the ground rushing toward my window, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the pain.

But it never came.  Before the car made impact, everything went dark.

***

“…with me.  Okay?  I’ve…in the…keep breathing.”

Breathing?  Was I breathing?  I became aware of the strangest juxtaposition of pain and numbness, like my body was directly split in half.  My fingers were curled in…sheets?  It was some kind of warm, scratchy fabric.  I couldn’t seem to open my eyes and check, and either everything was missing from my hips down, or something was cutting off all my circulation.

I had legs, didn’t I?  I started the night with legs.  I tried to blink but something was gumming up my eyes. 

Where the fuck was I?  Was it…god, was it cold or hot?

I couldn’t tell.  I was shivering, but I also felt like the back of my neck was covered in sweat, and my face felt so fucking warm.

I tried to make a sound but there was something in my mouth.  I felt jostled from left to right, and then suddenly the chaos of the world settled into total silence.  Was this it?  Was I dead?  Asleep?  Having some kind of night terror or sleep paralysis.

Fuck, I wanted to wake up.

And then came the sirens, somewhere off in the distance.  They were faint, but something about them grounded me, and in that moment I realized what happened. I was in an ambulance.  I’d been in a car crash and now I was with EMTs. 

The pain became very real for a second—searing hot like all my nerves below the waist were on fire. 

I tried to blink again and my eyelids moved just a sliver.  I could see a person—broad shouldered and wearing a dark parka.

His hands were on me.  They were—oh.  They were so cold and calloused.

And dear god, so comforting.

“You’re doing amazing, Atlas.”

Atlas.  He knew my name?  How did he know my name?

“I see you breathing, you fucking champion.  Fuck yeah.  Sorry for the swearing, though I heard one of your songs earlier and you dropped a lot f-bombs so I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

I wanted to laugh.  I tried, but I couldn’t seem to exhale more than soft breath through my lungs.  I pushed at whatever was in my mouth with my tongue and suddenly it was gone.  I still couldn’t move the rest of me, though my fingers did twitch.  I was a thousand pounds of led weights.

“You with me?”  A bright light was suddenly in my eyes and I wanted to smack it away, but I couldn’t lift my arms.  “Yeah, I see those pupils.  Amazing.  Can you squeeze my fingers?”

His cold hand was in mine and I could feel it.  I let my fingers twitch.

“Yeah, baby.  Look at you go.  You’re gonna be just fine.  How about here?  Can you kick me?”

Was he…oh.  He must have been touching something near my feet, but I couldn’t feel it.  Something in the back of my mind told me that was bad.  Very, very bad.  Terrible, in fact.  But I didn’t know why.

I couldn’t remember why.

“Hey, babe?  How we looking?”

“It’s gonna be at least forty-five minutes with all this shit.  We can call Life Flight.”

“He’s stable for now.”

Me?  I was stable for now?  What did that mean?  I managed to poke my tongue out and lick my lips, and one of my eyes opened a little more.  Suddenly my entire field of vision was flooded with a man.  A very good-looking man, in fact.  He wore aviator style glasses perched high on his nose, and he had full lips, freckles on his cheeks, and the softest golden brown eyes.

“Hey, Atlas.”

I made a small noise and he smiled wide.

“Yeah, I knew you’d be a fighter.  Squeeze my hand again?”

There it was, back against my palm.  “Second…date…first,” I managed to murmur.

He blinked, then threw his head back and laughed.  “Yeah?  You write all those sexy songs about blowjobs and you want a second date before we hold hands?”

I tried to shrug but all I managed was a twitch.  Those two words took everything out of me.  I breathed, in and out, slow and steady.  The ambulance was moving a little, but I had a feeling it wasn’t enough. 

I took another breath.  “Am I…”

He waited patiently, his hand still holding mine.  I squeezed his fingers and his face brightened.

“Dying?”

“Not on my watch.  You have more sad songs you have to write.”

“You…were,” I searched for the strength to make my mouth move.  “There?”

“So my partner—she’s in the front seat driving—we were eating at the little kebab place near the bar you were playing at.  They ran out of Diet Coke, and she wouldn’t be able to navigate through all this bullshit traffic without it, so I had to run to the bar to get her some.  I saw you on stage.”

“Saw?”

He laughed and squeezed my fingers.  “And heard you.  You were gorgeous, you know.  I can’t believe I have a real life celebrity holding my hand right now.”

“Not.”  Suddenly the ambulance began to race, spinning around in a circle.  Was it the ice?  Was—oh.  Was it me? There was a warm palm on my cheek and two fingers pressed against my neck.

“…with me, okay?  Stay with me.  Breathe, Atlas.  Slow and steady.”

I did my best to obey.  The edges of my vision were dark and the pain was getting worse.  “Hurts.”

“Where?”

I couldn’t name a place so I just shrugged.

“That accident beat you up pretty badly.  Do you remember much?”

“Mn-mm.”

His hand moved from my neck to my cheek, his gloved thumb stroking just to the right of my mouth.  I expected the latex to feel awful but it didn’t.  When had he put gloves on?

Everything began to spin again, and I was starting to feel weaker, and for a moment, everything felt like a dream.  How did I get here?  There was the club.  I sang.  Then the snow and…  “What happened?”

His eyes turned sad.  “Car accident.  Another ambulance picked up the driver.  He was your friend, I’m assuming.”

I managed to lick my lips.  “Strange…er.”  I closed my eyes for so long, he began to squeeze my fingers again and I opened them.  “Not…Uber.” He looked at me, confused.  I didn’t have the strength to tell him everything.  “Help me.” 

Everything felt so…foggy.  So surreal.

“What can I do?”

“Don’t…don’t know.”  I needed his name, so I asked for it.

His smile, what I could see of it, turned a little shy.  “Ryan.  Definitely not as cool as Atlas.  Is that a stage name?”

I think I managed a smile.  It felt like it anyway.  “Mn-mm.”  I tried to move my foot but I couldn’t even tell if my foot was there.  “Gone?”

Ryan—the name fit him so well—frowned at me.  “Gone?”

“Legs?  Can’t…”  My breath felt weak coming out.  “Can’t feel them.”

Ryan visibly paled and let out a trembling breath.  “They’re there.  Don’t you worry about that, okay?  We have you strapped down and on the way to the hospital so the doctors can fix you up.  Gracie, honey, how we doin’?”

“Best I can.  Still stable?”

“BP has been dropping.”  He began to read out numbers and say other words I couldn’t really process.  I could only assume they were about my condition.  The driver swore, so I knew it was bad.

I didn’t want to die.  Not now, not here.  Not like this.  I wasn’t ready.  I was done letting people make me feel like the world was better off without me.  I didn’t want to find my heart again, and my purpose, only to lose it because a drunk fan made shit choices.

“Talk to me,” I whispered.

Ryan’s gaze snapped back to mine.  He peeled off his gloves and took both of my hands, holding them up, my knuckles grazing the chest of his uniform.  “About what?”

“Anything.  Everything.”  My eyelids were getting heavy again.  “Don’t let me go.”

“I’ve got you,” Ryan murmured.  He shifted so close I could feel heat radiating off of him.  “What do you want to know?”

“About you,” I rasped.  I wanted to know everything about this fucking angel who was currently keeping me alive.

He gave me another shy smile.  “There’s not much to me.  I’m an EMT—obviously.  I didn’t decide to cosplay for the night.”  I grinned.  “I’m good at my job even though it’s not what I want to do.”

“What…you want?”

“It’s not important.”

“Is.”

He met my gaze for a long beat, then squeezed my fingers harder.  “Keep squeezing back.”  I did, and it must have satisfied because some tension left his shoulders.  “When I was a kid, I was wildly obsessed with Ancient Egypt.  That eventually bled into Ancient Mesopotamia when I was old enough to understand more complicated textbooks.  I developed a fixation on Babylon, and then Akkadian Empire.  By my freshman year of college, I went through the typical Antiquities phase.”

“Don’t…know…means.”  I had no idea about half the things he was saying.

His rough thumb stroked over my knuckles.  “Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome.  I did a bunch of term papers on gender and sexual identities in Greco-Roman societies.  It kind of helped me come to terms with being gay.”

“Mm.  Me.  Yes.”

He chuckled softly.  “Glad I’m in good company.”  His thumbs stroked my wrists and I started to fade again, so I focused on where he was touching me, letting the pressure of his hands ground me.  “My parents were furious when I graduated with a bachelor’s in history, then got into a master’s program.  They made me feel like I was giving up on having a comfortable life and wasting money on something that would never matter.  Maybe they were right.  I’m going to have to see them soon and listen to what a useless waste of space I am and how badly I fucked up this holiday season.”

“You…fucked up?  How?”

Ryan passed a hand down his face before taking mine again.  “There’s this thing my family does.  An island we always visit during New Years because no one wants to deal with the cold.  I was supposed to be there this year and that’s one more disappointment for the jar on the mantle they’re keeping of how I failed them.”

I squeezed his fingers.  “Tell…me.  About…island.”  I wanted to hear about it.  To picture anything except the inside of this ambulance moving at a snail’s pace.

Ryan let out a tiny laugh.  “It’s called Pierce Island.  We always stay overnight in Savannah and then take a tram to the docks at the ass crack of dawn and get on this thirteen-hour ferry.  Everyone hates everyone for the first leg of the trip.  Then suddenly we go from freezing cold to tropical and warm and people tend to forget why they’re mad at each other.  Well, unless you’re my parents and then they’re still pissed at me because all I’ve done is go against the meticulous life-plan my mother made for me…”  He said it in a way that told me he’d heard it over and over and I felt an odd sense of rage for this stranger who I knew didn’t deserve that from the people who were meant to love him unconditionally. 

“More,” I whispered.

He took a breath and managed a smile down at me.  “It’s funny because I hated going there when I was a kid, even when I loved it.  I wanted to be somewhere that felt like Christmas.  Like the Poconos with snow and cider and skiing.  I’ve never been skiing,” he added, his eyes crinkling in the corners.  “But I’ve always wanted to learn.”

“Not…that fun,” I managed.

He laughed and shook his head.  “I have no doubt I’d make a fool of myself, but I don’t know that I’ll ever get the chance.  Whenever I suggest a winter holiday, my mother calls me an idiot.  She makes me feel small, so I shut my mouth and go along with what they want.”

“Hurts?”

He shrugged.  “It does, yeah.  Pierce Island’s beautiful even if my family’s being ugly.  I think I’ll go with them next year even if it means feeling shitty about myself.  And hell, maybe it’ll be better after everything, you know?”

“Everything?”

“I’m taking the MCAT to see if I can get into med school.  I mean, it’s not what I want.  It’s the last thing I want, but if it means making them happy…”

“No.”

He laughed and blinked down at me.  God, he was so, so pretty.

“Mean…it,” I managed.  “Be happy.”

“Good advice, but hard to follow.”  He closed his eyes and bowed his head.  “If I could have just one thing, it would be someone who gets me.  Someone who doesn’t want me to twist myself into all the wrong shapes to make them happy.”

I understood that a little too well.  So well that for a brief, fleeting moment, I forgot the pain I was in and we were just two men lamenting about our lives.

And then my nerves fired up again and I gasped, squeezing him tighter.

“Hang in there,” he said, leaning over to check something on the monitor beside me.  He didn’t look happy.  “Keep breathing, Atlas.  We’re moving slow, but we’re going to get you help, okay?”

“Mm.”

I squeezed his fingers again, the only way I could really respond.  I wanted him to keep talking, to selfishly live out loud these painful parts of his life.  It was keeping me grounded.  It was keeping his hands on me and where the numbness was starting to spread, I was terrified that eventually I wouldn’t be able to feel him at all.

And then my heartrate got funny again.  I could feel it slowing in my chest, like all the blood in my body had turned thick as honey, and he quit talking for a while as he adjusted a couple tubes. Eventually I could breathe easier once more, and things felt steady.  I could see the worry in his eyes as he looked down at me.

He brushed fingers through my hair and the sensation made me want to cry with the relief it brought.  “When I applied for a master’s program in history, my parents threatened to disown me.  I can’t decide if I want to pursue that part of my life or do what they want me to do.  Is giving up on my passion worth the peace?  I don’t know if you know how that feels.”

I didn’t.  Not in the same way.  But the thought of him living a life that didn’t make him happy gutted me.

“No.”  The inside of the ambulance went dim.  Or…was my vision fading.  I tested the movement in my legs again, but there was still nothing.

I understood what that meant now.

I knew what caused it.  I knew that every second that ticked by, hope was draining like an open vein.

But I felt safe, holding Ryan like this.

“No what?” he pressed.  He squeezed me as the monitor beside me started to dig frantically.  “Come on, Atlas.  Don’t let go now, okay?”

I let out a breath and found the strength to speak more than three words.  “Don’t give up.  Please don’t give up.”

“On you?  Of course I won’t—”

“On you.”

He went silent.  I couldn’t see him now, and my arms felt like cold spaghetti, but he was still holding me.  “Atlas—”

“Promise me.”

He let out a trembling sigh.  “Only if you promise me you won’t either.  We’re going to get you to the ER.  They’re probably going to take you right into a surgery.  I don’t know what’ll come after.  I think you know it’s serious, but if I do this—if I listen to you and don’t give up on what makes me happy—you have to listen to me too.  You have to go on living.”

Yes, I wanted to tell him.  I’ll try.  I’m shit scared and think I might be dying, but I’m not going to give up.

Except I couldn’t make the words come. I’d used up all my strength to speak and the best I could do was squeeze his fingers one last time. 

The world around me went dark.  I was floating in a void of my subconscious full of numbness and pain, and it felt like every time I reached out, reality was slipping through my fingers.  But I could still feel him.  He was still there. 

Holding me. 

My ballast.

Ryan was a complete stranger, but it didn’t matter.  For that moment, for these few, weak heartbeats, he was mine.

***

The Night We Fell, Coming December 30th, 2026