Chapter 25 Blake
Blake
The woods are chaos. Flashlights slash through the dark, sirens wail closer, and the static of radios crackles over everything. Officers shout to each other as they fan out, and the masked body on the ground becomes just another piece of evidence for them to secure.
Word ripples quickly through the noise that there was a third masked guy in the trees, likely the jittery one from the video. He must’ve backed out again, because now he’s cuffed against a cruiser, spilling his guts to any cop who’ll listen.
In the mess of it, all I see is Mads.
Blood streaks his arm, his side, his shirt. Too much of it for my liking.
He flinches when they press gauze to his ribs, a sharp breath hissing through his teeth. I push in closer, refusing to be moved when one of them tries to usher me away, and Mads catches my wrist, smearing my skin red. “I need her here with me,” he rasps, eyes locked on mine.
The paramedic gives me a quick once-over, then shrugs. “Fine. Just stay out of the way.”
Out of the way. As if I could stand anywhere but here, pressed to Mads’ uninjured side while they patch him up. His face is pale, but he still manages a smirk between rough breaths as the antiseptic burns across his broken skin.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I whisper, tears stinging my eyes.
“Like what?” His voice is threaded with pain.
“Like you’re not bleeding all over the place.”
“Can’t help it.” His thumb brushes my knuckles. “You’re the only thing keeping me upright right now.”
An officer clears his throat beside us, notebook in hand. “We’re going to need statements. Both of you.”
Mads’s smirk doesn’t falter, but his grip on me tightens, like he’s daring them to try and separate us.
The questions come fast—names, descriptions, how long we’d been in the woods, what started it.
My throat’s raw from screaming, but I keep my answers flat. As truthful as possible. Two guys in masks jumped us. We didn’t know them. One had a knife, and he’s dead now because Mads fought back, and he fell on it. An accident. The officers agreed, the body’s position making it obvious.
Mads also felt the need to tell him we were out here for sexy time, which earned us a look that screamed, I do not get paid enough for this.
The parts about the drive, the video… we left all that out. It felt like the right thing to do for the time being. Just until we have all our ducks in a row.
They press, trying to catch us in a contradiction, but there isn’t one. Eventually, they accept everything for what it is and leave us be.
By the time the paramedics finish with Mads, his side is tightly bandaged and his arm wrapped. He’s pale but upright, leaning a little too much on me as they sign him off with a warning to get checked at the hospital if the bleeding starts again.
The cops don’t look happy about letting us go, but they’ve got more than enough to deal with, and two bruised and bloodied college kids aren’t high on their list once the body bag arrives.
We don’t wait around to see what happens next. We’ve dealt with enough for one night, and I’m just grateful no one’s cuffing either of us on the way out.
The second the door clicks shut behind us, I turn on him. “Sit down. You’re bleeding through the bandage already, and you—”
“Nope.” His voice is firm, already steering me toward the bathroom with one hand at the small of my back. “You first.”
I whip around, glaring at him. “Excuse me? You should be—”
“Blake.” He says my name like a warning. “I’m fine. You’re the one who just had a knife pressed to her throat. You’re showering. Now.”
My chest tightens, the image of that blade flashing in my mind, the way his face had looked when he saw it. I want to argue, to insist he needs rest, but he doesn’t let me. His hand slides up to cup the side of my face, thumb moving along my jaw, softer than the words spilling out of his mouth.
“I can live with a few cuts,” he murmurs. “I can’t live with you walking around in someone else’s blood. Go.”
I look down at myself and realize just how disgusting I am. Some of it must’ve smeared onto Mads in the fight, and ended up on me when I grabbed him after.
When I look back up, the heat behind his eyes leaves no room for protest. He nudges me into the bathroom, flicks the light on, and opens the closet to grab a few towels.
I cross my arms, fighting the crack in my voice. I can’t help but want to cry a little. “You really need to lie down.”
“And yet you’re still going to do what I say.” He smirks, tossing a towel onto the counter. “Shower, Blue.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he’s already tugging his ruined hoodie over his head, wincing when it brushes his bandaged side. His t-shirt follows, landing in a crumpled heap on the tile.
“Mads—”
He cuts me off with a look, then with a kiss, quick and firm. “Not up for debate,” he murmurs against my lips.
His fingers find the buttons of my top, working them open one by one, and I don’t fight him this time. The fabric peels away, falling to join his. By the time he’s nudging me toward the shower and twisting the handle, steam is already curling around us.
The spray is warm and just what I need. He doesn’t give me a chance to move on my own—he takes the soap, lathers his hands, and starts at my shoulders, working down my arms with a gentleness that makes my throat ache.
“You’re going to soak your bandages,” I protest weakly, watching the water drip down his chest, turning pink where it trails through blood he hasn’t bothered to scrub off himself.
“Doesn’t matter.” He leans in and kisses the corner of my mouth. “You matter.”
He tilts my chin, washing the dirt from my jaw, the smear of dried blood from my neck. Every time I start to argue—to tell him he’s the one who needs care—he kisses me again, quieting me with lips that taste a bit like copper and stale beer, but I really don’t care because it’s him.
By the time he’s finished, we’re both under the spray, wrapped around each other and unmoving, letting it wash over us. My cheek rests against his chest, his arms locked tight around me, his breath steady against the crown of my head.
The water beats down, carrying away the blood, the dirt, everything. The last few weeks swirl down the drain until it’s only the two of us left. In the quiet, with his hands on me—gentle, steady—I know what we are.
What we’ve become in the middle of all this.
In love.
By the time we crawl into bed, the rain outside beats steadily against the tin roof, wrapping the night in a hush that feels a thousand miles from everything else.
The room is dim, lit only by the glow of the laptop on the blanket between us.
The drive’s plugged in, waiting, taunting.
Because even after everything we’ve been through tonight, it’s still the priority.
I sit cross-legged, damp hair dripping down my back. Mads settles behind me, pulling a comb gently through the tangles.
“Tell me again what Riley said.” He sections off my hair and starts to braid, surprising me in the best way. I pause, twist just enough to press a kiss to him on the lips, careful not to ruin his handiwork.
I open a new window on the screen. “Partition reader. Rebuild it in chunks. Focus on the headers.”
“Sounds simple enough.” His voice is skeptical, but there’s a quiet undercurrent of hope there, too. He knows more about this than I do, but he’s willing to try whatever.
I huff a laugh. “Simple. Right. Let’s just hope it works before my laptop decides to explode.”
“If it does, you can borrow mine. Though fair warning—it’s mostly porn and half-finished essays on there.”
I nudge him with an elbow in his good ribs, earning a grunt before he dips down to kiss the spot where my neck meets my shoulder.
Lines of code scroll past as I start the process Riley described—partition reader pulling fragments, headers isolating, data piecing itself back together one block at a time. Every string that reappears feels like proof this might actually work.
Mads leans down, presses a kiss to the damp top of my head as he ties off the end of my braid. “We’ve got this, Blue.”
The program runs slow, too slow, little progress bars creeping like they’re mocking me. I keep clicking through directories, checking, rechecking, forcing myself not to panic every time another corrupted block of data flashes red before flickering back to green.
An hour later, I’m bleary-eyed, staring at the same screen like it might eat me alive, when Mads comes back from wherever he disappeared to and nudges something against my lips.
“Open,” he says.
I blink, confused, then catch the smell. Fucking tacos. “Are you—”
“Shut up and eat.” He demands, holding the taco like it’s a spoonful of medicine he’s determined to get into me.
I groan but take a bite, too hungry to argue. The taste is heaven after everything tonight, and he grins like he’s won some kind of victory.
“You’re always so full of surprises,” I mumble through a mouthful.
He wipes a smear of sauce off my lip with his thumb before popping half a cinnamon twist into his own mouth.
By the time I’ve choked down half a dozen tacos and eaten more of the cinnamon twists than I’ll admit, the program’s still churning, lines of code crawling like molasses.
Mads doesn’t seem to care. He stretches out behind me, one arm draped heavily across my waist, the other sneaking chips out of the bag when he thinks I’m not looking.
“I hate crumbs in the bed,” I groan. “And those are mine.”
“You’re terrible at sharing.” He bites my shoulder. “Plus, I’m feeding you. That means I get a tax.”
“Pretty sure that’s not how it works.”
“Pretty sure it is.” He kisses the back of my neck. It’s too comfortable, too easy.
My eyes grow heavier with every passing minute. My head tips back against his chest, and he rubs up and down my arm, soft and absentminded. The code keeps crawling across the screen, meaningless lines blurring together.
“Close your eyes, Blue,” he murmurs, low and steady. “I’ve got you.”
And with that, I finally let go.