Chapter 23
MAX
Her voice faded away. The silence echoed softly among the trees in a quiet moan.
All I could hear was my staccato breathing, Megan’s gasps, and Jackson’s uncontrolled hissing. My whole fucking world cracked in half as I looked down at Mackenzie.
Blood blurred my vision, sticky and thick in my mouth, damp on my hands. Around me, the world narrowed to a tunnel of terror, trees looming like a silent, malevolent army.
“I… Oh my God… baby, wake up.” I continued to press my hands onto Mackenzie’s wound. The blood was pouring out of her. It was all over me. “Hold… hold her, please.”
Megan got down onto her knees and cradled Mackenzie, while I took off my shirt and bunched it up. I pressed it down hard against Mackenzie’s wound and then pulled her back into my arms.
“She’s going to be okay, right?” Megan’s voice cut through the chaos.
I turned to Jackson, who was cradling his arm, drenched in blood. The bloody knife was on the ground.
“You fucking stabbed her, you sick fuck!” I screamed. A panic unlike anything I’d experienced before ripped through my chest. I thought I knew fear, but this? Seeing her slip away right in front of my eyes was agony.
This was hell.
I pressed my hand against her cheek, desperate to wake her. But her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she lay perfectly still in my arms.
“She’s… she’s not okay. She’s not opening her eyes! She’s not fucking opening her eyes! Mackenzie. Mackenzie, look at me, baby. Look at me, please.”
“Max!” Megan sobbed violently. “We have to call 911. I’m calling an ambulance.” She yanked her phone out.
I shook Mackenzie lightly, terrified to shake harder. My chest was caving in, my ribs splintering under the pressure of losing her.
I would never survive it.
“Oooh, is she dead? Too bad. I was looking forward to peeling her skin off on our wedding night.”
I looked up at Jackson, watching him smile through the dark blood dripping down his face.
I was going to kill him. I was going to bash his brains out with my baseball bat and then feed his brain to a dog.
I had never wanted to commit murder before, but the act of it was something I welcomed.
The thought of it brought me joy. Because my hatred for Jackson was the strongest it had ever been in that moment.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” I snarled. “And everyone you’ve ever known.” My voice was venomous, filled with rage that he clearly sensed. His smile faded instantly, replaced by a flicker of terror.
He thought he was bad? I was worse. I was always going to be worse. All bets were off when it came to Mackenzie.
Megan shifted nervously, eyes darting between us. “Jackson, you’ve got about ten minutes before the cops arrive. You’d better run.”
“Fuck that,” I snapped, rising to my feet. I handed Mackenzie back to Megan and pressed my blood-stained hands against my face, smudging the gore into a grim mask. The caged Max was finally unleashed. “I’ll give you a head start before I rip your limbs off, one by one.”
A small hand pressed against my chest, stopping me in my tracks. I looked down to see Megan’s cold, distant eyes.
“Max. Mackenzie needs you. Your chase is over,” she said quietly, with an unsettling calm.
I glanced back at Mackenzie’s distorted, lifeless body, and then turned to Jackson, who was frozen, staring at her.
“Don’t you dare look at her like that, or I swear I’ll gouge your eyes out. Promise me, Jackson—next time I see you, I won’t hold back. Run, motherfucker.”
He didn’t hesitate. He took off into the darkness. I was about to pursue him, but a soft, agonized sob slipped from Mackenzie’s pale lips, drawing me back down to her, clutching her trembling form.
“Baby, look at me. Please. You’re mine, do you hear me?
You’re not leaving me,” I rasped, my words harsh and trembling as sobs choked my throat.
I pressed my forehead against hers, my mind consumed by an overwhelming fear.
I was thinking of how deeply I loved her, how I had always loved her, and the terror that gripped me at the thought of losing her forever.
“Open your eyes, Mackenzie Anne Hamill! Please, just open them!” I begged, desperation thick in my voice.
“Max… the ambulance will be here in fifteen minutes,” Megan's voice was distant, almost drowned out by the pounding in my ears. Only the frantic, ragged sound of Mackenzie struggling to breathe against me remained clear.
I lifted my gaze and met Megan’s wide, panicked eyes. Something inside me shattered.
“I’m taking her to the hospital now. I won’t wait for her to die,” I said, my voice haunted and urgent.
My decision was final. There was no universe where anyone could argue with me. I stood, cradling Mackenzie in my arms, her head lolling into my chest. The sight of her blood soaking into my shirt nearly brought me to my knees, a scream trapped in my throat.
Megan started to say something, but I cut her off with a murderous glare so sharp she silenced instantly. No one was stopping me.
“I’ve got you, baby,” I whispered into Mackenzie’s hair, my lips brushing her damp forehead as my hands trembled violently. “I’ve got you.”
Rage and terror flooded through every step I took toward the camp gates, my breath ragged and shallow. I ran to the cabin with her in my arms, grabbing my wallet and truck keys in a frantic blur. Bloody fingerprints smeared across the nightstand as I seized them, mind racing.
“I’m not losing you,” I muttered like a vow, clutching her tighter as if to hold her from slipping away.
By the time I shoved open the camp’s front gates, my chest heaved wildly, my mind a chaotic storm.
Rational thought had vanished. Only raw, primal instinct remained: get her safe, get her healed, keep her alive at all costs.
If anyone tried to stop me, I would destroy them.
As I forcefully charged through the ER doors 15 minutes later, chaos erupted around us.
People were shouting and screaming at the sight of us.
I was half-dressed, drenched in a sickening mixture of my blood and Mackenzie’s, the scent almost suffocating.
The squeal of gurney wheels echoed like nails on a chalkboard.
Someone desperately tried to yank her from my grasp, but I clung on, brutally unwilling to let her go.
"She... she hit her head. She was stabbed... D-don’t you dare waste time..." My voice cracked into a guttural cry, losing all composure. I could feel my mind slipping, unable to hold back the terror and despair.
"Sir, please, step back,” a nurse commanded, grabbing my arm roughly.
"Don’t fucking touch me!” I spat, my grip tightening on Mackenzie. “She isn’t leaving my arms until you swear she’ll be okay.”
Two orderlies moved in quickly, their faces cold and intimidating. Realizing I was blocking the way, I reluctantly lowered her onto the stretcher, my hands shaking as I gently brushed her blood-matted hair from her face.
“Get vitals,” a nurse said quickly. The cuff inflated around her arm with a hiss.
“BP eighty over fifty, pulse one-forty, tachycardic. Respiration’s shallow,” another nurse rattled off, already clipping a pulse ox to her finger. “SpO? ninety-two percent.”
The ER doctor appeared in the same instant, eyes sharp and voice calm. “Airway’s intact for now. She’s talking?”
“No, unresponsive,” the nurse answered.
“Okay—two large-bore IVs, fluids wide open. Oxygen, non-rebreather, fifteen liters. Apply direct pressure to that stab wound, left flank. Get a type and cross, send blood, and page trauma surgery now.”
Gloved hands pressed gauze to the wound, red blooming through the white. Someone slipped an oxygen mask over her face. Machines began to beep.
“FAST exam at bedside, CT head and abdomen once she’s stable.”
“Step back, sir,” the charge nurse barked without even looking at me. Her tone was flat, practiced. My legs obeyed before my brain could argue.
“I’m not leaving her.” My voice cracked.
“You can follow in the hallway,” she shot back, already pushing the stretcher. “But she goes to trauma now.”
And then she was gone, swallowed whole by an overwhelming tide of scrubs and clipped voices, while I stumbled after, powerless. My heart pounded so loudly it drowned out the monitors. Inside the trauma bay, chaos erupted.
Gloves snapped onto hands, monitors screeched, voices shouting over each other in frantic, disjointed commands.
Orders yelled amid the chaotic, synchronized movement of the team: gauze pressed desperately into the bleeding wound, IV bags spiked and hung, machines blared ominous numbers into the suffocating air.
“Stay with us,” a nurse’s strained voice whispered as they shoved meds into her line. I stood paralyzed at the edge of the turmoil, helpless, watching strangers fight desperately to keep her alive. I clutched Mackenzie’s hand tighter, feeling the cold grip of terror and helplessness.
“Sir, I’m sorry, but next of kin only.” The nurse put her hands on my chest and tried to push me out of the room.
“I am her next of kin,” I said curtly. The lie was instinct, primal. It just happened.
“And you are?” The nurse eyed me inquisitively.
“Her husband.”
The nurse paused, sizing me up. I was eighteen, but my size made me look older. She relented, grabbing a clipboard and a pen.
“Okay, husband, I need details on our Jane Doe. Patient ID, age, allergies, medications, blood type.”
“Mackenzie McKinnon…”
My voice was shaking, but I rattled off all the information as if it was second nature because it was. I knew Mackenzie. I knew her so well.
“Any past medical conditions or surgeries?”
“Concussion from soccer last year. Her appendix was removed three years ago.” The sobs were taking over my entire body.
“Okay, Mr. McKinnon,” the nurse said briskly, already moving me back towards Mackenzie. I stood frozen, my chest caving in with every clipped order. She wasn’t responding. Her hand didn’t squeeze mine back. Her pulse—God, I could feel how weak it was.