Chapter 23 Jace
JACE
Ignoring their retreating forms, I kneel in front of Shane. “You okay?” I ask, keeping my voice soft so I don’t spook him any more than I have.
He shakes his head.
“What did you take?”
“Percs,” he croaks.
“How many?”
“Three.”
Without knowing the dose of each pill, I can’t be sure if that’s enough to cause an OD. But even at low strength, three pills are enough to fuck him up, even without the copious amounts of alcohol he’s probably had too.
“Anything else?”
He shakes his head.
“Did you drink anything other than alcohol and mix?”
He shakes his head again and sways back and forth a few times.
Gently, I place my fingers on his neck to check his pulse. It’s slow and thready, and his skin is cool and clammy. I can’t be sure without a way to check, but it looks like his blood pressure is low, which is never a good sign when you mix alcohol and opioids.
“What’s happening to me?” he asks, his words slurring together.
“You’re fucked up on booze and pills.”
“I don’t feel good.”
“That’s because of the booze and pills. Can you get up?”
He shakes his head, but he’s so drunk he moves his shoulders and torso at the same time so it looks like he’s impersonating a sprinkler.
“You have two choices,” I tell him. “You can either try to walk, or I can carry you.”
“You can’t carry me,” he snorts, then lets out a little giggle. “I’m too heavy.”
“I already told you I can bench more than you weigh. I can manage a fireman’s carry.”
“You’re going to carry me all the way back to the dorm?” He blinks at me like a confused lemur. “That’s like, two miles.”
“More like a mile and a half.”
“Same diff.” He waves dismissively. “S’impossible.”
“Not for me.” I drape one of his arms over my shoulder and get up in a crouch. “But I don’t have to carry you all the way to the dorm to get you back there.”
“Huh—Yikes!” he squeals as I stand, holding him in a fireman’s carry.
“Don’t wiggle or I might just drop you on purpose,” I warn and start walking toward the woods.
He doesn’t wiggle. Instead he whips his head around like he’s trying to see better, making me sway on my feet as his weight shifts back and forth.
“Where are we going?” he asks, his words slurring worse than before. “I can’t see.”
“That’s because it’s dark,” I tell him as I step through the treeline and into the forest. “And it’s about to get a whole lot darker.”
“Why’re you helping me?” he asks and finally stops trying to look around.
“Because you need it.” I adjust my grip on him and step over a fallen log. He isn’t that heavy, but the ground is uneven, and I have to move more slowly than usual because it’s too dark to see where I’m putting my feet.
“Am I dying?”
“No.”
“My head feels weird.”
“Weird like all the blood is rushing to it, or weird like you’re gonna puke?” I ask, stopping in my tracks.
“The second one.” He makes a gagging sound, and I quickly pull him off my shoulder and set his feet on the ground.
He wobbles and sways, but doesn’t fight as I pull his arm over my shoulders and grip his waist with my other hand.
“Better?” I ask as I start walking again.
He’s not able to do much to help me, but he leans his weight against me and puts his head on my shoulder as he lets me half drag him through the dark woods. “I miss them,” he says forlornly.
“Who?” I ask when he falls quiet. I have a feeling I know exactly who he means, but it’s probably better to get him talking than it is to let him get stuck in his head right now.
“KJ and Rosie.” His entire body shakes with a sob. “I miss them so much.”
I have no idea what to say, but Shane is so far gone from the drinks and pills that he probably wouldn’t hear me even if I did try to comfort him.
“I don’t understand why I’m still here,” he mumbles, his voice thick with emotion as his words blend together, making it hard to understand him.
“Why did he do it? Why didn’t he listen to me?
” He lets out another body-shaking sob. “Why am I the one who’s still here?
Why did it have to be me? I’m not him. I’ll never be him. They want me to be. But I can’t.”
He’s babbling now, his head heavy on my shoulder as I half carry, half drag him through the woods.
“I’m so tired,” he mumbles, his voice full of pain and despair. “I try to be what they want me to be, but I can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to do it anymore.” He presses his face into my neck. “Don’t make me do it anymore. Please.”
“You don’t have to do it anymore,” I tell him, keeping my voice soft and even. I have no idea what he means, but he needs reassurance right now, so that’s what I’m going to give him.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
He sort of falls against me, his entire body going limp, and I have to stop walking and grab him in a bear hug hold so he doesn’t slide right out of my grip and onto the forest floor.
“I wish he never saved me,” he whispers.
“You wish who never saved you?”
“KJ.” His voice is so soft I barely hear it.
His brother saved him from the fire? Is that why he was found outside?
“And I wish you never saved me,” he whispers, pressing his cheek into my neck. “I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to be here anymore.”
Instead of saying something that will most likely just make everything worse, I hold him tight and let him cling to me.
“I’m so tired,” he mumbles, and I know he’s not just talking about the effects of what he took.
“I know.” I rub his back in what I hope is a soothing manner. “Let’s get you back to your room so you can rest.”
“’Kay,” he murmurs, but doesn’t loosen his hold on me.
It takes a bit of shifting and some gentle prying, but I manage to peel him off me and tuck him back up against my side.
It’s slow going because he’s too fucked up to help, but we eventually clear the trees and step out into a secluded lot that’s off one of the many access roads around campus that aren’t on any of the school maps.
The car I borrowed from the back parking lot of the dorm is sitting exactly where I left it, and I drag Shane over to it and pull open the door.
Folding him into the car is a struggle, and I have to move his legs in one by one like he’s a mannequin.
When he’s finally in the car, I close the door and walk around to the other side. I didn’t bother buckling him in since we’re only driving to the dorm, but he’s fumbling for the clasp over his shoulder when I slide into the car next to him.
“Seatbelts,” he slurs and catches the clasp. He gives it a hard yank, which just causes it to lock and slip right out of his hand.
“We don’t need them.”
“What if we get pulled over?” He blinks at me with big, liquid eyes that are so full of trust and innocence, it makes something in my chest tighten.
“We won’t,” I assure him and push the ignition start button.
“I didn’t know you had a car,” he says and leans back against his seat.
“I don’t. Not here, at least.”
He furrows his brow in confusion as I put the car in gear. “Then whose car’s this?”
“Not mine,” I say as I pull onto the access road.
“You stole it?”
“More like borrowed it since I’m putting it back.”
“How?” He lets his head fall back against the headrest. “Did you borrow the start thingy too?”
“The key fob?”
“Yeah, that.”
“No. I made my own.”
“Kinda like how you made that dumdum card?”
I huff out a soft laugh. “Not exactly the same, but pretty much.”
He rolls his head so he’s looking at me. “How do you know how to do all this stuff?”
His words are slurring worse than ever, but I can still understand him.
“It’s not that hard. Just need the right tech.”
“Is this like when they told you they needed you to use magic on those files we got?”
It takes a second to piece together that he’s talking about when Jordan tasked me with going over the blackmail files and the info Carter compiled about them after the escape room meeting.
“Mostly,” I tell him, even though it’s not even remotely the same thing.
Now isn’t the time to go over the complexities of the different methods and tech needed to hack computer files versus hacking a car.
“Who are you?”
I shoot him a quick glance as I turn off the access road and onto one of the back roads that will take us right to the dorm. “I thought we already established that I’m Jace, or at least I ended up being him.”
He shakes his head, and I don’t miss the way he closes his eyes like he’s fighting off a dizzy spell when he stops. “Not that. Who are you? How can you do all this stuff? I know you’re what you are, but how the hell can you do all these things?”
“Our family learned early that the worst thing you can do is let me and my brother get bored.” I toss him a quick smirk.
“So in order to keep us out of juvie, they taught us the ropes of the family biz early and let us learn whatever the fuck happened to catch our fancy. And our pathological need to one up each other and turn everything into a competition made it so we got really good at whatever we learned, no matter how atypical or unique it is.”
“Juvie?”
“Yup.” Turning off the road, I pull into the parking lot and drive over to the spot where I borrowed the car from.
“For like, shoplifting or shit like that?”
“Not so much shoplifting,” I tell him as I pull into the parking spot. “More like beating the fuck out of anyone who pissed me off and not giving a shit if I killed them.”
“Killed like killed?”
“Killed like deleted from the census,” I confirm.
“You’ve killed people?”
“Yup.” I turn off the car and look over at him.
He tilts his head to the side and gives me a thoughtful look. Or at least as thoughtful as he can be in his current state. “How many?”
“How many people have I killed?”
He nods.
“Don’t know. Never bothered to keep count.”
“Did they deserve it?”
“Yes.”
He nods slowly. “Okay.”
I grin at him. “Okay? That’s it?”
He shrugs. “Whaddelse am I gonna say? S’not that much of a shock considering what I’ve seen you do. And what you are.”
“It doesn’t freak you out?”