Chapter 56
Sebastian
The Third Act Fuckup
“Are you taking me to a hospital?” Evie’s face was pale as I brushed her damp hair away from her forehead. I’d managed to sneak her out the back and into the limo with minimal people seeing us.
Luan, my driver, tossed me a look. His eyes drifted to where I was holding Evie’s stomach. I shook my head and put a finger to my lips. I bit down, trying to figure out a plan, and then quickly made a decision.
“Take us home.”
Luan had been my driver for a year or so now, and he was paid handsomely not to ask questions. Nodding, he put the divider up, separating us from him, and shifted out of drive.
“No. I’m taking you back to my house. I’m going to clean you up.
I told you to watch the cameras,” I groaned.
When she got the award, she went behind the curtains, just out of sight of the audience and cameras.
Alarm bells had been ringing, but it wasn’t until Arthur returned, flushed and with blown pupils, like he’d just done the best coke of his life, that I knew I had to go check on her.
She’d only been gone ten minutes, if that, but in that time, he’d managed to stab her and leave her to bleed out.
I pressed harder on her wound, doing my best to stop the bleeding.
Blood soaked through her dress and onto my fingers.
I bit my lip. The warm liquid wetting my skin made the reality of the situation hit me.
I had no idea how to treat a stab wound, but I’d seen enough movies to know this much blood loss was bad.
Both my hands and hers were covered now.
Evie closed her eyes, and I reached for my phone with my empty hand, quickly searching how to sew up a stab wound.
This was going to get me on a watchlist.
It seemed simple enough—clean it, stop the bleeding, sew it up—as long as I had needle and thread, which I was pretty sure I didn’t. Laun dropped us at my house, and I lifted her out of the limo, carrying her like my dead bride up the steps.
I shoved the dark thoughts out of my mind. She wasn’t dead. She was breathing. She was going to be okay. I opened the door, and the dogs ran into the foyer from the other room, hitting the walls as they slid.
“Guys, not now! Go to your kennels!”
For once, they understood my tone and words and went to their rarely used crates.
I ran up the stairs with her still in my arms and into my bedroom.
Tenderly, I placed her on the bed and went to my bathroom, searching for alcohol, bandages, and the needle and thread I knew weren’t there.
I returned with what I had and then got to work.
Carefully, I rolled her over and unzipped her dress.
Evie’s eyes fluttered open, and she screamed.
“Evie! It’s okay. It’s fine.”
I cringed as I tried to calm her, failing miserably.
I dropped to my knees beside the bed, reaching for her hand.
It wasn’t fine, but me losing it wouldn’t help the situation.
Her entire body was shaking and sweating.
The wound in her middle oozed through the dress and onto my sheets, the deep red staining them.
“I got fucking stabbed!” she sobbed. She squirmed as she clenched her jaw tight to hold in the screams.
“Was it Arthur?” I demanded. I needed to know just how desperate they were getting. Were they still using hired help for their dirty work? Or had they started doing it themselves? Either way, he was going to pay painfully.
“Yes, it was him,” she hissed, leaning up to help me peel the dress down her torso, revealing the full wound. I flinched. It was larger than I’d expected.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
I stared into the wet, mushy gash in her side. The knife had left a good-sized hole in her. Skin had peeled back, leaving muscle exposed and pulsing as she breathed. The wound was deep.
“No,” I lied. I had no idea if it was good or bad. “I mean, it’s not good.”
“Can you sew it up?” she asked. Her breath grew ragged, and her eyes fluttered closed.
“I’m going to try. You ready?”
She licked her lips and then nodded, replying with a quote from Hellraiser. “We have such sights to show you.”
“Stay with me, Final Girl,” I whispered as I took a rag and dumped alcohol on it.
Bracing for the scream, I placed it gently on her open wound. She lunged forward with a cry so shrill that I ducked as her arms came swinging forward. I braced myself as I tried to push her back down. “It’s okay! We’re just cleaning it!”
Tears poured from her eyes as she squirmed and tried to push me away.
“Evie, please, we need to do this!” I finished cleaning her wound, taking care of the muscle and other exposed pieces.
Once the bleeding had slowed and the area was clean, I was able to better assess the damage.
It wasn’t as horrible as I originally thought, but she wasn’t going to be walking around in a few hours.
I needed to get the wound closed so she could rest.
Pulling out my phone again, I tapped the screen, smearing blood on the glass as I searched for at-home options to close the wound.
“It hurts, Sebastian.”
“I know, Final Girl. Let me get you some pain pills, and I’ll work on closing you up.” I went to my bathroom again, returning with some low-dose aspirin and a small plastic cup I’d filled from the tap.
“How are you going to close it?” she asked after taking the pills with the water.
“Superglue or staples. Whichever I have in my office.” I hurried to my office, right next to my bedroom, looking for either item.
I found a stapler and grimaced, knowing what I was going to have to do next.
Would these things even hold? I returned to Evie, offering her one of the clean hand towels I’d grabbed. “Put this in your mouth.”
“You are not fucking stapling me together.” She growled with such ferocity, I jumped.
“It’s not that bad,” I argued. “Look.” Swallowing, I pulled up my sleeve and opened it, pressing it against my arm. Taking a deep breath and bracing myself, I slammed down and winced.
“Find something else,” she hissed.
I tossed the stapler onto my nightstand and nodded.
“Yeah okay.”
Digging out the staple with my nails, I returned to my office to scrounge some more.
While not as painful as being stabbed, being stapled wasn’t exactly great either.
I wiped the small droplets of blood and forced the uncomfortable pain away.
I’d live, but if I didn’t figure out how to close Evie up soon, she might not.
I dumped drawers and threw things off shelves, looking for something, anything, when my phone started to ring. Pausing, I pulled it out and saw it was Bryce. Answering quickly, I started speaking before he could.
“Hey, where are you, I need help.”
“Oh, I’m out of town. I was just calling to ask about—”
“I need to close a stab wound.” I cut him off. Bryce went quiet.
“At home?” he asked. The tone of his voice and the background noise suggested he was with company that shouldn’t be hearing this conversation. “Hold on.”
“Yes, I don’t have needle and thread, or glue. Staples are not an option.” I looked down at my arm and paced, tugging my hair.
“Staples? Jesus, Seb, you’re gonna make it worse. What about string and a paperclip?”
“What?”
“It ain’t gonna be pretty, but if you heat it up some with a lighter to clean the metal it could work. I’ve had to do some quick clean ups a time or two.”
I racked my brain, trying to think. Did I have either of those things?
Yes!
I returned to my messy desk and shuffled the contents tossed on top around, finding a handful of paperclips that had been in a drawer. They were covered in dust.
“Sebastian, you there?”
“Yeah, I just gotta find string.” I said, wiping the paperclips off with my hand.
“You got any fishing line?”
I blinked. Did I?
“Thanks. I gotta go.” I hung up and ran downstairs out to my garage.
Bryce and I had gone out on his boat a handful of times.
Quickly, I found my tackle box and pulled out a spool of fishing line.
Staring at the two objects, I knew this wasn’t ideal, but I took it back up to Evie anyways and showed her the paperclip and thread. I dropped to my knees at her side.
“Okay, Final Girl, you really need to work with me. We need to seal this up here. If we take you to the hospital, they’ll report it, and you were just filmed on television at the charity event.
They’ll start putting pieces together, and we can’t have that.
Can you sit still, please?” I pleaded with her, placing a kiss on her damp forehead. She closed her eyes and nodded.
Straightening the thin metal instrument, I pressed the thread against it and poked her skin, and it refused to go in. Frowning, I thought back and remembered what Bryce had said.
“What are you doing?” Evie asked as I leaned back and pulled out my cigarette case. “You really need a cigarette right now?”
I ignored her, opening it and removing the lighter. Flicking it on, I ran the paperclip over the flame.
“Relax, Final Girl.”
“What are you doing?”
“Sanitizing before shoving it through your skin.”
“Sanitizing?” She stretched her neck to see.
“Yeah, it’s a fucking paperclip I found on my desk covered in dust. Do you really trust that it’s clean?” I pointed out.
She scrunched up her nose and relaxed back, breathing slow and steady.
Unsure of when it would be hot enough, I decided to just estimate, waiting until the silver metal turned bright red. I then blew on it impatiently, counting to sixty before taking my other hand and pushing her skin around the wound together to shove the makeshift needle through.
Evie grunted loudly, as if I’d socked her in the belly, and she whimpered as I pulled the line through. Despite feeling the urgency, I knew I had to take this slow so as to not do more damage.
This was going to be a long process.