Chapter 27 – Ben #2
She jerked her hand back from my side and stared at it.
It was covered in blood.
“Are you bleeding?”
“I’m afraid so, angel,” I said.
Her eyes shot up to mine.
“You’ve been stabbed,” she breathed. “You’ve been — oh my god — Ben —”
“It’s fine.”
“It is not fine!” Her voice broke on the last word.
She sucked in a breath like she was trying to pull herself together by sheer force.
“Okay, listen to me. We have to get you back to the house. Now. Before you fall down and bleed out on the barn floor and I have to tell Lucia I let her favorite idiot die.”
I huffed out a laugh that hurt.
“That’s not funny,” I wheezed.
“It wasn’t a joke.”
She ducked under my arm, careful of the wound, and heaved my weight onto her shoulders.
I tried to shift away.
“You can’t — Chrissy, you can’t carry me —”
“Watch me,” she snapped. “You ran out into an ice storm barefoot with no shirt and picked a fight with two grown men and a knife. You don’t get to tell me what I can’t do.”
Fair point.
The barn doorway loomed ahead again, the storm outside howling loud enough to vibrate the walls. The second the wind hit us, it felt like knives along my open wound, like ice inside my lungs.
I gritted my teeth and leaned on her anyway.
“You shouldn’t be out in this,” I rasped. “The ice—”
“Little late for that observation, don’t you think?” she shot back.
Snow and ice had layered thicker since I’d sprinted out here. The ground was slick, treacherous. My footing was garbage. Hers wasn’t much better, but she dug in, step after step, teeth bared against the cold and the weight and the terror.
“Those bastards,” she muttered, almost under her breath, as much to herself as to me. “I knew they were acting weird. I knew it. I should’ve trusted my gut. I shouldn’t have—”
“They’re done,” I said. Each word felt like it cost something. “You’re safe now.”
Her grip tightened.
“That’s not the point.”
It was, actually. It was the only point that mattered to me.
We slipped on a patch of ice, my injured side screaming as my weight shifted sharply. Spots burst behind my eyes. For a second the storm went gray and far away, sound dropping to the dull rush of blood in my ears.
Chrissy swore viciously and dug her heels in, dragging me back upright.
“Stay with me,” she said. “Do you hear me? Stay. With. Me.”
I forced my eyes open and fixed on her face, the only clear thing in the white blur around us.
“If you fall, I will drag your stubborn ass across the ice by your hair,” she warned, voice shaking. “Don’t test me.”
“Bossy,” I managed.
“You have no idea.”
The porch finally came into view, the lodge rising up out of the storm like something carved from shadow. Relief hit me so hard my legs almost gave up altogether. Adrenaline was burning off, leaving behind nothing but pain and cold and a bone-deep, gut-twisting guilt.
I’d done this. Directly. Indirectly. Didn’t matter.
If I hadn’t pulled her into this insane game… if I hadn’t designed challenges to test her loyalty, kindness, competence, made her run an obstacle course built out of my trauma and trust issues, she wouldn’t have ended up in that barn at all.
And she wouldn’t have needed saving from my hired decoys.
A bitter taste filled my mouth.
“You ran out there without shoes,” she said suddenly, as if the thought had just landed and offended her personally. “You absolute maniac. Do you have a death wish?”
“You screamed.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
She made an angry sound that might’ve been a sob if she’d let it get that far.
“I fucking hate you,” she muttered. “I hate you so much right now.”
She didn’t. That was the worst part because even as she said it, she was clutching me like something precious, like she refused to let the ice, or the wind, or my own stupidity have another inch of me.
We hit the bottom step of the porch. She half shoved, half hauled me up it. My breath sawed in and out, vision narrowing to this tunnel of dim light and wood grain and her.
“Almost there,” she said. “Come on. Just a little further.”
She reached for the door with her free hand and hammered on it with her fist hard enough to sting.
“HENRY!” Her voice rang through the storm. “HENRY, OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR! NOW!”
For a heartbeat nothing happened. The world tilted. Then the door yanked inward, warm air spilling over us like a blessing.
Henry’s frame filled the entryway, eyes going from confusion to horror in half a second when he took in the scene: Chrissy, shaking and wild-eyed; me, drenched in blood down one side; the trail of red on the ice behind us.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed. “What the fuck—”
“Help him,” Chrissy snapped, cutting him off. “He’s been stabbed. The other two are in the barn. They’re dead as fuck, and that’s a problem, but help Ben first. Worry about the mess later.”
Henry’s gaze darted to mine.
I saw it in his eyes… the questions, the judgment, the I told you so. He’d warned me about this game. About pushing too far. About thinking I could control every variable and not have it all explode in my face.
I didn’t have the energy to argue.
“Boss?” he asked quietly.
“Later,” I ground out. “Get her warm. Then… we’ll deal with the rest.”
“Like hell,” she said. “We’re getting you patched up first.”
Henry’s brows shot up at the steel in her tone. He stepped aside to let us in.
As they dragged me over the threshold, the warmth of the house hit my exposed skin and made the pain flare hotter. I sucked in a breath and felt my knees give.
They both grabbed me at once — Henry under one arm, Chrissy under the other — keeping me upright through sheer, furious force of will.
The last thing I saw before my vision started to go fuzzy at the edges was Chrissy’s face, set and determined, curls wild around her shoulders, cheeks flushed with cold and rage and something that looked an awful lot like fear.
Not for herself, but for me.
I didn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve her, didn’t deserve the way she was fighting for me when I was the one who’d put her in the wolves’ path.
The hallway blurred. The floor seemed to tilt. Voices went echoey, like they were coming from the end of a tunnel.
Somewhere far away, I heard her again, shouting my name, shouting for Henry, for towels, for a first aid kit, for something, her voice cracking on curses and commands.
I let my eyes close for a second. Just one.
If I lived through this, I knew one thing with a cold, brutal certainty.
The storm outside was nothing compared to what was coming for me, for this game, and for us when Chrissy finally learned the whole, ugly truth, and I had no idea if even bleeding for her like this would be enough to save me when it hit.