Chapter 33
THIRTY THREE
Felix
Why am I shaking so much? I blink. I can’t . . . I don’t understand. Everything’s fuzzy. I can’t move. My throat is sore. Everything is . . . hot. So hot. I blink again, trying to wipe away the fog surrounding my brain.
I roll my neck and feel resistance. Finally, my eyes clear. My glasses are gone. They’re mainly to see long distances and for reading, but right now all I see is orange.
Fire.
I look behind me. Steven is holding his belt tight around my throat.
Fire. That’s right. He’s been holding my head close to the fire for a while now.
He knocked me out inside and dragged me out here, and I’ve being coming in and out of consciousness.
How long have we been out here? I blink again.
Smoke chokes my lungs. It still looks light outside.
“Ah, damn. Spoiling the fun already? You following us?” What? What is he talking about? I don’t even have the strength to fight back. I don’t care anymore. I just want it to end. I feel something slick dripping down my face. The gun. That’s right. He whipped me with it.
“Let him go.” And now I’m hearing shit. Great.
“No can do.” What? Why is he answering the voices in my head? “You fucked with something of mine, and now I’m going to fuck with something of yours. I’ll start with the house. Then your friends. Then everyone who has ever meant anything to you.”
What? I blink harder. Everything is fuzzy.
Then I see him.
“Let him go and I won’t rip you limb from fucking limb,” Grey growls.
“Grey?”
Everything is hazy, but I see him. He’s here. How is he here? I’m hallucinating. I have to be. I watch him, real or not, take a step toward me. A click sounds behind me. I wrench my head around and watch Steven raise his gun. “Not a step.”
Grey’s eyes pass between me and the gun. I look behind Grey and . . . Is that Oli? What the hell. Yeah, I’m hallucinating. There’s no way they left their wedding. How would they even have known? “Is this the plan?” Grey says. “Kill us all because you can’t have him? What’s the point in that?”
Oh, this sweet innocent man. He doesn’t need a point. He doesn’t care. That’s what makes him dangerous. There are no lines he won’t cross and nothing he cares about more than his own ego. “The point is, you won’t steal from another man as long as you live.” The belt tightens squeezing my throat.
“Grey.” I love you. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. “Just let me go, Grey.” I wrench my head back. “I’ll go home. Please. Just leave them be.” Andre and Oli just got married. Grey has his family and friends. He has Atlas. He doesn’t even want me. “He doesn’t want me anyway.”
“What?” I hear both Grey and Steven say.
I slump forward, almost forgetting the blazing flames near my head. “He wants someone else. He doesn’t even want me.”
“Felix.” Grey takes a step—Steven raises his hand. Grey throws his hands up. “That’s not what you saw. I . . . I didn’t know, okay? I didn’t know Atlas felt that way. I didn’t know, I swear. He was drunk and he kissed me.”
“It’s true.” I watch Oli’s shoes move forward then halt. I dare a look behind me. Steven’s gun is darting between the two of us. “Atlas fucked up. He’s not . . . he’s not doing well, and he was really drunk, but Grey . . .” I watch him move slightly. What are they doing? “Grey fucking loves you.”
“I’m so sorry, Angel.” Grey’s gun is at his side.
I look up and meet his eyes for the first time.
They’re on me. All on me. Those beautiful stormy eyes belonging to the man who showed me what it’s like to be loved.
Sweat drips down my face. Or maybe it’s blood.
My skin’s burning. “Let him go. I don’t give a shit what you do to me. ”
“No, Grey.” Then I hear a noise. It’s tiny. A shuffle in the grass.
“Listen to him,” Oli says loudly. Why is he so loud? “Let him go and I won’t rip out your spine and beat you with it.”
“That was my line,” Grey says. What are they—then again. A noise. I blink looking to my other side. Shoes. Shoes walking slowly toward us. I look up. Andre. Andre is sneaking up to Steven. He must have gone out the front and kept to the trees. He’s close.
“Please let them go,” I say, distracting him like they are. “Please, I’ll do anything. You can kill me, take me, I don’t care. Just let them go.”
“What happened, Steven?” Grey says, stepping a hair closer. “It’s not making much sense.”
I hear him scoff, but I keep my head down, my eyes on Andre’s careful footsteps behind him. I meet Andre’s eyes. He holds his finger to his lips.
“What are you on now?”
“When you got fired for misconduct and soliciting minors, where did you go during the day?” My head snaps up.
The belt tightens around my throat. “Because Felix told me you got moved from the night shift to day shift, but that’s not exactly right, is it?
” What is he talking about? I look behind me, my skin rubbed raw under the belt.
“What is he talking about?”
I feel it, though, the belt tightening a little, choking the air from my lungs. “He’s making shit up.”
“What was his name, Oli? Matthew Sherburne? Right. Isn’t that the fourteen-year-old boy who accused you of sexual assault?
Is that right?” The belt tightens again.
I choke out a breath. What is he talking about?
“How many, Steven? How many students like who didn’t come out on social media about your abuse?
How many like Felix did you groom and manipulate? ”
“You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.”
“What did you do?” I ask, and his hard eyes land on me, soaked in evil. Holy shit, he did. He did. “Is that why you switched shifts?” And if so, where the hell did he go all day? What did he do? How did I not know?
“Shut the hell up.” He clenches the belt tighter in his fist. “Another fucking word, and he’s going in.” I look beside me. Andre is close.
“You’re going away, you sick fuck.” Grey steps closer, carefully. SNAP. No, no, no. Steven’s attention whips behind us to Andre, only feet from us. Steven raises his gun behind him. A force barrels into us. My head smacks the ground.
BANG!
Trembling, I’m afraid to look. When I do, I’m sick. “No!” Grey is on top of Steven, neither of them moving. Oli rushes over to them but Andre holds him back. Oli rips out of his arms, dropping to his knees beside them. I can’t move. I’m going to throw up. “No.”
“Grey!” Oli yells.
Finally, Grey slumps off him, red spreading across his chest. “Grey!” I get up. “Grey.” He’s splayed out on the grass and I drop to my knees. “Greyson, look at me!” I touch his beard. “Please look at me.”
Finally, his eyes open. “I’m okay,” he whispers. It takes him a moment to take a breath. “Not mine. I’m alright. I’m not shot.” I look beside us and see Steven staring blankly up into the sky. Lifeless.
It’s over.
Holy shit, it’s actually over.
“Andre?” Grey wheezes. “Are you okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” I see him tremble slightly. Oli gets up off the ground and grabs him in a hug, squeezing him tight. “I’m alright. I’m okay.” He hugs him back, burying his head into Oli’s shoulder while Oil’s hand cradles the back of his skull. “I’m okay.”
Grey looks down and to his side. Then his eyes land on me. A tiny smile spreads along his lips. “Hey, Angel.”
“Oh my god.” I hug him tight, squeezing him hard. Too hard, from the grunt that leaves his lips. “I’m so sorry.”
“What did I tell you about saying sorry?” He smiles weakly. “Oli called for help. It’s my knee. I can’t get up.” Alarm hits me. “I’m alright. I will be alright. Just moved way too fast for my knee’s liking.”
He struggles, sitting up slowly. “Are you hurt anywhere serious?” It’s Oli asking me. My face hurts, and I’m sure I have some sort of burns there, but it’s not terrible. My head aches from the pistol whip too, but I’ll live.
“I’m okay.” I bury my face into Grey’s neck, grabbing onto him. This is real. I don’t have to go back. I don’t have to be afraid. Ever. My arms tighten around him. “How did you get here so quickly?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment.” Grey squeezes me hard, and I don’t even have the strength to tell him it hurts. I’m just so happy he’s here. With me.
“Police and ambulance are on the way,” I hear Andre say.
The next hour is chaos and questions. I can’t stop watching Grey as he talks to the police.
Luckily everything was caught on camera, both in the front and back.
Self-defense. I know he didn’t want to do it.
I hate the haunted look in his eyes. I hate that he had to do it for me, but Steven would have killed Andre.
I know he would have. Still, I can see the weight there.
I’m checked out by EMTs and cleared. No concussion and only minor injuries. I declined going with them, even with Grey trying to argue for me to go. I’m fine. I don’t want to. There’s only one thing I need to do.
I need to talk to Grey.
“Hey.” I’m surprised when I see Andre come into my room. “Oli and Grey are on the way back now.” Grey had to go down to the station for questions, and Oli went with him. “How are you holding up?”
I swallow. Since everything that happened here, I haven’t been able to think or focus on what I saw back at the wedding.
Once Grey and Oli went down to the station, I crashed.
I haven’t slept much, and everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours weighed down on me.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to feel.
” Everything’s too fresh, and my brain is having a hard time processing it.
My nightmare is over in a way, but I feel .
. . I don’t know. Then there’s Grey. What happened? How did they get here so quickly?
Where’s Atlas?
“It’s okay if you’re upset that he’s gone.”
My attention snaps to Andre. “He was evil. He was abusive.”
Andre comes in and sits beside me. “Can I tell you a secret?” I nod. “I’m sometimes upset that my dad’s in prison.”
“What?!”