Chapter 23 Ellis #3
“Dee Dee went onstage and did her number,” Liv continued, her voice cutting through the silence and drawing both our attentions back to her.
“The way the energy just shifted—among all of us—and Dee Dee was killing it. Seriously. All those hours of watching it over and over again… seeing it done onstage like that was like seeing it for the first time. We were dancing and singing along; we sure as hell knew the words by then.”
She pressed her lips together, and I watched as her nails bit into her upper arms. My own anxiety coiled, licking its way down my spine.
“Smoke,” she murmured. “It got smoky. We all assumed smoke machine at first… but then the smell. You could smell it. Fumes—thick and acrid—and it just seemed to burn your nose the second it hit you. I can still remember… still taste it.”
Sweat gathered under my arms, and a lump rose in my throat. I could picture it all too easily—the club, the pulsing lights, the music and the dancing and the growing smoke. Joy that got shattered like glass.
“Then the shooting started.”
All color seemed to drain from my face, and I felt Dove’s hand suddenly grip mine across the console where it had fallen to rest. Her palm was hot and sweaty, her grip tight, her eyes zeroed in on Liv, who continued to look away from us—out into nothing.
“It—it just seemed to come from everywhere, all at once,” Liv whispered. “There was no… no warning. You just heard it and then—then there was the screaming. People started—started running. God, the sound. I’ll never forget it.”
Tears filled my eyes at the image—the thought of how it would have felt to be inside…
smelling smoke… hearing gunshots… seeing people run, people shove, people collapse.
That sinking feeling in your stomach when you know something horrible is happening and your brain is only just starting to catch up.
My stomach twisted, and I bit down a sob.
“Dee Dee—Ryan,” Liv rasped, her hands covering her face as if she could press the memory out of her mind.
Will it to disappear. “He was on the floor of the stage. I—I don’t know if he was ducking for cover or if he had been—” Liv choked, unable to get the word out.
“I couldn’t see Bri. We got separated as soon as people began running.
And Jedd and Kyle had been at the bar. I couldn’t see them.
I was just being swept up in this—this tidal wave of bodies… ”
Her hands fell from her face, her eyes near glazed, as if she were back inside that moment. Back inside the club.
“I could feel people under my feet,” she said, weeping tearlessly. “Being crushed. I didn’t know if they’d been shot or had just fallen in the stampede. I moved with it. Fighting against it wasn’t an option. Something—something primal in my brain took over. I kept moving. Kept pushing.”
Her hands shook, and she looked down at them.
“I just became—became this animal that was trying to survive. There was this red door that led to a fire escape. It’s where the crowd was headed, and I ran with it. There was so much screaming. The floor was slippery… not sticky like—like a club should’ve been.”
Something strangled sounded in my throat, and Dove gripped my hand tighter. Her face had gone ashen, her eyes filled with tears, her other hand covering her mouth.
“I heard… I heard a familiar scream,” Liv gasped, gripping her thighs with a look of anguish. “Bri. Bri was screaming. My name, over and over. I paused in the rush. Something—I remember something sharp hitting my leg. But I just remember Bri’s name ringing in my mind, over and over.”
She blinked hard, and her jaw tightened as she looked at both of us. “Then I woke up and saw myself on an operating table and my organs being put into coolers.” Her eyes met mine. “Then I was with Ellis.”
I couldn’t breathe right, and a cry tore from my lips—raw, involuntary, awful.
Dove’s own stifled sobs echoed beside me.
The panic—it was as if I could feel it. I wasn’t sure if it was because of my link to Liv, if it was her panic and terror pouring into me, or if it was mine.
The pure, blinding terror those people must have felt.
The sick… sick realization that someone had decided the people in that club didn’t have lives worth living, just because of who they loved. Because of who they were.
Liv looked directly at me, her eyes hollow and empty.
“I ran,” she whimpered weakly. “I left my friends. I saved myself—yet I didn’t. I still ended up dead. But I ran. In the defining moment of my life, I ran.”
My lips parted, but no words came. I couldn’t soothe her. Couldn’t offer empty comforts like That’s not true or you didn’t have a choice. Couldn’t say Fight or flight kicked in. You’re only human.
I couldn’t say a word, because the weight of her revelation pressed down on my chest, and every phrase I thought I could offer just felt too small.
So I sat with it.
Sat with the aching despair that filled the car as Liv aired her truth, and the silence held us in an icy embrace I felt deep in my bones.