Prologue #2
A flicker of surprise overtakes his features as I inch closer. As if he hadn’t expected anyone to find him. As if he hadn’t expected anyone to care.
After a long moment of silence, it becomes clear that the man isn’t going to respond to my excellent health advice with anything more than that pitiful laugh. I let out a heavy sigh. Stubborn. Of course, he’s stubborn.
My next gentle step forward causes his eyes to widen a fraction, and suddenly, I’m close enough to see their sea-blue glint catching the light. The impact of that gaze hits me like a physical force, stealing my breath and making my knees weak.
A criminal with pretty eyes. God isn’t fair.
But they’re not just pretty, they’re haunted. Like they’ve slipped into a practiced dissociation. Like Mom’s eyes when I left. Like someone who’s made peace with enduring pain.
I’m so close now that I can almost touch him, and the tang of blood assaults my senses tenfold, watering my eyes with its potency.
Blood shouldn’t be spreading that fast. It floods like water across the grit of the street, an hourglass sifting through the last grains of its supply. The sight is jarring.
My pulse races against a ticking clock I can’t hear. I rummage through my pocket, retrieving my phone. The screen’s glare lights up the backstreet like a lantern in a cave, and my fingers shake as they dance across the contact screen.
Nine. One. One. Three numbers. That’s all it takes.
I’ve barely managed to dial the first two digits when my wrist is grabbed in an unforgiving grip. The contact sends a live bolt of electricity through my entire nervous system, not from pain, but something else entirely.
“No hospital,” the man says in a deceptively calm tone.
His voice. The sound of his first words spoken aloud startles me almost as much as the burning grip of his fingers. His inflection is a low rumble that sneaks up on my senses, vibrating through my body like a warning. Like thunder rumbling across the sky.
“You’re on your last hundred breaths if you don’t get medical help right the hell now.” I yank my wrist from his harsh grasp, but my skin continues to tingle where his pressed against mine. Why does my arm feel like it’s on fire?
“I’ll be fine on my own. Just leave me be,” he mutters.
Delusional. Absolutely delusional.
“I think we both know that’s a lie.”
I level a pointed look at his drenched chest, which is now heaving with considerably more effort than a few minutes earlier. This guy’s an idiot if he thinks he’s getting out of here alone. From what I can see, his lungs took the hit, which is causing his breathing to turn rough and raspy.
“In fact, I don’t think you plan on leaving here at all,” I murmur, considering the horrifying realization all over again.
What does he want me to do? Watch him die a painful, miserable death? Rinse the blood from the soles of my shoes and move on with my life?
The thought makes something inside me twist and scream. I barely know this man, but the idea of walking away and leaving him here distresses something profound in my brain. Something that feels dangerously like…
No. Don’t go there, Cass.
I glance at said idiot, who now seems to be evaluating me with slightly more interest than before.
His gaze moves over my face as if trying to solve a puzzle.
I wonder what he sees when he looks at me.
Some naive college girl who stumbled into the wrong alley?
Someone stupid enough not to run from an armed stranger?
“This doesn’t concern you. Just leave.” The words leave his lips with a wheeze.
“No.”
Each choke of blood in his throat has me wincing in place.
“No?”
“That’s right. No. I can’t just leave you!”
“You don’t know me.”
I sigh in exasperation, shifting closer. “What will it take for you to let me call for help?”
Please. Just let me help you.
You’d expect someone in such bad condition to look weak, curled in on himself in pain, and begging for relief. For some reason, this man does nothing of the sort, as if he’s incapable of feeling the damage to his body. His eyes squint like he’s doing some pragmatic assessment.
When I’ve just about given up on getting a response, his throat clears with a fresh round of coughs.
“I can’t go to the hospital,” he sighs. “And you can’t...” Another cough. “...call the police. I’m not a good man. Ease your conscience, little menace. Let me…pass in peace.”
Those eyes flick up to me with a teasing glint. “It’s not a comfy hospice bed they’ll...put me in.”
Little menace. Despite the blood and gore surrounding us, something warm dances in my chest at the nickname. He’s dying, and he’s giving me demented pet names. What is wrong with both of us?
The bright silver of his weapon shines in the splatters of reddish-black on the pavement. A reminder of who exactly I’m trying to help. My pulse drums faster.
There’s a real possibility that helping this man will place me on the wrong side of morality.
The thought should scare me off. But time warps back, and all I can think about is the closet.
Those three days of suffocating darkness, the scratch of my fingernails against the wooden door, the way the panic made me drown on dry land. The way no one came when I screamed.
I can’t leave him here.
Do I have it in me to call for help and condemn him?
His next wheeze tears me from the thought.
But this time, when he starts coughing again, he can’t seem to stop. It’s terrifying. Blood sprays from his mouth and pulses from his chest, and I begin to panic.
He’s drowning. He’s drowning in his own blood.
My fingers curl and unfold. Do something. Do something, you useless piece of—
Fuck it.
I race to his heaving body, bare knees splashing red as I kneel on the pavement. My hands fly to his chest, pressing into the flooding wound. Warm. So warm. How can one person have so much blood?
Our gazes meet, mere inches apart. From the intimacy of the position, I allow myself to look—really look—at the man whose life I’m trying to save.
Dark, short hair curls across his brow, a stark contrast to the paling pallor of his skin.
I gape at the collection of sharp features: a strong nose, high, sharp cheekbones, full, jet-black brows.
Each characteristic is too severe on its own, but combined, they create something utterly fascinating.
A masterpiece I can’t look away from.
Deep blue crashes into me with waves of light when I find his gaze again, threatening to drown me in cavernous, salty depths.
I’ve never seen anything quite so hopeless or empty. The look of a man who has already done the work of mentally severing himself from a future he’ll never see. Blood swims down his shirt and congeals in the fabric, a nonsensical volume pouring from a bottomless tap.
He’s going to die here. Right here, with my hands pressed to his chest.
And I…I hate it.
Without overthinking, I lean forward and scoop up the gun lying beside him. He lunges forward a second too late, the movement sending fresh, sticky blood pulsing between my fingers.
“What the fuck are you doing? Give that back!”
Heavy. Heavier than I expected. The weight of it in my hand feels so wrong. Foreign. But necessary.
Drops of crimson drip from my palms. Stick to my nails. Run through the cracks.
“No. Do you have anything else that could be used against you? Phone? ID?”
I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m hiding evidence for a man I met five minutes ago.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” His voice rasps in a weak murmur, all his energy already expended.
“I’m calling an ambulance in the next two minutes, like it or not.
” I push his hand away when he makes another weak grab for the gun.
Stubborn ass. “I’m gonna give you a choice,” I grind out.
“Either they take you as you are now, or you get to go to the hospital without incriminating evidence because some really nice girl—who you should really stop pissing off...” I pause to smack down his reaching hand again.
“...took your gun before they show up. The choice is yours.”
Please choose the second option. Please let me help you without getting us both arrested and questioned.
He levels me with a withering glare, but I deal one right back, forcing my face to show what I hope is a confident, unbothered front. I can be intimidating. I learned from the best, after all.
An icy gust of wind sends a new wave of shivers down my spine.
The pause is a living thing between us, weighted with anticipation.
Please.
Then the spell snaps. The man fumbles into his pocket with an exhausted sigh, retrieving a small disposable phone. A burner. Of course, it’s a burner.
I do my best to ignore how blood seems to cling to every object I touch.
I don’t dare allow myself a spare second to reconsider the stupidity of this plan. I’m not clueless. The owner of the weapon I’m so casually sliding into my thrifted Coach purse practically screams nefarious. Dangerous. I mean, he even tried to tell me himself.
It’s not a comfy hospice bed they’ll put me in.
The words should’ve sent me right to the cops, but something has grounded me in place from the second I saw him lying on that concrete.
I know how useless our legal system can be.
I’ve seen firsthand how good and evil can blend and cross.
My stepfather taught me that lesson early and often.
I’ve never had the luxury of believing in that comforting binary of right and wrong.
All I have is a desperate instinct. And tonight, that has to be enough.
When I flip open his cheap burner phone and dial the digits this time, he doesn’t move a muscle to stop me.
My voice returns to my ears muffled and thick, like I’m listening through water.
Yes, someone needs medical attention.
Yes, that address is correct.
I can barely make out the following response through the speaker, but I’m pretty sure the operator asked for my name. I snap the phone shut, brushing gravel off my knees as I stand on shaky legs.
Anonymous caller. That’s what I am now. Someone who was here and then wasn’t.
And that’s who I have to be tonight.
“Help is coming,” I whisper in weak reassurance. He doesn’t respond.
Slow breaths reverberate through his entire chest, sounding more like a death rattle than an act of habit. Maybe he’s too far gone to even process my words. To hear my voice.
Maybe I’m too late.
I bend down, catching this man’s gaze for the last time. My gut twists with something deeper than fear, something that feels perilously close to loss.
Those ethereal eyes, lined with heartbreaking exhaustion, burn into a space in my memory that I already know will never fade.
“Just fight a bit longer,” I whisper.
My hands work quickly to staunch the bullet wound once more. The squelch of blood dribbling down my arms as I press down sears into my senses. This is going to haunt me forever. The sound, the smell, the way his eyes gaze back at mine.
Every piece of him seems to lock into the deep recesses of my head, steeped in his musky scent, swirling with the sharp tang of fresh copper.
A siren’s groan shrieks through the night, snapping me out of the moment.
They’re here. Thank God they’re here.
But I know what that sound means.
It’s time to go.