CHAPTER 23
“I would have slaughtered with you forever. I would have turned myself inside out for you.”
—Not Hope Floats
“Shit.”
Wes curses when he pushes the blood-marked door fully open.
The white tiles of the bathroom look like a Jackson Pollock painting, smeared and streaked with red. The source of the color is instantly apparent. I only need to lift my gaze from the example of abstract expressionism to see John propped up against a urinal.
When he looks up, flicks his hair out of his eyes, and sees us in the doorway, I spot the dark stain spreading out underneath his left shoulder and through the gaps of his fingers. It’s almost exactly where Wes was cut, but I can already tell this isn’t going to be fixed by a Band-Aid.
“I—” John winces as he tries to straighten, pain etched across his face, blood gushing out of his shoulder. “I tried to stop him from getting to the bathrooms, but he—he got me. Dani and Jennifer ran. I think… I think they got away.”
They did, but he didn’t.
“I don’t think he even realized I wasn’t… He just wanted to get to you, Jamie.”
He stayed to try and protect me and Laurie, and this is what he has to show for it. He said he doesn’t take risks, but he’s the first of us to go on the offense against the killer, to try and save us from an attack, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
“John.” His name falls out of my mouth in a sigh as I move forward and almost slip on the trails of his blood.
Dropping to my knees in front of him, I try to ignore the way they hit the ground too hard when I do.
Even though I have the best intentions, I can’t figure out a way to make the bleeding stop.
I gave the first aid kit to one of the women, and if they’re smart, they’re far away from here and hiding.
Looking back to Wes for assistance, I almost lose my balance, but his free hand grips my elbow before I can, and I can’t help but grasp his arm and smile in gratitude. I never thought reflexes would rank highly when it comes to hotness traits, but his are certainly coming into the top five.
“Where’s Laurie?” John pants, drawing my eyes from Wes and the kind of thoughts that aren’t going to patch up his wound or get us all out of here.
Catching sight of the paper towel dispenser, I point toward it, but Wes is already striding two steps in its direction without any chance of slipping.
His hand goes into the slot, but it comes out empty. Fuck.
“Where’s Laurie?” John asks again, the concern in his voice still clear despite how weak he sounds.
I open my mouth but the answer dies on my tongue.
It’s not that I don’t trust him or Wes. They’ve been narrowly avoiding death with me all night.
It’s just that I love Laurie more. I will lie and omit and play dumb for that bitch.
I would’ve let Heart Eyes gut me like a fish if I thought it would help her escape.
The only way I can buy Laurie time to get out of this clusterfuck is if no one knows where she is.
So I lie. “She ran, too.” Finally biting the bullet, I press my palm into John’s shoulder.
His blood coats my hand like syrup. Somehow he still has the Midori bottle in his hand.
It’s covered in blood, too, but I suspect it’s his rather than Heart Eyes’s.
The broken bottle would’ve been useless up against whatever is making red run out of his shoulder in a steady stream.
Wes walks past where I’m trying to stanch John’s wound and into a toilet stall.
The wall shakes, there’s a resounding plastic snap, and then he comes back out with a full roll of toilet paper and the broken cover of the dispenser.
It’s more hysteria than humor that makes me laugh, but I still catch the roll in my free hand and press it into the wound.
The white two-ply paper soaks up the blood and almost falls apart in seconds.
I toss it onto the floor and the damp paper hits the tiles with a wet smack.
John groans when I push the heel of my palm deeper into his wound to try to constrict the flow, and Wes drops to the floor on his other side. He falls back into first aid mode by tilting John’s head back to look at his pupils, pressing two fingers to his neck to check his pulse.
“Keep that pressure on. That’s good,” he instructs, and I look up to meet his gaze.
He looks like he’s proud of me for shoving my fingers into some guy’s open wound.
Like he wants to kiss me. I’d even say it’s the kind of look that makes me think that if he knew I forced my friend into an air vent it would factor high on his list of hotness traits.
It’s a fleeting thought when John tries to shake out of Wes’s grip.
He looks like he’s annoyed with being fussed over, which is pretty badass considering he’s just been stabbed, but then I notice he also looks like he’s going to throw up.
Blood keeps seeping out from around my fingers.
He doesn’t wince when I increase the pressure.
He barely reacts, and that’s when I start to get worried.
“We need to get you out of here,” I say. “We need to find something that will stop the bleeding.”
John nods slowly, drunk from blood loss, his eyes narrowing as he glances up at Wes and mutters, “Funny how you’re gone, and I get stabbed.”
It’s the first time I’ve heard him sound hostile all night and it’s jarring, uncharacteristic. It’s an indication of how much pain he’s in, how scared he is, but still, I can’t help but be a little shocked.
“John—”
“It’s fine, Jamie,” Wes says.
He isn’t offended; he barely even blinks at the unsaid accusation as he bends down, instructs me to keep the pressure on John’s shoulder while I push up from my knees to stand, then pulls John off the ground without breaking a sweat.
It’s not the time to be thinking Wes is very strong.
If he can pick up a fully grown, limp man he’d have no issue with me…
My priorities are very warped.
“I thought I found a way out,” Wes says as he takes most of John’s weight and we move as one toward the door.
I reach down and grip John’s hand with my free one, keeping my left palm firm against his wound and feeling a little comfort from the way he’s able to slip his fingers through mine and give a weak, assuring squeeze.
We push through the bathroom door and back into the corridor, Wes holding his knife out in front of us as we head toward the main hallway as a unit.
John’s grasping the broken bottle again and his arm is looped around Wes’s shoulder for support.
The edge of the glass is dangerously close to Wes’s neck, and an unwelcome thought of how John could easily nick an artery if he wanted to comes to mind. We’re lucky we’re all on the same side.
“I found a door,” Wes continues. “A normal one without a code, but the lock was jamm—”
“—and the killer just happened to reappear at the same time,” John murmurs as we move back into the main hallway.
Wes stops to prop John against the wall so he can extract the flashlight from where it’s tucked into the side of his pants. I catch a glimpse of his abs when his shirt gets caught in the process and rides high over his ribs as he jerks the flashlight out. He squints at John.
“You honestly think I’m the killer after all this shit?”
“You always seem to be gone when he’s around,” John mutters, his head lolling against the wall.
When we were in the bathroom it seemed as though Wes was willing to overlook the slight, but now he’s ready to get offended.
He scoffs, slipping the flashlight under his arm as he pulls his shirt up again to tuck it into his pants properly, and I can’t help but stare at the second preview I’m afforded of his muscled stomach.
It is… defined, and looks like it’d be fun to run your fingers over. Maybe even your tongue.
Mine goes dry at the thought, and when I try to get my mind back onto something other than body parts like tongues and stomachs and fingers, I’m reminded that my fingers are sticky and stained red with John’s blood because I’m still trying to plug a wound I can’t see, and I wouldn’t know the severity of it even if I could.
Wes uses the flashlight to point accusatorily at John. “You said there wasn’t a door down there.”
I’m about to suggest that this conversation could be delayed until a later date, but then the slightest movement at the edges of my vision draws my eyes to the end of the hallway where Wes went to find Billie.
“I said it was a dead end,” John says, but I suddenly no longer care about Wes’s abs or missing first aid kits or dead-end doors.
“Guys…” I breathe.
There’s something standing in the darkness. Idling in the shadows and watching us as Wes and John continue to snap at each other.
“And you didn’t think to tell us why it was a dead end?”
Maybe it is just a shadow, or one of the other daters, but if that’s the case, why are they just standing there?
“What are you trying to say, Wes?”
“Guys.”
Wes and John glare at each other, completely unaware we have an audience, and once again my brain is frozen, trying to rationalize what I can see at the end of the hall, when the most obvious explanation is the most terrifying.
“What I’m saying, John, is that you—”
“Boys!” I hiss, and somehow that makes them stop and turn their heads in my direction. Whatever Wes sees on my face is enough for him to flick out his elbow and point the flashlight down the hall.
A click sounds out in the silence, a sphere of cold, white light bursting out of the flashlight, down the hallway and illuminating it to the very end.
While the familiar tones of red and black and brushed bronze take up most of the visible space of the corridor, my eyes are drawn to a color that never used to instill any kind of emotion in me but now has the power to make my skin prickle in fear.
Pink.