CHAPTER 26
“Do you think—after we’ve dried off, after we’ve spent lots more time together—you might agree ‘not’ to murder me? And do you think not murdering me might maybe be something you could consider doing for the rest of your life?”
—Not Four Weddings and a Funeral
Eyes snap open, pupils constrict, chins jerk apart as both of our backs press against the partition. He doesn’t need to, but Wes brings a finger to his lips after he untangles his hand from mine. The same lips I had planned on preoccupying myself with for at least a few minutes.
Of course.
Masked killer.
Dead bodies.
Worst speed date ever.
That should have been at the forefront of my mind instead of debating whether it would be more comfortable to straddle Wes on the floor or if he’d prefer we move over to one of the chaises. Those kinds of musings should’ve been the furthest thing from my mind. They aren’t, but they should’ve been.
Wes pushes himself up the partition, making sure to stay crouched below the top of it as he brings the knife up to his chest and looks around the room for a better vantage point.
I push my back against the same surface and manage to slide up to a similar bent-over position, brutally pulled back to the present.
Back to the fact we’re still being hunted and the only weapon I have, aside from my brain—which wasn’t concerned about anything other than where I was going to place my bloody hands while I made out with Wes—is Wes’s body.
He’s been an advantage when it comes to making it this far, but his knife hasn’t suddenly grown fifteen inches in the time it took for Heart Eyes to make his way back up to the mezzanine.
Who’s to say he isn’t still waving that machete around?
Or what if he’s just gearing up? What if he takes it to the next level and goes all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on us as soon as we step into view?
The footsteps sound closer and I’m too panicked to try to distinguish if there’s one or many, if it’s friend or foe. The only thing I can decipher is that there is no rolling purr of a chainsaw idling along with them.
Wes steps away from the partition, pulling me with him, drawing me behind him, his back firm against my chest as he retreats to the side of the room until we’re shrouded in darkness.
I’m caught between a wall and his well-toned traps.
It’s clear he’s making himself a human shield, and that’s not going to do us—me—much good if it is Heart Eyes.
I’d end up alone, pinned to a wall by a dead body with nothing but a knife I’d struggle to wrangle off said dead body’s wrist.
A shadow spreads across the wall, stretching in from the front of the partition, distorted by the flickering lamps.
The exit strategy I thought of when we first entered the room comes to mind: I’m ready to run.
I’m ready to drag Wes with me around the other side of the partition, slip out the door as the killer rounds it, and start our cat-and-mouse game all over again.
Wes tenses in front of me as a body finally comes into view. I spy a familiar material over his shoulder, and the relief it isn’t pink wool is short-lived when I distinguish the pattern against the shadow-drenched crimson of the walls. Red plaid.
“The fuck?” Stu mutters.
Wes’s shoulders drop back down, and when he takes a step forward, I move to his side and stare at the new addition to the room.
I can’t bring myself to be overjoyed at the sight of the manicured beard or the stunned, gaping mouth in the middle of it, especially when I glance down to see a boning knife gripped in his palm.
He drops it down to his side as he stares incredulously between us.
“You’re okay?”
That second statement seems a little more appropriate for the situation, but the way he says it, the inflection at the end—he looks at us as if we just performed a flash mob of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and it didn’t work to bring a function back to life. He thought we were dead.
A rustle of fabric from the hallway makes us all flinch, but the subsequent whispering voices bring my heart back down from my throat. If there’s one thing Heart Eyes has been consistent about, it’s maintaining the silent antagonist aspect of the classic slashers. Therefore, voices equal friend.
Or someone who’s going to get themselves killed before you.
Wes darts across to the partition as the voices draw closer.
Going toward any kind of sound, even if it’s obviously some other daters, is a fatality waiting to happen (I know this from personal experience now), but his back is pressed against the wall, and he silently slips around it into the entrance before I can reach for him and pull him back.
I have half a mind to run after him. If not because I’d like to one day—after all this—have the opportunity of a do-over for whatever was about to start before Stu reentered the chat with his stupid, heavy footsteps, then because there is no way in hell I’m going to survive this night with Stu, of all people.
I’ve given up following most of the rules of surviving a slasher on Wes’s advice and I’m still alive, but teaming up with the Jerk Jock is where I draw the line.
A few breath-holding moments later, Wes comes back into the room with Dani and Jennifer at his heels, and when I shoot a glance across at Stu, I can see the relief settle into his shoulders the same time as mine.
I assume I’m not the only one who wasn’t happy with potentially being the last ones on each other’s dance cards.
Stu pushes off the wall as I swap “I’m happy you’re not dead” looks with Dani and Jennifer. “You’re okay?” he asks, looking down at them with concern.
It’s the same question he asked us, but this time he’s inquiring about their well-being rather than inferring they should be deceased by now.
I think we can all agree, none of us are okay at this point in the night.
The three of them look just as ragged and on edge as Wes and me; there’s blood on Stu’s hands, bruises on Dani’s legs, and Jennifer’s knuckles are white around the handle of the first aid kit.
It survived the escape from Heart Eyes and I wish it wasn’t the only thing that had.
“Is John—”
Jennifer starts the question but doesn’t finish it when our eyes meet. I know she already suspected the answer, but her face pales at the unspoken confirmation. She and Dani got away while he stood his ground and bought them time. Exactly what he did for me and Wes.
“What about Laurie?” Jennifer says, and for a second I want to ask Stu why he isn’t the one posing that question.
Then I see the way he’s standing closer to Dani, the way she looks up at him with glassy eyes and pink-cheeked gratitude.
I guess she doesn’t hold the “sending her off into the basement” thing against him despite it ending with the role of her best friend being recast for the rest of the night due to disembowelment.
“Laurie ran away,” I say automatically, and that pulls Stu’s attention from rubbing the goose bumps on Dani’s arms.
His eyes narrow at me when he says, “She ran away?”
“We were attacked in the bathroom. She managed to get out while I locked myself in a stall.”
I mean, technically, I’m not lying. And if I keep reminding myself that she did get out, that all I have to do is keep myself, Wes, and anyone else alive until she sees the plan to the end, then I can see some version of a happy ending to all of this.
I can see myself getting to call her an elitist piece of shit again.
“And here I thought you were against splitting up,” Stu sneers.
Asshole.
Wes tenses beside me, takes a breath like he’s going to shoot a retort that might warrant the same peacocking performance that Stu displayed when we first came upstairs from the basement, but I don’t need him to jump to my defense.
I may not have what it takes to be a Final Girl, but I am a big girl. And Stu is just a small man.
“You know what? Fuck you, Stu, I—”
“You’re such good friends and you’re not looking for her?”
“In the time it took for me and Wes to escape a killer who just ran John through with a machete?”
The words are harsher than I mean them to be, and if my hands weren’t covered in blood I’d clap them over my mouth, especially since the statement causes Jennifer and Dani to flinch, letting out matching gasps.
“No, I haven’t had the chance,” I say. I’m trying to use a calm voice, but Stu rubs me the wrong way.
He was hot and cold with my best friend, antagonistic toward Wes, he left his group alone, and I still get the feeling he’d be rude to hospitality staff.
“But I know Laurie—better than you. She’ll hide. She won’t do anything stupid.”
When Stu walks toward me, I notice his knife looks more foreboding in his hand than the one resting against Wes’s thigh, but maybe that’s just because of the person holding it.
It’s probably due to the way his voice drops low and abrasive when he says, “It’s probably good she got as far away from you as she could when you’re the one the fucking psycho wants. Isn’t that right, Jamie?”
It’s clear he’s seen my name in the middle of the dance floor at some point, and he doesn’t share the same sentiments as my admirer.
Even though he said it to try to hurt me, I don’t take the bait.
If I get out of here tonight there’s probably going to be a lot of things I’ve said or done or didn’t do that I’ll regret.
But doing whatever I can to get my best friend away from danger?
Yeah, I’m not going to lose sleep over that.
Although I restrain myself from snapping back, Wes can’t stop himself this time. His dark gaze is cold, and the rasp of his voice is sharper than I’ve heard it all night.
“Keep saying dumb shit, Stu. I dare you.”
“Like I’m not saying what we’re all thinking.”
“What the fuck have you done tonight other than put people in danger and then fucking disappear?”
“She’s the girl who—”
“Woman,” Jennifer says. I’m not the only one who is shocked that she’s jumped to my defense. “She’s the woman who’s saved multiple people’s asses tonight. Including mine. Right?”
She directs that at Dani. Her tone leaves no room for disagreement, and I look at the woman across from me and see a completely different person from the one we found hidden behind a curtain and shaking from fear.
Jennifer has gone through some kind of character arc tonight.
She seems more akin to a Final Girl than I could be, and it makes me think maybe Heart Eyes should’ve gotten to know us all a little better before making me the lead of the night.
“Right,” Dani agrees, sending an apologetic smile my way, but not making any moves to shift away when Stu retreats to her side. I guess the lumberjack effect hits some people in full force.
“Well, you’re really something, aren’t you?” Stu mutters, and I think we can safely determine he has not been pining over me for the last few hours.
“And you’re really an asshole,” Wes says before I can express the same sentiment. He turns his stare onto Stu’s fist, using his own weapon to point to it. “Where’d you get the knife?”
Stu glares back at Wes before looking down at the boning knife in his hand. The tip has specks of blood on it.
“I got it from Campbell.”