Chapter 25
twenty-five
Zach
The blood is warm through my hands.
That’s the first thing that settles properly once the car is moving, once the tires catch and Elijah forces Paul’s car down the road hard enough that the whole frame of it shudders around us, because everything else is happening too fast and too loud and too wrong to land cleanly.
Jackson has her in his lap, half-turned across the back seat to keep her close, to keep her upright enough that her head doesn’t fall too far back, and I’m beside them with my shirt pressed into the wound at her side, both hands locked over the soaked fabric because the second I ease up, even slightly, more blood pushes through.
It isn’t slowing.
That thought stays low and ugly in the back of my mind while I adjust my grip, angling the pressure more directly over where the blade must have gone in, trying to remember everything I know and forcing my hands to stay steady even though nothing else in me is.
“Lia,” Jackson says again, and his voice is so wrecked now that it barely sounds like him. “Sweetheart, come on. Open your eyes for me. Just look at me.”
Her head rolls faintly with the movement of the car.
No response.
Her lashes don’t even flicker.
“Keep her on her side a little more,” I say, and my voice comes out tighter than I mean it to, but at least it comes out clear. “Not flat. Don’t let her go flat.”
Jackson shifts her immediately, one arm under her shoulders, the other cradling her head, his whole body wrapped around her like if he holds her tightly enough he can keep her here by force.
“Like this?” he asks.
I nod once, not trusting myself to do more than that while I look at the wound again.
There’s too much blood.
Too much on her shirt, too much on my hands, too much soaked into the fabric I’m pressing down with. The back seat reeks of iron already, thick and unmistakable, and every time the car hits a bump the pressure slips just enough to make my stomach tighten harder.
Elijah is driving like the road owes him something, one hand locked so tightly around the wheel I can see the tension all the way from here, the other shifting constantly as he forces the car faster around corners and down dark stretches of road that never seem to end.
He keeps checking the rear-view mirror every few seconds, and every time he does I can feel the refusal in it, the way he won’t let himself see what’s right in front of him for too long.
“She’s not dying,” he says again, his voice flat and hard and completely unyielding. “She’s not.”
Jackson makes a broken sound that might be agreement or might just be him trying not to fall apart completely.
“Lia, please,” he whispers, pressing his face briefly to her temple before pulling back to look at her again. “Please, sweetheart. Don’t do this. Don’t you fucking do this.”
I shift my hands again.
The pressure point is wrong.
No, not wrong. The angle of the shirt is bunching underneath my palm and it’s stopping me from getting directly over it. I pull one hand away just enough to wrench the fabric tighter, then press down again with both hands, harder this time, feeling the way her body gives beneath it.
“Sorry,” I murmur without thinking, and I don’t even know if I’m saying it to her for the pain or to myself because I can’t stop it.
She doesn’t move.
My pulse kicks harder.
“Talk to me,” Jackson says, and now he’s not begging softly anymore, he’s trying to drag her back by force, trying to make his voice matter enough to pull her through whatever darkness she’s sunk into.
“Lia, come on. You hate when I get dramatic, remember? You always roll your eyes at me. Do it now. Come on.”
Nothing.
I swallow hard and force my focus back to the wound.
This is what matters. Not the panic. Not the blood all over my hands. Not the fact that my chest feels so tight it’s actually starting to hurt.
Pressure.
Breathing.
Consciousness.
“Jackson, keep her upright,” I say again, because if I stop talking, if I stop giving instructions, then I’ll start hearing too much of what’s in my own head. “Don’t let her slump.”
He nods quickly.
“Okay. Okay.”
Elijah takes a corner too hard and the car swerves slightly, the tires catching gravel before he corrects it, and Jackson curses at the same time I feel the pressure shift under my hands.
“Watch it!” I snap, louder than I mean to.
Silence hits for half a second.
Then Elijah’s voice comes back, rough and dangerous and held together by nothing but force.
“I am watching it.”
I don’t answer.
Because he is.
He’s just also driving like if he doesn’t beat the road into submission, it’s going to take her from us.
The headlights cut across another stretch of empty road. Trees. Darkness. More road. It all looks the same, and the knowledge of how far we still are from anything solid presses harder into my chest with every passing minute.
She shouldn’t have been on that floor.
That thought flashes through me with such sudden violence it almost knocks the breath out of me.
She shouldn’t have been lying there bleeding while he touched her, while he leaned over her, while...
No.
I force it down.
Not now.
Not while my hands are the only thing between her and whatever happens if I lose focus.
“She’s cold,” Jackson says suddenly, panic sharpening the words. “Why is she cold?”
I look up then, properly, and for a second I hate it because the second I stop looking at the wound I can see all of her instead.
The pallor in her skin is wrong. The softness in her mouth is wrong.
The way her body just lies there in his arms like she’s too far under to even fight the pain is so wrong it makes my stomach twist hard enough to ache.
“Shock,” I say, and I hear how tight my own voice is. “She’s in shock.”
The words hang in the air.
Jackson’s face changes when he hears them.
Not confusion.
Understanding.
The worst kind.
“No,” he says immediately, like refusing the word might do something. “No. No, she’s not...”
“She is,” I cut in, because lying to him isn’t going to help. “Jackson, listen to me. Keep her warm. Keep talking to her. Don’t let her go quiet.”
He nods too fast.
Too many times.
“I am. I am.”
Then he’s right back to her, one hand rubbing hard over her arm, over her shoulder, over anything he can touch.
“Lia,” he says, and his voice breaks fully this time. “Lia, sweetheart, I need you to stay with me. I need you to hear me.”
Elijah’s hand tightens on the wheel again.
“She hears you,” he says, and there’s something in the words that isn’t calm, isn’t reassurance, just command, as if he can force that into being true too. “Keep talking.”
I look back down at my hands.
The blood is still pushing through.
Not as fast.
Maybe.
Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
I shift the pressure again, using the heel of my palm this time instead of the whole hand, trying to be more direct, more deliberate, and the second I do, her body gives a faint jerk beneath my grip.
It isn’t much.
Barely anything.
But it’s enough.
“Lia?” Jackson says sharply, seizing on it instantly. “sweetheart?”
Her mouth parts slightly.
No sound comes out.
But I saw it.
I know I did.
“She moved,” Jackson says, half-laughing, half-sobbing at once. “She moved...Lia, do that again, come on—”
“Don’t make her work,” I say, because hope is dangerous when it gets too loud. “Just keep her awake if you can.”
If you can.
I hate the phrase the second it leaves me, but there’s no taking it back.
Jackson hears it too.
His face tightens.
Behind the wheel, Elijah goes even stiller than before, and that is somehow worse than if he’d shouted.
“She’s staying with us,” he says, and he doesn’t raise his voice, but every word in it lands like iron. “She is not slipping away in this fucking car.”
My hands tighten over the wound again.
I don’t tell him she isn’t really awake now. I don’t tell him I’m not sure what that movement meant. I don’t tell him that every minute on this road feels like a minute too long.
I just keep pressing.
Keep counting breaths.
In for her.
Out.
In.
Out.
They’re there.
Too shallow.
Too slow.
But there.
Jackson keeps talking to her, his words tumbling over themselves now, too desperate to filter.
“You remember that morning at the apartment when you yelled at me because I drank your coffee? You said I was a menace and I said you liked me that way. You remember that? You remember the tattoo? You said it was insane and then you got it anyway. Come on, sweetheart, don’t do this now. Not now.”
My throat tightens so hard it hurts.
I drag in a breath and keep my focus where it is.
The road stretches on.
The dark outside the windows has thickened fully now, the headlights carving out only small sections at a time, and the longer we drive, the more the car starts to feel like a sealed thing, full of blood and panic and the sound of all of us trying not to let the worst thought in.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I notice the change.
It’s small.
So small I almost convince myself I imagined it.
Then I feel it again.
Her breathing catches.
Not fully.
Not long.
Just enough to break the rhythm I’d been counting on.
I freeze for half a second, every part of me locking around the feeling of it.
Then it happens again.
Shorter this time.
Wrong.
My mouth goes dry.
“Jackson,” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound right.
He looks at me immediately.
“What?”
I lift my eyes to his.
And for the first time since we got her back, I can’t make my face hide what I’m thinking.
Something in his expression collapses the second he sees it.
“What?” he says again, louder now. “Zach, what?”
I look back down at her.
At the rise of her chest.
At the pause that comes after it.
Too long.
Then the next breath finally comes, thin and dragging and wrong enough that cold floods through me all at once.
No.
Not now.
Not here.
Not when we finally have her.
“Elijah,” Jackson says, and there’s panic in his voice now, raw and immediate. “Elijah!”
I press down harder without meaning to, my whole body leaning into the pressure as if I can hold her here by force.
“Come on,” I whisper, and I don’t know if I’m saying it to her or to myself. “Come on.”
The next breath takes too long.