Chapter 39 #2
The laughing drains out of the crowd in patches as everyone starts to understand what he's saying.
“Craig,” I warn low, just for him. “Just drop it.”
“Hey, I'm not saying anything.” He spreads his hands, all wounded innocence, playing to the people watching. “Just pointing out you're very popular, aren't you? It's hard to get a look in, really. Busy, busy girl.”
“Craig,” Rhys says, his voice hard and cold as he gets up from the table and storms towards us, the other two behind him.
Leon leans across the table to ask Patrick what's going on. Patrick just shakes his head, confused.
“What?” Craig's voice climbs, pitched for the whole clearing.
“She clearly didn't need to make room for me, when she already had the three of you. And those are only the ones I know of. So which one is it that gets her this week, out of curiosity?” His eyes flick past my shoulder, to the guys circling me, clearly delighted at the attention he's getting.
“Hmmm. Or do you rotate? Daily? Hourly? Or do you not care, as you all get a turn at her?”
A hand closes around my wrist. Zachary. I'm yanked back as all three of them step in front of me — Rhys leading, Marcus at his side, Zachary close enough behind me that I feel him against my back.
“Stay here,” Zachary whispers.
Rhys takes another step towards Craig, who stumbles back. I realise he's not totally sober. “Take back what you just said and apologise to Alexia right now. That's not a suggestion and I'm not going to wait.”
Craig gives him a smarmy grin that has my spine stiffening. “Oh, so you're the favourite today. Must be nice, getting a taste of her, she looks like she'd be sweet on her knee—”
He doesn't finish. Rhys's fist connects with his jaw so fast I can only gasp once I see the aftermath — Craig staggering into the trestle table, plates and food flying everywhere, someone screaming, everyone jumping to their feet.
I've never once seen Rhys raise his voice, let alone his fist, and the sight of it — controlled, contained Rhys, knuckles split, chest heaving — is somehow more frightening than the punch itself.
Marcus and Zachary haul him backward before he can get a second swing in.
Craig's brother tries to steady him, but gets shoved off, blood already running from Craig's split lip.
“What a big strong man, protecting his credit-stealing little slut,” he spits the words like the poison they are. “Sleeps her way to the top and calls it networking.”
I can't believe my ears. Where did all this vitriol come from? I almost take a step forward just to ask him.
“What is he talking about?” someone says, his voice cutting through all the noise.
I whip around to see Leon in his chair right beside me.
“What is he talking about, Alexia?” Leon asks again, his voice cold, his eyes promising murder even as his forehead is furrowed in confusion.
He's gripping the wheelchair's arms so hard his knuckles have gone white, staring at me like he's trying and failing to make sense of it.
“Did he just suggest you were...” he stops, as if he can't say the words out loud.
“She's fucking those housemates of hers! Your so-called best friends have been screwing the fucking daylights out of your slutty little sister!” Craig yells so that nobody in the entire park could've missed it. My hand comes up to cover my mouth, suddenly feeling sick.
“Alexia?” Leon asks, the look now focused on me. “Is it true?”
Fuck. I take a deep breath.
“Yes,” I say. “We've—” It cracks straight down the middle. “We're involved.”
“Which one? Which one of my friends are you sleeping with?”
I bite down so hard, iron floods my mouth. “All of them.”
The silence lasts about a second and a half before it isn't silence anymore.
He shakes his head. “You're lying.”
I wish. God, do I wish. “I'm not. I'm sorry, it just — it happened, and I didn't know how to—”
“It's not what it sounds like, man,” Zachary says, stepping forward, and Leon rounds on him so fast the chair almost tips.
“Really? Because it sounds like you've all been fucking my little sister. In my house. While I was in a hospital bed.”
“Leon. No. We have feelings for her.” Marcus, closer, low and urgent. “We care about her. We didn't plan for any of this to—”
Leon holds his hand up. “No. If you actually cared about her you'd stay the hell away from her.”
“We tried,” Rhys says, quiet, wrecked. “We tried to stay away, Leon, for years, we've—”
“Don't! Don't you dare stand there and tell me anything other than you did the one thing you knew I never wanted you to do.”
He's pushing himself up out of the chair before Patrick can stop him — and I see the exact second it goes wrong.
The wince tears across his face, and every trace of colour drops out of it at once.
Then he cries out, and there's blood, blooming fast and dark through his shirt where the stitches have torn open.
Marcus lunges forward. “Leon!”
“Don't touch me,” he hisses, sinking back into the chair. Patrick's hands move fast and practised, pressing hard against the wound. “Someone call an ambulance. Now,” he says to me, his voice tight.
I'm already dialling. My hands are shaking so badly I have to redial twice, and the operator's voice sounds like it's coming from somewhere underwater.
“You all need to step back,” Patrick says to the guys, fast, clinical. “Alexia. Stay with me. Talk to the operator. Tell them what I say.”
I remember nothing after that, only the sound of Leon's ragged breaths, Patrick steadily telling me what to repeat to the operator, telling Leon to breathe, to calm.
I grab his hand and he doesn't stop me.
In the corner of my eye, I can see the guys standing there, barely breathing, ready to jump forward if they're called on, but never are.
The ten minutes it takes the ambulance to arrive feel like hours. Leon's gone pale and quiet by the time the paramedics get him onto the stretcher, eyes half-closed, jaw still tight with pain, and I don't let go of his hand until they physically need to free him to load him in.
“I'm coming with him,” I say, already climbing up after the stretcher before anyone can tell me otherwise.
Nobody argues. I catch one look back, Marcus, Zachary, and Rhys stand frozen in the wreckage of the trestle table, sausages and lamingtons and someone's abandoned trivia sheet scattered around their feet.
“I'm coming, too,” Rhys says, already moving towards the doors once I'm inside.
“No room. You can follow in your car,” the paramedic says, not unkindly.
The last thing I see before the doors close is Rhys's face.
Inside, the ambulance smells like antiseptic and coffee.
The paramedic's already got a line in Leon's arm, monitor beeping steady and fast beside him.
I hold his other hand the whole way, watching his face, watching the machine, willing them both to keep telling me that he's going to be okay.
His eyes crack open halfway to the hospital, unfocused, finding me slowly.
“Xi,” he says, voice thin and cracked.
I squeeze his hand and slide forward. “I'm here. I'm right here.”
He blinks, working to focus, and when his eyes finally settle on mine properly, there's nothing in them but pure, exhausted bewilderment.
“What the fuck,” he says, “is going on with you?”