Chapter Twenty-Eight
I’m three, maybe five steps out when I hear it.
bang.
Muffled by the chapel doors, rain, my own heartbeat but still loud enough to stop me short.
The gun. The fucking gun went off again.
I could turn back. Charge through those doors and—
And what? Get my head blown off? Make everything Kade did for me worthless?
I run. Away from the stink of blood and rot. Away from the altar, from his hands on me, from the sounds I couldn’t stop making.
“Kristy!”
5:20 am. Almost dawn. Not that it matters. The storm drowns everything.
Don’t know where the exit is. Where I am. How long I was lying on that fucking altar.
My hoodie’s soaked through, dragging me down. My eyes sting. My sneakers slosh through mud. Every step.
A branch cracks ahead.
Lana. She’s slowing—favoring her right side, one hand clamped over her shoulder where Kristy jammed that antler in.
I lunge forward.
Don’t know if I’m chasing her—
Or the memory of the girl who showed up with crackers and Gatorade when I had the flu.
Senior spring. We almost got matching tattoos. She chickened out last second.
We snuck onto the dorm roof. Lay side by side. The stars blinked and planes soared overhead.
‘Promise me something,’ she said, drunk-poking my ribs, ‘if we’re ever miserable at thirty, we’ll run off with the circus.’
The friend who never fucking existed.
“Lana!” My voice shreds.
I push harder. Run faster.
Something snags my ankle.
Watch for tree roots—
My knees hit so hard my teeth rattle. Mud through my skirt. Thunder cracks.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please—
A scream.
I’m up before I feel the pain, branches whipping at my face.
Another shriek—closer. Cut mid-breath.
Past a wall of leaves and—
There.
Kristy’s on the ground, crawling backward. Lana standing over her, knife raised.
The blade flicks out, retracts. A taunt.
I throw myself at Lana.
One pivot and her elbow slams into my ribs. Air whooshes out. I reel backward.
Krav Maga. Right. Fuck.
She spits rainwater. “You should’ve run.”
Kristy lurches up, rock in hand.
Lana seizes her wrist—pop—Kristy screams.
“Lana, stop,” I choke out.
She turns. Rain drips from her lashes.
There’s the Lana who stole street signs and sang off-key.
Then it’s gone. Just the cold-hearted bitch who put that antler through Mia’s eye. Made Kade bleed on that knife.
“Please,” Kristy breathes, cradling her wrist. “Just let us go.”
Lana spins. Yanks Kristy close by the hair—the knife at her throat. “Let you go and then what? You’ll go crying to the cops? Ruin my life?”
Ruin her life. Like she hasn’t fucking destroyed everyone’s lives tonight.
Kristy swallows. Shakes her head.
“No, we won’t,” I say quickly. “We won’t tell anyone. We can—”
The blade bites in—
“No!”
The hilt thuds against Kristy’s throat.
Lana laughs. “You should see your faces. Both of you.”
Kristy roars. Slams her shoulder into Lana’s wounded side.
Lana catches her finger.
snap.
Kristy howls, reeling back, eyes wide and welling—
Lana grabs her again. Yanks her forward.
I swing the first thing I grab. The damn stick cracks across Lana’s shoulder.
Her knife slashes at me—blade flicking out mid-swing.
Pain sings up my arm. Blood ribbons into the mud.
“Aww,” Lana pants, “you still fight like you’re scared to hurt me, P.”
Her face twists—familiar but wrong—and something in my chest tears.
“Fuck you,” I yell. “Fuck you and your lies. Fuck you and your stupid fucking games.”
“Oh, this isn’t a game.” Rain dripping down her chin. “It never was.” A glance at Kristy. “Come on. I’ll take both of you.”
Fucking psycho. Kristy and I trade a look.
“No,” she gasps. “We’re not doing this.”
Lana rolls her eyes. “Oh, yes, we are. Do your best if you wanna live. Else, just do me a favor and fucking die already.”
I pounce. I want her to hurt. To feel every fucking thing she made us go through tonight.
She ducks my swing, but we go down together in the mud.
The ground soaks through my hoodie. I claw up fistfuls—earth, grass, rainwater.
Her knee drives into my ribs.
I buck. Jab. Roll. Kick out—
We slip in the mud, limbs tangled, teeth bared like animals. My fist catches her cheek—bone under skin—
My scalp explodes. The world jerks sideways.
I claw at her arm.
She laughs, breathless, wild. “Still pulling punches? You really are pathetic.”
Kristy screams. I turn.
Lana’s elbow smashes into my jaw. A burst of white. I taste blood.
Kristy’s stumbling toward us, holding the taser.
“Back off,” she shouts.
“Do you even know how to use it?” That stupid snort whenever someone wiped out skating.
The taser wavers. Kristy blinks, hair plastered to her cheeks. “Try me.”
Lana lunges.
crack.
The prongs hit her stomach.
Lana jerks once, twice—
She rips the taser free, hurls it into the dark.
Kristy stumbles back. “Y-you … you’re not real.”
“I’m focused,” Lana snaps, fingers flexing. “Which is more than I can say for either of you.”
I grab a thick branch from the ground. Heavy enough to hurt.
“God, I missed this.” Lana tips her head to the sky. Smiles. “The three of us.”
“Not like this,” Kristy sobs. “Lana, please. This isn’t you.”
Lana stills. Her smile fades. “You don’t fucking know me.”
I’m moving before she charges—she gets to Kristy first.
The blade sinks in.
I crash into Lana sideways, screaming, swinging the branch.
She grunts. Claws at my hoodie. Laughs through her fucking teeth.
We tumble into the mud. Lana straddling me—a mockery of a position we both thought she was too classy for.
My hands find her shoulders.
“I should’ve let Derek kill you.” She raises the knife. Drives it to my throat.
I freeze, a sob caught halfway out.
Nothing. It’s jammed. Packed with mud.
I claw at her again. “You made me perform, you fucking bitch.”
My nails rake down her arm.
A ragged hiss. “And you didn’t disappoint.” Her breath ghosts across my lips. “Turns out, you’re just like me.”
“I’m nothing like you.” I slam my forehead into her nose.
crunch.
Her head snaps back. Blood gushing. She clutches her face, knife raised.
Two fingers into that antler wound and her scream rips through the storm.
She bucks.
I shove hard, roll her. My knees slam into the muck, pinning her down.
snick.
The blade’s free.
I clutch her wrist with both hands.
We grapple.
Knife to my face. To her chest. Up again, shaking between us.
Lana stares up at me, panting. “You’re my best friend, P.”
“And you were mine.” I ram the blade down.
A gasp.
I let go of her wrist. Stagger off her.
Her hands flutter around the hilt, not quite pulling it out.
Rain beats down. Blood bubbles at her lips. “P … guess we”—a wet cough. She smiles. Or tries to—“no matching tattoos.”
Kristy.
I lurch toward her, crying so hard I can barely see. “Kristy …”
She’s propped up against a tree, clutching her stomach. Blood. Too much blood. On her crop top, neon shorts, everywhere.
“Hey. Hey, stay with me.” I drop to my knees, wrap my arms around her. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna get you help.”
Her eyes find mine, glassy, unfocused. “Is the Uber here yet?” she mumbles. “It’s freezing.”
My throat closes. “Kristy—”
“I want a hot bath,” she whispers. “And spring rolls. The good kind. From that place off-campus. Remember?”
I bob my head, sobbing. “Yeah. Pad kee mao and spring rolls.”
“We should do a movie night again.” A soft, broken laugh. “Remember when Lana wore heels to your dorm and bitched the whole walk over? Tell her no heels this time.”
I nod, holding Kristy tighter. “I’ll tell her.”
“Is it … Sunday? ’Cause I swear I still have that poli-sci paper due.”
I choke on a breath. “No, babe, it’s not finals week.”
She smiles faintly. “Good. Then we can stay up all night and do shots.”
I press my forehead to hers. “Anything you want.”
“I-it’s … so cold,” she murmurs. “Think I’ll nap for a sec.”
“No. No—Kristy, you can’t. Stay with me. Stay with me. Please—”
Her fingers brush my cheek.
Then her hand falls.
And I’m wailing into the storm, clutching the body of the girl who used to braid my hair after bad dates, knew how I took my coffee, promised we’d grow old and adopt a cat together if we were still single by fifty.
“Kristy, no. Wake up. Wake up. Kristy … please, wake up.”
My chest heaves. I glance at Lana.
Motionless too.
Gone.