Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
DIE WITH A SMILE
HAZEL
Time does something strange when you’re asked to destroy yourself on command.
It stretches and tightens all at once, every second pulling thin as wire, humming with pressure until I can feel it in my teeth.
Alex’s knife stays at Leyla’s throat, steady and patient, like she’s done this a thousand times and knows exactly how long a person can hold hope before it collapses.
Zack is still on the floor to my left, blood soaking into concrete that doesn’t care, his jaw clenched so hard I can see the muscle jumping, His eyes are locked on mine like he’s trying to say everything at once without saying anything at all, his eyes fluttering, I watch as the man I’ve fallen in love with is dying right in front of my eyes.
I don’t move, not because I can’t, but because moving wrong will kill someone, though at this rate I’m running out of time.
Alex watches me with open curiosity now, head tilted slightly, as if she’s studying a puzzle she already solved and is waiting for me to realize it. She thinks this is the end of the equation. Choice equals loss. Loss equals silence.
She’s wrong.
What she doesn’t account for is the space between moments, the breath people forget exists when they’re too busy counting down. I see it then, an almost indistinguishable movement that goes unheard and unnoticed.
Behind her, Cameron shifts.
It’s subtle, almost nothing at all. Just a redistribution of weight, a tightening in his posture that only someone who’s lived in danger learns to recognize.
I see it out of the corner of my eye, feel it more than see it, the way you sense a wave before it breaks.
His wrists are still marked red where the cuffs were, his movements stiff and slow on purpose, playing into the image Alex has already decided is true: that he’s exhausted, weak, done. She doesn’t even know that he’s there.
He isn’t finished.
Leyla’s eyes flick past my shoulder for half a second, just long enough to catch Cameron’s reflection in a metal beam.
Something changes in her expression—not hope, exactly, but readiness.
She stills, goes quiet, and as if almost trying to play along with what’s happening in front of us, playing Alex’s stupid little game.
Alex doesn’t notice. She’s still watching me.
“Tick,” she says softly, not unkindly.
That’s when Cameron moves.
He comes up behind Alex in a burst of motion so sudden it breaks the illusion she’s been controlling, one arm looping around her shoulders, the other slamming into her wrist in a sharp practiced strike meant to disarm, not kill.
The knife skitters across the concrete with a metallic shriek, Leyla crying out as she stumbles forward out of Alex’s grip.
Everything explodes into motion.
Alex snarls, twisting hard, elbowing Cameron in the ribs with brutal precision. The gun comes up in her other hand as she half-turns. The shot goes wild, slamming into a beam overhead, sparks raining down as Cameron grunts and stumbles back, but doesn’t fall.
Leyla collapses into me, shaking so hard it feels like her bones might rattle apart, and I wrap my arms around her without thinking, dragging her down and away, my heart trying to punch its way out of my chest.
But my eyes are already on Zack.
The choice I couldn’t make before snaps into place with terrifying clarity.
I leave Leyla with Cameron and move.
I’m at Zack’s side in seconds, dropping to my knees, hands already pressing hard against his abdomen, my brain locking into action because panic doesn’t get a vote right now. Blood seeps hot and fast between my fingers, and I swallow hard, forcing myself not to think about how much there is.
“Hey,” I say, my voice shaking despite my effort. “Hey—baby please, stay with me.”
His eyes flutter, then focus. “You…didn’t listen,” he rasps.
I laugh, a broken, hysterical sound that surprises both of us. “I never do.”
Behind me, there’s the sound of bodies hitting concrete, of Cameron shouting Leyla’s name, of Alex swearing low and furious as she scrambles back, recalculating in real time.
I don’t look. I can’t. Everything I am narrows to the man bleeding beneath my hands, to the fact that I chose him and I would choose him again even knowing what it costs.
“You’re not allowed to die,” I tell Zack fiercely, tearing fabric, applying pressure, doing anything that buys us seconds. “Not today. Not like this.”
His mouth curves faintly, painfully. “B-bossy.”
“Damn right.”
Somewhere above us, the warehouse screams with chaos, the careful silence finally shattered beyond repair, and I know that feeling, deep in my bones—that Alex didn’t lose because she underestimated our strength.
She lost because she believed choice meant isolation.
Because she forgot that love doesn’t always hesitate, sometimes it lunges. In the chaos of it all, in what seems only like a flash of life, Alex is gone; she’s run off. Leyla’s checking over Cameron, knowing that the gun had gone off again, but it missed Cameron, he’s okay.
“Zack—Zack, baby, please…c’mon Gramps, you can’t leave me, okay?
” I try to keep as much pressure onto his wound, but Zack is pale, his face fully leeched of color, and I see his life leaving him.
His head lolls back against the concrete wall, a small smattering of blood on it, where at some point it seems that he hit his head.
“H-Hazel? T-take…take care of Sammy for me?” His voice is barely a rasp, and I see the tears fall down his cheek. It’s then I notice Cameron and Leyla standing behind me, it’s one of those moments that almost totally don’t feel real. “I—I love y-you...”
“No, Zack, save it—for when you’re okay. Tell me when you’re not on your fucking deathbed, you hear me?! Help is coming...” Though I don’t know that, I just need him to hang on, just for a little bit longer.
Zack’s eyes close as I hear the sound of sirens in the distance, and I know that it’s going to be okay. We didn’t come this far for him to die on me now.