I only emerge from that fog when I feel the agony of pain at my wrists.
I snap back into my body, and panic takes its hold. Naked and covered in blood, Jonah kneels over me with the knife in his hands, and my wrists…
Oh god! My wrists! Blood flows like a crimson river down my arms as I hold my hands up to my face. Too much blood. There’s way too much blood. “Jonah, what have you done?”
“You shouldn’t have said that about my mother,” he snarls.
“Fuck. I’m—I’m going to die, Jonah.”
His ashen, blood spattered face registers the faintest amount of shock. Between his legs, his dick hangs flaccid and spent. He staggers back, dropping his hold on the knife, and the sound of it hitting the hardwood clangs inside my head. “You…shouldn’t have…said that about…my mom,” he whispers.
Panic makes me come alive, even as I can feel myself fading. My heart’s beating hard, thumping against my ribs, pounding out a desperate rhythm as it tries to process the shock…
“Jonah. Jonah, listen to me. If you leave me like this, they’re gonna know it was you. If you let me die, they’ll know that you attacked me.”
He shakes his head. “They won’t.”
“They will! They’ll do an autopsy. Oh, god, they’ll…” The room pitches. I’m so lightheaded, I can’t even see straight. Too much blood. So much blood. “They’ll know you…raped me. The bruises…”
“FUCK!” Jonah tears at his hair, doubling over. “This is all your fault. Why the fuck did you have to say that shit!”
Like a flip being switched, he drops like a stone to the ground, cradling his head in his own hands. He starts to cry.
“Take me…to the hospital, Jonah. Take me and…it’ll all be okay.”
“No! No, no, no! I can’t!”
“Take me!”
He whips around to face me, his face red and blotchy, his eyes manic as hell. “You’ll tell them what I did!”
“I won’t. I swear I won’t. I’ll say…I did it myself. They’ll never even…know.”
Jonah stops crying. He sniffs, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. he looks like a little boy—a child recovering from a temper tantrum. “You swear? If I take you, you’ll tell them you did this? Not me?”
“I swear.”
He thinks for a second. A second I don’t have. And then… “Okay. But if you breathe a word of this, I will fucking come back for you, Red. Just see if I fucking don’t. And I’ll make it hurt so much more next time. I’ll find your fucking mom and I’ll kill her, too.”
I don’t care about his threats.
He picks me up and starts to dress me. I feel like a limp ragdoll in his arms. I’m fading so fast.
“I mean it, Presley. I swear to God. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll come back and I’ll kill you.”
It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.
I want to live.
I want to live.
I want to live.
33
PAX
* * *
“You’re not particularly warm. No fever to speak of. You said you felt sick?”
Wolf Hall has changed a lot in the past couple of weeks. The nurse’s office used to be glorified broom closet near Harcourt’s office, but now the academy has its very own medical bay. How very U.S.S. Enterprise of the school board. One of the lesser used classrooms was converted during break, and now the place is decked out with medical equipment that’s more advanced than anything you’ll find at Mountain Lakes’ hospital. I’ve heard they’re running advanced biology classes out of here now, for the students who are interested in going into pre-med. This is also where I had my check up after the bone marrow donation—being poked and prodded here instead of down the hill seemed like the better option than potentially running into Meredith.
I glare balefully at the guy holding the back of his hand to my forehead, letting him know precisely what I think of his arcane temperature-gauging methods. It’s not as if I wanted a thermometer in my ass. One in the mouth would probably be appropriate, though.
“I still feel sick. I have an upset stomach, too. Happy to provide a fecal sample if you need one.”
The guy, Danny, laughs. He taps some notes into his iPad, documenting my phony visit, and then sets the tablet down. “Thanks, but that won’t be necessary. Here. Take this to reception and then head home. Get some rest. I’d hate for you to have to sit through a full day of classes if you felt sick.” He hands me a printout that looks like a receipt, his tone dripping with sarcasm. He knows I’m fine, but what’s he supposed to do? Tell me to stop being a little shit and head back to English? I’m eighteen years old. I can walk right out of the academy and there’s nothing he can do to stop me. Plus, he weighs next to nothing; I could bench three of him, easy. I’d like to see him try and keep me here against my will. He would not like the consequences.
I take the stupid receipt to the school receptionist, who blanches, hand shaking when she takes it from me, like I’m about to hop over the desk and assault her or something. Then I realize that I’ve left my cell on the chair in the med bay, which is just fucking great. I head all the way back over to the other side of the building, only to witness Chase being carried through the door to one of the computer labs in the arms of a guy who most definitely is not a Wolf Hall student.
Tall, with almost blond hair, he’s sporting a whole bunch of ink—the bad kind that you get in a low rent back alley shop off the Vegas strip when you’re fucked out of your mind. The kind of ink that identifies a guy as a straight up asshole loser. I think he sees me, but I can’t be sure. If he does, then he’s got some brass balls, ’cause he clearly doesn’t give a flying fuck that someone’s clocked him.
It's not that I’m intrigued. No. That’s definitely not it. I couldn’t care less if Chase has gotten herself into shit; it was bound to happen, her mouth being as colossally smart as it recently is. The vibe I get from the guy who manhandled her through the doorway, though…he looked like a piece of work. Arrogant. Nasty. He didn’t even blink when he saw me, as if there was no way I might pose a problem to him. I don’t like that. It smacks of next level arrogance. On any given day, I’d gladly burn this place down to the ground and wouldn’t even break my stride, but that doesn’t mean that rando strangers can just show up here and just wonder around like they own the goddamn place. Yeah, that’s just not fucking happening.
I move quickly, beelining for the computer lab. The academy is hundreds of years old, so there are no windows in the antique mahogany doors. I can’t spy on them that way, so I toe the heavy weight of the wood back, shoving it open just enough to peek through the gap into the room.
The stranger is setting Chase down on the floor by the window on the far side of the room. She comes to—fuck, she was unconscious?— just as I slip inside the classroom. Chase starts, real fucking jump, when she sees the dude. They’re glowering at each other, neither one of them paying any attention to the fact that they’re not alone. I dip into one of the old Gothic recesses that form an alcove in the in the stonework. The perfect place to loiter and eavesdrop on a conversation.