I try to remind myself that he wanted me to do it, that helikedit, but disgust is a brutal fist around my stomach and queasiness swims in my head. All I can see is my dad and the sick hunger in his eyes as he sliced into his victims.
I am not like that. I am not like him.
Last night was intense but it was consensual, and it feltgood. My head is all messed up though and the lines between right and wrong are so blurred I can’t see what side I’m on.
I close my eyes, trying to use the breathing techniques Alistair showed me to stay calm. Water droplets run down my face and gather at the edges of my lips. I breathe in the steam, concentrating on the cloud of heat surrounding my body.
I’ve almost found my calm when a loud crack has me jerking. My eyes flick open and I freeze for one devastating moment before throwing myself out of the shower.
That was a gunshot. I’ve heard enough of them to know what a bullet sounds like and that was definitely a gunshot.
It came from downstairs, and I run a towel over me before grabbing my clothes off the bedroom floor and pulling them over my still damp body.
“Jude!” I shout.
There’s no reply and I race to the door, running my fingers over the edges in a futile attempt to open the damn thing. Frustration has me slamming the sole of my foot against themetal before I give up and snatch my phone off the bedside table. I call Jude and grab my knife, heading to the window as the phone rings and rings.
“Come on. Pick up, pick up,” I mutter under my breath, but no one does. A desperate scream tears out of me and I hammer the hilt of the knife into the window. The glass vibrates but stays solid and unforgiving.
“Jude!” I shout again, trying not to read into the fact that he hasn’t answered. Trying not to think about the gunshot.
I draw the blade of the knife diagonally across the window and do the same from the other side, carving a cross into the glass. If I can create a weak spot, I might be able to smash the window with the chair. I go over the lines again and again as fast as I can. The knife screeches with each slash, like chalk on a blackboard, but I keep going until a deep ‘x’ shape is cut into the glass.
I drop the knife and go to the armchair. I’m just about to try and lift it when the door beeps.
I stop what I’m doing.
One step and I have the knife back in hand as I face the door.
Three more beeps follow the first and I wait, my fist turning white around the hilt of the blade.
The door pushes open.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t to see myself staring back at me.
My hand drops to my side. “Allie?”
My sister trembles in the doorway. Splatters of blood speckle her pale arm, all the way down to the gun that hangs from her fingers.
Her face is ghost-shocked and so very young as she looks at me with desperate eyes. “I shot him,” she says. “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to see you but he…” Allie keeps talking, the words tumbling from her lips, but I stop listening.
Jude.
I push past my sister, out of this damn room, and race down the stairs.
I see his legs first, poking out from behind the couch. Electricity seizes my chest like a defibrillator and it’s a miracle I manage to keep moving.
I run to him, skidding to my knees on the floorboards. Blood pools around his shoulder, the entire upper and left side of his hoodie soaked a dark red.
“Jude! Jude wake up!” I whip my shirt off and press the material against the small hole in his shoulder. He doesn’t answer at first but then his eyes flicker open and his head lolls to the side as he looks up at me.
My chest shudders. “You’re going to be okay.”
“Angel…” His lips stumble on the word before his eyes roll back.
“Shh,” I sob as I push down on my shirt, trying to stem the bleeding. “Don’t talk, just stay with me okay.”
Jude doesn’t answer, his eyes flickering closed.
