“You’re fucking crazy!”
“I guess that’s what happens to a person when you lock them away for ten days on their own, and then show up accusing them of being a whore.”
“I didn’t accuse you of being a whore.”
“You may as well have done. You think just because I slept with you, I’d want to sleep with any of your gross, Neanderthal groupies? I’m not some club hooker to be passed around like a damn party favor!”
He comes at me again, reaching for me, and that’s when I notice the blood on his hands. My mind instantly rewinds to what he just said about setting out to kill someone tonight, and I reel back. Oh my god. No, he couldn’t have. Did…did he actually do it? Rebel sees my anger change to horror and swiftly stops in his tracks.
“What?”
“Your hands, Rebel. What the fuck is all over your hands?”
He looks down at them, a small frown creasing his forehead, eyebrows banking together. The expression he’s wearing screams innocent confusion, however the wet blood on his hands screams something else entirely. His face is ashen.
“I don’t…”
I scream when he staggers sideways and crashes into the couch, dropping to one knee. “What the hell? Rebel? Rebel!” He looks like he’s on death door. “Oh, god, please…what’s wrong?” I touch his side, the side I rammed with my knee, my hand comes away covered in blood. His t-shirt is drenched with it. I didn’t notice before since the material is black, but now that I’m looking closer I can see the dark, wet stain spreading across his stomach.
“Is this…is this you?”
Rebel nods, holding one hand to his side. “Go and get Cade.”
“What happened?”
“Go and get Cade, Soph.”
“Rebel!”
“Jesus, I was stabbed earlier. You just kneed me right on top of the wound. Now, please, fuck…go and get Cade.”
I’m not going anywhere. I drop to my knees beside him, tearing at his shirt. “Show me. Show me for god’s sake.” The bastard deserves to be in pain after everything he’s put me through since we returned to New Mexico, but now that he’s potentially bleeding out on the floor of his cabin, I’m suddenly not so sure that I want him to die.
He tries to pull shirt back down, but ironically I’m stronger than him right now. A jolt of surprise hits me when I see what’s underneath—a seven-inch long gash runs down his ribcage, onto his stomach. And it’s seriously deep. “Are you insane? Why the hell didn’t you go straight to the hospital?” Yelling at him probably isn’t the most constructive thing I could be doing, but it’s about all I can think of. Rebel grimaces, slumping back so that he’s sitting on his ass on the floor.
“It wasn’t bleeding that much before you belted me,” he says. Unbelievably, he winks at me, like he finds that highly amusing.
“Shit. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. God, I need to find a towel.” I start pacing, tearing through drawers and cupboards, searching but not finding what I’m looking for.
“It’s okay, it’s all right. I don’t need a towel. Soph. Sophia!”
I stop pacing.
“Go and get Cade, okay? He’ll be up in the bar, in the biggest building. Go and get him and tell him to bring a suture kit.” Rebel reaches up and hands me a key, and it takes me a second to understand what it’s for: the door to the cabin. The door to my freedom. I take it from him.
There’s an actual pool of blood spreading out around him on the floorboards now, growing bigger by the second. I did that to him. Well, I didn’t do it to him, but I sure as hell made it worse. Fuck. I run to the door and unlock it, my hands shaking like crazy., and then I’m running some more, running to the left toward a building I’ve only ever seen from a distance as I’ve been brought to and from the cabin. Tall, dead grass whips at my bare legs as I barrel head on down the steep hill that leads to the rest of the compound. The night air feels cool in my lungs, pulling at my clothes as I sprint for help.
It occurs to me that I could veer to the right, towards the banks of motorcycles and cars parked off the side. I have no idea how to hot wire a car but I could give it a damn good go. A part of my brain is screaming at me to do it, to let Rebel bleed out on the floor, steal a car and head for the closest police station, but I can’t. I just can’t make myself do it. Rebel was a major asshole when he came back to the cabin just now, but I saw something in him in Alabama. Something that made me drop my defences and trust him. I can’t just let him die.
When I slam though the doors of the main building, I see it must be the Widow Makers’ clubhouse. Inside, at least fifteen people stop their conversations, glasses and beer bottles held halfway to their mouths, and they all turn to stare at me. A tall woman, maybe in her late forties cocks her head to one side and blinks like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. Cade’s on the other side of the room, paused mid-hand shake with another, shorter guy with neck tattoos. His eyes nearly pop out of his head when he sees me.
“What in Sam Hell?” Cade drops his friend’s hand and storms across the clubhouse bar, murder in his eyes. “You trying to get yourself killed?” he hisses, grabbing hold of my arm. I’ve had enough of people manhandling me for one day. Ripping my arm free, I step back, ready to knee him somewhere a little more intimate if I have to.
“Rebel needs you. He said for you to bring a suture kit,” I tell him. If I were my sister, I could have sewn Rebel up myself. I’m not though, so this is the best I can do. I shove Cade in the chest, trying to transfer some sense of urgency to him. “He’s bleeding everywhere,” I snap. “When he sent me to fetch you, I don’t think he had a huge amount of time for you to decide if you were gonna come or not.”
Cade scrubs his hand with his face, rolling his eyes. “Jesus, I told him he should go see the doc.” He ducks quickly behind the bar, where an overweight guy in an ACDC t-shirt is staring at me with eyes like saucers. It takes me a moment to realize why: I’m half freaking naked. It may be winter, but you wouldn’t know it by the temperature in New Mexico. I’ve been sweltering in Rebel’s airless, AC-less cabin. Shorts and tank tops have been my recent staple.
The fact that my shirt is covered in blood really isn’t helping matters, either. I try to shrink inside my own skin as Cade grabs a small green case from somewhere underneath the counter, and then he’s vaulting over it and leading me out of the bar. I glance over my shoulder just in time to catch the hateful look being sent my way by a beautiful pink haired woman with tattoos. Her eyes narrow at me, and then she’s gone as I’m dragged out of the clubhouse and across the compound in the direction of the cabin.
“Is he conscious?” Cade asks.
“Was when I left him,” I pant. “There was blood on the floor, though. A lot of blood.”
Cade just grunts. He lets me go and takes off without a backward glance to make sure I’m following. Again, I’m presented with the opportunity to escape. Rebel is about to get help. Cade will either stitch him up or take him to get further medical attention. My usefulness in this situation is at an end. I should be ducking into the shadows and vanishing, even if I can’t get one of the cars to work and I have to walk to the next town.
I take a deep breath, watching Cade growing smaller and smaller as he runs up the hill to Rebel’s place, and then I’m looking over my shoulder, out over the endless, scrubby desert between me and civilization…and I’m shaking my head.
I could die out there. That’s not what stops me from running, though. It’s the fact that Rebel could die right here, right now and I would never know it.