Page 277 of Cross Checked
Ryan’s mouth trembled once, fast enough that maybe he thought I didn’t see it. “Don’t make me have to tell her you died, Cap.”
My eyes opened again.
Ryan nodded hard, like I had done something impressive instead of barely managing basic consciousness. “Do not fucking die. Stay with me.” He said it as if the command itself would breathe air for me.
Footsteps pounded closer.
Security burst into the corridor first, voices tangling together when they saw the blood. Ryan barked something at them to secure the hall, to keep everyone back, to get EMS through the service entrance. He sounded like someone older than us. Someone who had been waiting his whole life to become useful in the worst possible moment.
One of the security guys swore.
Another voice said, “Is that Dempsey?”
The lights blurred.
The ceiling shifted.
Ryan’s face faded in and out above me, then the corridor wasn’t the corridor anymore. It was street hockey. It was Luke at the barbecue with that fake smile. It was Bliss’s voice telling me to read between the lines. It was her throat, bruised under my fingers when I wanted to kiss every mark he’d left and then rip the world apart for letting him make them.
Ryan looked over his shoulder, getting an eyeful of Luke, then back at me, his face suddenly different. Not just scared but confused. Like the hallway had stopped making sense the minute he looked at his body.
“What happened?” he asked, voice low enough that maybe he didn’t mean for anyone else to hear it. “Cade, what the hell happened?”
I tried to answer. I think my mouth moved, but nothing useful came out.
Ryan’s gaze flicked past me again, toward Luke’s body. “What did you do?”
A broken, useless sound dragged out of my throat. “No.”
That was all my brain could find to explain my why.
Every ignored no that made my girl question her worth.
No.
The word he never learned, the one Pip deserved to keep her safe. The word she needed him to hear. The word I hadcarved into him because I wanted the world to know he earned that no.
“No,” I rasped.
Ryan’s eyes snapped back to mine. “What?”
I swallowed against blood. “No.”
His brows drew together, and then he looked again, closer this time, and his body went still.
So still.
He saw what I did.
Saw the blood-dark letters cut through the soaked shirt beneath the wound in Luke’s chest.
NO.
His face changed in a way I couldn’t name.
Horror, maybe.
Not at me.
