I can’t look away from him even as I think it. I can’t get myself to run. Something makes my ribs feel tight and my skin too stretched. Like walking away would somehow hurt me far more than it’d hurt him. Ihave no idea why. I don’t know this man. He could be a killer, a drug dealer, a?—
A wet, desperate cough breaks the tension. The kind of sound that makes your chest twist in sympathy.
I take another steady step toward the danger.
Maybe I’m more like Mom than I thought.
My mouth peels open, but nothing comes out. What do you ask someone who’s bleeding out on 5th Avenue in the middle of the night?How’s your evening going?Need a band-aid?
“You need to go to a hospital,” I settle on, desperately straining to keep my words even despite the thundering beat in my ears.
Deep blue eyes snap open. The man’s shoulders and chest rise with a thick wheeze, and it takes me a minute to realize he’s laughing at me. Laughing. The sound quickly dissolves into another coughing fit, a spray of blood joining the spittle.
He’s laughing because he knows something I don’t. Because I sound like an idiot, a naive little girl. Because…
Because he’s not planning to survive this.
Spurred on by that terrible, knowing laugh, I ease forward, eyes trained on him as if approaching a cornered animal. He certainly had the look of one. From this angle, moonlight bounces off the trail of blood spewing from his lips. His eyes are set in a dark, tired look of resignation.
But there’s something else there, too.
A flicker of surprise overtakes his features as I inch closer. As if he hadn’t expected anyone to find him. As if he hadn’t expected anyone to care.
After a long moment of silence, it becomes clear that the man isn’t going to respond to my excellent health advice with anything more than that pitiful laugh. I let out a heavy sigh. Stubborn. Of course, he’s stubborn.
My next gentle step forward causes his eyes to widen a fraction, and suddenly, I’m close enough to see their sea-blue glint catching the light.The impact of that gaze hits me like a physical force, stealing my breath and making my knees weak.
A criminal with pretty eyes. God isn’t fair.
But they’re not just pretty, they’re haunted. Like they’ve slipped into a practiced dissociation. Like Mom’s eyes when I left. Like someone who’s made peace with enduring pain.
I’m so close now that I can almost touch him, and the tang of blood assaults my senses tenfold, watering my eyes with its potency. Blood shouldn’t be spreading that fast. It floods like water across the grit of the street, an hourglass sifting through the last grains of its supply. The sight is jarring.
My pulse races against a ticking clock I can’t hear. I rummage through my pocket, retrieving my phone. The screen’s glare lights up the backstreet like a lantern in a cave, and my fingers shake as they dance across the contact screen.
Nine. One. One. Three numbers. That’s all it takes.
I’ve barely managed to dial the first two digits when my wrist is grabbed in an unforgiving grip. The contact sends a live bolt of electricity through my entire nervous system, not from pain, but something else entirely.
“No hospital,” the man says in a deceptively calm tone.
His voice.The sound of his first words spoken aloud startles me almost as much as the burning grip of his fingers. His inflection is a low rumble that sneaks up on my senses, vibrating through my body like a warning. Like thunder rumbling across the sky.
“You’re on your last hundred breaths if you don’t get medical help right the hell now.” I yank my wrist from his harsh grasp, but my skin continues to tingle where his pressed against mine.Why does my arm feel like it’s on fire?
“I’ll be fine on my own. Just leave me be,” he mutters.
Delusional. Absolutely delusional.
“I think we both know that’s a lie.”
I level a pointed look at his drenched chest, which is now heaving with considerably more effort than a few minutes earlier. This guy’s an idiot if he thinks he’s getting out of here alone. From what I can see, his lungs took the hit, which is causing his breathing to turn rough and raspy.
“In fact, I don’t think you plan on leaving here at all,” I murmur, considering the horrifying realization all over again.
What does he want me to do? Watch him die a painful, miserable death? Rinse the blood from the soles of my shoes and move on with my life?
The thought makes something inside me twist and scream. I barely know this man, but the idea of walking away and leaving him here distresses something profound in my brain. Something that feels dangerously like…
