“Not his boyfriend,” Adonis said briskly.
“He talks about you all the time,” Cort said. He coughed. “I think he really loves you.”
“Okay,” Adonis said. “Keep talking, Cort. Even if it’s about my miserable love life.”
“They’re a minute away,” the 911 operator said.
“Fucking hurry, please,” Adonis said. “Police cars, too. I saw a man running away from the Rink before I got here.”
“They’re coming, too, honey,” the 911 operator said. “Just stay on the phone with me. You’re both doing great.”
I don’t fucking feel like it,Adonis thought, but didn’t say out loud.
Cort gripped one of Adonis’s wrists, leaving a sticky, bloody handprint. “Tell Bash that I’m sorry, okay? Tell him that I should’ve listened to him.”
“You can tell him,” Adonis said.
“You helped me in Minneapolis, didn't you?” Cort whispered. He coughed again.
“I did.”
“I’m so stupid,” Cort said.
“Maybe,” Adonis huffed, “but we all make mistakes.”
He didn’t want to know what mistake had led to Cort getting shot in the fucking shoulder, but that wasn’t his problem to figure out.
He heard sirens from outside the Rink. Without taking his hands from Cort’s shoulder, he turned and screamed, “In here! We’re in here!”
Seconds later, paramedics were on the ice with a stretcher. They moved efficiently and quickly, and they didn’t slip. Two men and a woman who knelt beside Adonis gently moved him and lifted Cort onto the stretcher.
They drilled him with questions, but Adonis had no answers.
“I’m coming with him,” Adonis found himself saying. “I don’t want him to be alone.”
One of the paramedics, a guy probably only a year or two older than Adonis, looked about to protest, but his partners silenced him.
“What’s his name?” asked the woman.
“Cort Styleton. He’s a student.”
They navigated the stretcher off the ice and picked up the pace as they hurried out of the Rink.
Adonis was already calling Bash. Pick up, he thought. Pick up, pick up, pick up.
The call went straight to voicemail. Adonis cursed.
He called the next person he could think of.
Robbie answered on the third ring. “Adonis?” he said. “What’s up?”
“Cort was shot,” Adonis said, not wasting words. “At the Rink. I’m on the way to the hospital with him.”
There was a clatter on the other end of the phone. “Holy fuck. I’m on my way.”
Adonis sent a quick message to Bash:CALL ME. CORT SHOT.Then he pocketed his phone.
The ride to the Bellford University Hospital was quick. They barreled from the ambulance into the emergency room, where Adonis was told he had to wait. He stayed there, bloody and shaking, while frantic nurses wheeled Cort away, shouting about surgery.
