Wes takes my arm, one hand on my elbow, the other at the back of my bicep, and lifts it off the table, turning it in his grip to get a better look at the cut.Even through the gloves, his hands are warm against my skin.
“And?”he asks, resting my arm back down on the table and ripping open the first antiseptic wipe.He starts at my wrist, slowly erasing the red, working his way up toward the actual cut.
“He didn’t come back,” Laurie says from the other booth, and it prompts a responding sob from Dani.
“I went to look for him,” I continue, “but I heard something down the other corridor.I went to make sure… I don’t know what I was making sure of, but I found one of the guys from tonight.The killer was—” I tilt my head, and Wes nods in understanding.“So we ran.I got cut by Laurie’s Kahlúa bottle in the panic, and then we hid.”
As I’m talking, he strokes the antiseptic wipe softly against my arm.It’s methodical, meticulous, and he doesn’t need to rest the thumb of his free hand on the inside of my elbow to keep my arm in place, but he does.The way he mindlessly strokes it against my skin takes my mind off the fact he’s doing it while he’s cleaning my wound.It makes me swallow thickly and consider grazing my fingers against his forearm in return.Again, I’m reminded these aren’t the kinds of things that should be running through my mind after narrowly avoiding a killer.
“It might sting,” Wes warns when he gets close to the cut.
“This isn’t the first time Laurie’s almost sent me to the ER,” Isay, and ignore thepfftshe emits from the other booth.Though in her defense, it is only the second time.The first was an unfortunate cooking adventure that gave me food poisoning and dehydration.“I think I can handle it.”
His eyes are locked on my arm, but he still grants me a grin.“Yeah, you’re tough.”
Being tough doesn’t stop me from gritting my teeth when he wipes the edge of the open skin.I blow out a breath as Billie asks, “And what is that?”
She’s pointing to the table the other women are sitting around, and when Jennifer lifts her hand, I spot the rose that’s captured Billie’s attention.
“The killer left this in the room we were hiding in,” Jennifer says.“He left a card, too.Jamie?”
As Wes keeps working on my cut, I use my free hand to pull the card out of my bra.All eyes focus on the folded note.Well, almost all eyes.In my periphery, I spot Wes’s gaze drop to the neckline of my dress for a split second before he shifts it back to the antiseptic wipe.I can’t be mad.I’d look down his shirt, too, if given half a chance.
Billie strides over to the table and plucks it from my hand, pulling the top flap up and reciting the line in a monotonic cold read: “Can’t you see?You belong to me.”
There’s a sniff.Dani lifts her head from her hands, and while her face is pink and tearstained, her voice is uncharacteristically sober when she says, “Isn’t that Taylor Swift?”
“That’s whatwethought,” Jennifer says.“What do you think it means?”
“I’d say it’s meant to be romantic,” Billie quips, tossing the card onto the table in front of the others and moving back to the railing.She bends her back over the edge in a leisurely stretch before she straightens, her arched eyebrow visible despite the curl of hair that fallsin front of her eye.“Who doesn’t love roses?I know I do.”I’m about to counter that roses lose their appeal when they’re left by someone who’s killing off everyone in the building when she adds, “And how does this all fit in with your movie, Jamie?”
I glare at her as Laurie beats me to the punch and flips her the bird.
“Hey!You know what we should do?”Jennifer says pleasantly before Billie can turn her ire onto my best friend.“Let’s see if anyone recognizes the handwriting on this card.That’ll be… fun… kind of.”
It’s a weak excuse, but it deescalates the conflict and gives the others a common goal while Wes keeps cleaning my wound.
“There’s something else,” I murmur to Wes, and he pauses.His gaze flicks up to mine.Dark, serious, restrained.It almost makes me not say it.Almost, but I need to tell someone, and I can’t tell the others without upsetting Dani or getting scoffed at by Billie.
“He was wearing a mask,” I say quietly as the women huddle around the card in the booth next to us.“Like a ski mask, but the eyes were hearts.”
Saying the words easily tempts the image of the pink woolen head to the forefront of my mind.I feel like I need to give him a name.A placeholder until his actual identity is revealed.
“The Bloody Suitor” actually sounds really cool, so I’m not going do him the favor of granting him such a badass name.After tonight the media will call him something like “The Serendipity Slayer,” but right now, still in the midst of the action, it’s a bit of a mouthful.I need something fast, something that immediately conjures the figure that’s been hunting us all night.In slashers, before any real identity is revealed, simple, visual monikers are the norm.That’s how we got Ghostface, Pinhead, Leatherface.Hell, Michael Myers was referred to as “The Shape” in the credits forHalloween.So while it is low-hanging fruit, unoriginal to thenth degree, I can’t ignore the first name that comes to mind.
Heart Eyes.
“Remember when you first said the rose petals were romantic?”
Wes nods and then drops the bloody wipe onto the table, peeling open the adhesive dressing and suspending it over the cut.I wait until he sticks it to my skin and carefully presses down the edges before asking, “What if that was his intention the whole time?”
Letting go of my arm, Wes reaches for a bandage and unfurls it carefully, placing one end on top of the dressing.“What do you mean?”
I’d thought a motive wasn’t important in the grand scheme of things because the reason was most likely one of two possibilities.Mindless psychotic outburst?Checks out.Bloody revenge plot?I can rationalize that.But what if there is a third?
“The roses, the card, the fact tonight was clearly planned out—There’s a lot of effort behind everything he’s doing, and it makes me think that maybe killing isn’t the objective.”
That makes Wes’s hand tighten around my bicep.His gaze darts up to meet mine, those dark pools suddenly hard as he says, “It’s not a slasher to him.It’s a romance.”
