CHAPTER 18
“I’ll kill you.”
“For what?”
“Your heart.”
—NotLove and Basketball
It’s nice to hear Wes speaking my language, and when he glances up from winding the bandage around my arm, I nod.“Right?This night might be one big romantic gesture to him.”
“The most fucked-up rom-com ever?”he replies with a dark smirk that I match as he fastens the end of the bandage with a clip.
“Something like that…” I say.“But then what’s the endgame forher?The woman he’s doing this for?Does he want her to make it out alive, or is he saving her for last?”
“I’d say he’s doing thisforher, but if she doesn’t reciprocate, if she doesn’t appreciate what he’s doing…” He pauses, then murmurs, “Remember how I mentioned the woman that was found a few days ago?It was on the news.”
Blond, pretty, lights up the room.“Casey something—”
“Langenkamp,” he supplies.“Casey Langenkamp.”
I look down at the work he’s done on my arm.The blood is gone, the wound is covered, and—not that I’m an expert on this kind of thing—the bandage looks secure.Like if I have to run for my life again, it’ll hold up.
“On the news they said the police suspect that it’s connected to four other murders,” I say.
“It is.”
The way he says it—assuredly, conclusively—draws my eyes away from my arm and I watch as he sets out replacing the unused items back into the first aid kit.This isn’t the first time he’s done this.
“How do—”
“Let’s assume we’re right and tonight is connected to it, too?”he says, hand paused over the first aid kit, his intensely dark gaze meeting mine again.I wonder whether he’s been thinking this for a while.Whether this is what was going through his mind when we were following those rose petals away from the bodies in the corridor.
“What if he pursued those women and then killed them when they couldn’t live up to his expectations?What if he’s looking for ‘the One’?”
I mull that over.His theory aligns well with mine.What if we’ve unwittingly entered into a slasher version ofThe Bachelor?
The rose theme is on brand, after all.
“In this case, the One is going to be a Final Girl,” I say.“And they’re not always considered the ideal woman.”
Although maybe the killer—Heart Eyes—wants the jaded “walking out of the ruins,” “the shit I’ve seen” kind of girl at the end of this.
It’s clear Wes has no idea what I’m talking about.Not when one of his dark eyebrows quirk up in confusion.
“Awhatgirl?”
This is why he’d benefit from dating me.I could fill in these knowledge gaps.
“The last person standing at the end of a slasher.It’s usually a teenage girl, so they call her the Final Girl.The one who against all odds survives all the traps and all the killer’s attempts and ends up defeating him… Killing him.”
Wes considers that as he peels off the gloves.Despite the wipes, the latex is covered with my blood.
“So you think hewantsher to kill him?”
If only it were that simple.
“No, because this isn’tjusta slasher.You said it yourself; this is supposed to be romantic.”
