“Are they—” she whispered.
“Dead,” I said, voice rough. “You bet your sweet ass they are.”
Relief and horror tangled across her face.
“Why the fuck would you do that,” she said, stepping forward, hand shaking as she reached for the shovel. “You could go to jail for murder. They’re not worth that, no matter what they did.”
I let the handle slide out of my fingers. It hit the floor with a dull clang.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
She blinked, thrown by the question.
“I—” She looked down at herself for the first time, like she hadn’t checked yet. Her sweater had dirt on it, one sleeve torn at the shoulder. Her knee was bleeding in a thin line under the rip in her leggings, a smear of blood on one palm where she’d braced on rough wood. “No. I don’t think so. Not really, anyway.”
The breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding left me in a shaky exhale.
Good.
Then my knees nearly buckled. The room tilted sideways.
Chrissy moved faster than I expected, closing the space between us, shoulder slamming into my side as she grabbed my arm.
“Whoa, hey — hey,” she said, voice suddenly panicked. “You are not allowed to pass out on me right now, Stonewood. Absolutely not. Stand the fuck up.”
“I am standing—” I muttered, but it came out slurred.
She jerked her hand back from my side and stared at it.
It was covered in blood.
“Are you bleeding?”
“I’m afraid so, angel,” I said.
Her eyes shot up to mine.
“You’ve been stabbed,” she breathed. “You’ve been — oh my god — Ben —”
“It’s fine.”
“It is not fine!” Her voice broke on the last word. She sucked in a breath like she was trying to pull herself together by sheer force. “Okay, listen to me. We have to get you back to the house. Now. Before you fall down and bleed out on the barn floor and I have to tell Lucia I let her favorite idiot die.”
I huffed out a laugh that hurt.
“That’s not funny,” I wheezed.
“It wasn’t a joke.”
She ducked under my arm, careful of the wound, and heaved my weight onto her shoulders.
I tried to shift away.
“You can’t — Chrissy, you can’t carry me —”
“Watch me,” she snapped. “You ran out into an ice storm barefoot with no shirt and picked a fight with two grown men and a knife. You don’t get to tell me what I can’t do.”
Fair point.
