He shakes his head. “This isn’t a therapy session, Captain.” Then he gestures with his hand still in his pocket. “Let’s find her. I’ll flag down security to give us a ride.”
I frown at him.
“It’s what they’re there for.”
My frown deepens. Does he attract the drama? I’ve neverflagged down securityfor anything.
I stare at him for a long moment, wanting the heat of the shower. The heat of my house, even if it is empty there.
Then I decide the fastest way to get home is to look for the girl and have the freshman call security. They’ll come for us. It’s not like we’re gods, but it’s Ontario.
We’re something.
But just before I open my mouth to tell him that, a scream pierces the air. High and sharp and gasping.
Sylvan spins around, toward the direction of the noise, and without either of us saying a word, we’re running together.
FOUR
NEVE
Jackson is lying on the snow-frosted ground. I think I screamed but all I know now is my hands are over my mouth and I’m stepping back, and back, and back. My stomach lurches and there’s blood in the thin layer of snow—more is falling now—and my pulse is racing and I feel hot despite the cold.
He’s on his back, his eyes unseeing as he stares up at the sky. Red is on the corner of his mouth, but there’s more, there at his chest, bleeding through his flannel shirt, so bloody it’s nearly black all over, and in the remaining blades of dead grass, and…
I think I might throw up.
He was just… He was leaving, wasn’t he? I heard a truck. I thought it was his?
Where did those guys go?
Oh, God. What if it was them?
Fuck.
Fuck.
Even Nolan didn’t have a chance to warn me away from this and if he could see what I’ve stumbled into, he’d berate me for it.
After the guys sounded like they were planning to find me, I scurried across the back parking lot, staying in the lights of the arena, then I found myself on the other side, headed toward the front again, ready to find the sidewalk that would lead me to my apartment.
There was the shape of a person on the ground, but I thought it was something else, because I stupidly left my glasses at home.
I walked closer, every instinct in me telling me to run, but as my vision grew sharper, I realized I was right.
And the person wasn’t moving.
I saw the flannel first. Then the hat a few feet away from his body.
DD.Drayton Dragons.
What ifthey…
I had called his name at first, not noticing the blood. Then my eyes processed what I was seeing and shot it straight to my brain.
And he wasn’t breathing.Isn’tbreathing.
And he isn’t really… looking at anything either.
