“911, what’s your emergency?”
For half a second, Ryan didn’t sound like Ryan at all. He sounded like a kid, scared and furious and trying to shove panic back down his throat with both hands.
“Listen to me,” he said, voice rough as hell. “We’re at the Kimball Falls University hockey arena, in the back hallway behind the locker rooms. My friend’s down. He got stabbed—fuck, he got stabbed. It looks like a lot. He’s bleeding everywhere, and he can’t breathe. The other dude’s down too. Send somebody now. Please. Now.”
Barely breathing.
It seemed important but also dramatic.
No way was I that bad.
I stared at the ceiling while the operator’s voice crackled through the phone, asking questions Ryan answered with a crazed kind of fear.
“Is he conscious?”
“Yes, barely.”
Conscious.
Gold star for me.
“Cade.” Ryan’s face appeared above mine again, too focused, too pale beneath the arena lights. “Look at me.”
I tried.
His face blurred.
“Don’t do that,” he said sharply. “Don’t you fucking do that. Look at me.”
My eyes found his again with effort that felt insulting. I had played through injuries that would have made normal men cry in a shower, and now blinking on command was apparently my Everest.
“There you go.” Ryan swallowed once. “Stay pissed at me if you need to, but stay awake.”
“Phone,” I breathed.
“What?”
“Luke… took…”
Ryan’s jaw flexed.
He glanced toward Luke for half a second, and something murderous flashed across his face before discipline shoved it back down. He looked like he wanted to get up. Like he wanted to check whether Luke was really gone. Like some brutal, loyal part of him wanted to make sure if I had failed, he would finish it.
But he didn’t move.
He stayed with me.
“I’ll find it,” he said. “Doesn’t matter right now.”
It did matter.
Kind of.
It was the dumbest possible reason to get stabbed. Lost phone. Empty locker. Service hallway. Murderous ex with a knife and the emotional development of a spoiled ten-year-old boy. Briggs was never going to let me live this down.
Assuming I lived.
Important distinction.
