Page 79 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

Much gentler than I was with myself, I wash away the blood on him. The motion soothes my spinning mind as I fall into a rhythm of wiping the red from his skin, rinsing the cloth under the faucet, watching the pink swirl down the drain, and repeating the cycle.

I try to keep my touch light as I rub at a smear on his forehead, but his eyes spring open, fingers circling my wrist to stop my movements.

For a moment, neither of us says anything. I hadn’t realized how far I was leaning over him, but our faces are only a few breaths apart. This is the closest I’ve been to him since he kissed me. It would be too easy to close the gap and initiate a second. My hair hangs around us like a cage, half-dried tendrils escaping from where I tucked them behind my ears. I meant to braid it again after showering but was too focused on cleaning him up.

“Hey,” I say, the word too casual for everything we’ve endured in the past twenty-four hours.

“Hey,” he echoes, voice faint and raspy. I reach for the glass of water I prepped on the nightstand, but his hold tightens, keeping me in place. His eyes are bright, too bright, like a light bulb before it burns out.

I press my palm to his cheek, the same thing he did to me before crashing our lips together. His skin is cool and clammy. My other hand goes to his chest, right over his heart. It beats erratically beneath my touch. “I think you’re going into hypovolemic shock.”

He blinks at me. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means you’ve lost a lot of blood. Too much. It means you’re dying.” My voice rises and I finally escape his hold to grab the first aid kit.

“I am not dying,” he says with as much force as he can muster, which isn’t much.

I find what I’m looking for: a needle syringe I passed earlier. “What blood type are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? How do you not know your own blood type?”

“Why?”

“Because if we’re a match, I might be able to pull off the most janky blood transfusion ever.” I hold the syringe up. “But giving you my blood won’t work if we’re not the same type.”

“I don’t want your blood.”

His voice is finite. Mine is broken, caught on the edge of a sob. “I’m trying to save you.”

“You already have.” He pushes my hand toward the nightstand in an attempt to make me drop the syringe. The simple movement has his eyes rolling with exhaustion, a pained groan slipping out.

“You can’t die,” I tell him, fierce as a threat.

“I won’t,” he promises. His lids flutter shut. “I just need to rest.”

“What you need is blood.”

He forces his eyes open. “What I need is for you to stay.”

I suck in a breath. He can’t possibly mean it in the way my body interprets, heat spiking my bloodstream. But then he repeats it, softer yet, “Stay. I don’t want to be alone anymore.”

There is something bigger behind those words, something that gouges at my heart. I’ve felt so alone since my parents died. A fathomless ache that has only briefly ebbed when I’ve been with Krystal. But being with Luke the past few days is the least alone I’ve felt in months.

“You’re not alone. You have me,” I tell him. I wish I could believe he wants me to stay because he wants me, specifically, here with him. But I’ve been by the bedside of patients on the brink. The simple truth is no one wants to die alone.

But he’s not dying, or so he says. Not yet, anyway.

“Besides,” I continue, my impulse to turn everything into a joke rearing its head. “You’re kind of my only ticket out of here now.”

His brows pinch together. He knows there’s something wrong with my words. That I shouldn’t be here. But he doesn’t have the strength to make sense of it.

Unable to help myself, I wipe away the last streak of blood on his forehead.

He gazes up at me. “You look like an angel.”

The words are as reverent as a prayer, as if maybe they were supposed to only exist in his head and not find my ears. But now that they have, I can’t unhear them. He said them in a subconscious slur, as if he’s drunk. Like they’re words he won’t remember, come daylight.