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Iturn around as Mel races up the stairs. Running forward, intent on chasing after her, I pause when Emilia calls my name, her voice watery with unshed tears. "Forget about her! We need to get Wilder out of here."
Glancing back, she’s on her knees beside an unconscious Wilder, fear brimming in her glassy eyes as she pleads at me. I curse under my breath and reluctantly let Mel go as I stalk over to them.
"His pulse is faint, but there," Hawk states, staring at his best friend with concern.
“It’s going to be okay, Wilder. Everything will be okay,” Emilia murmurs, running her fingers through his hair in a soothing gesture as she crouches beside him, curled over him in a protective stance.
I run my eyes assessingly over his blood-soaked form, wincing. "He’s lost too much blood. He needs a transfusion if he’s going to survive." Spotting what appears to be the worst of his wounds, I gesture to Emilia. "Give me your scarf; we need to staunch this bleeding."
With trembling hands, she hurriedly undoes the scarf wrapped around her neck and hands it over to me. Balling it up, I press it against the slash across his lower abdomen.
“Press this against the cut,” I tell her.
Nodding, she takes over, and after I push her hands more firmly against his lower abdomen, indicating that she needs to put more pressure on it, I move to help Hawk lift him up.
We manage to get him up on his feet, Emilia still holding the sodden scarf to his stomach. With mumbled curses and a few close calls where either Hawk or I nearly fall backward and snap our necks, we crest the top of the stairs and break out into the late afternoon sunlight.
“How are we going to get him to the parking lot across campus without other students seeing us?” Emilia asks.
“We aren’t, but there’s nothing we can do about that,” I answer. “Want to explain why you went in there alone when I specifically told you to wait for us?”
“Is now really a good time to discuss that?” she argues, avoiding answering.
“Seems like as good a time as any,” I grunt, readjusting my hold on Wilder.
“It’s just as well I did,” she bites out angrily. “She was going to kill him!” I watch as she wrangles her emotions under control. “He was barely conscious when I arrived.”
“She was going to kill you!” I snap at her. “You were about to fucking sacrifice yourself for him.”
“Yeah, I was. And if it had been you in his place, I would have done the exact same thing.”
Hawk sighs, his voice coming out sharp when he says, "What’s done is done; arguing about it is pointless. Let’s just get Wilder to the car."
We make the rest of the challenging journey in silence. When we reach the parking lot, Hawk digs his keys out of his pocket, the xenon lights of his Aston Martin directing us to the right car.
With some careful maneuvering, we get Wilder into the backseat. Hawk winces, looking physically pained as he stares down at him sprawled out on his white leather seats.
“What’s wrong?” Emilia asks him.
“My seats. I’m never going to get the blood out of them.”
Emilia just rolls her eyes while I snort. “Seriously? God, Hawk, sometimes I forget what an entitled prick you can be.”
He simply shrugs, wrenching his gaze away from the white leather already smeared with red stains. “I only just got the car a few months ago. Sorry if I thought I’d get a little longer out of her before she was irreparably ruined.”
"Well, that’ll teach you to get white seats," I tease, earning myself a furious glare from Hawk.
"Yeah, next time, I'll go with red leather and cross my fingers that it's your blood on them instead."
Giving him the middle finger, I climb into the front passenger seat as Emilia gets in beside Wilder, carefully placing his head on her lap while pressing the scarf to his abdomen.
Hawk drops into the seat beside me, and in the next second, we’re hightailing it out of the parking lot and toward the hospital.
As the city flies by in a sickening blur, with Hawk driving at what must be three times the speed limit, my thoughts tick back to Mel.
“Em’s cover is blown,” Hawk says, clearly on the same train of thought as me. “Did you see the look in her eye when we arrived? She would have killed Em without a second thought.”
"Yeah," I sigh wearily, lifting my hand to run it through my hair before noticing the crust of dried blood on my skin. With another sigh, I drop it back on my lap. Glancing over my shoulder to the backseat, I find Em sitting with her head bowed over Wilder’s as she murmurs to him, her hand back in his hair as she strokes it.
