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When I laugh, it hurts down to my bones. “Leaving us down here to starve is pretty good revenge.”
Rome winks at me, and for a split second, it’s like we’re flirting in the ballroom of a five-star hotel, not a care in the world. “We’ll get him.”
He hesitates, and for a moment, I think he might say something else. It’s a moment too long for my wounded body. I’m still partially in mourning over the macaroni and cheese, which I hate. How dare he put all my favorite things in my mouth like that and let me remember what home tastes like. What hope tastes like.How fucking dare he!I was so close to slipping away to the other side.
I have to take Rome with me, though. That’s the plan.
“Together,” I tell Rome, and through a dim haze, he nods back at me. The last thing I hear before sleep takes me under is the sound of Rome stretching out on the mattress.
It’s the only sound that carries me through the next few days. It turns out Rome was wrong. The locks on the door never scratch and slam. The door never opens. The masked man never comes back to get his revenge. Minutes bleed into hours. I think they do, anyway. The pain in my belly pulses and throbs, covering me in waves, head to toe then back again. At some point, I hear Rome say that there’s no more water. The only food left is the rotted remnants on the floor.
Remember when he winked at me? I do. There was still a wisp of hope in his voice. It’s gone now.
And I’m almost gone with it.
CHAPTER TEN
ROME
Ican’t let her die like this.
It’s a bizarrely compassionate thing to say, coming from a motherfucker like me. Nothing changes you like being locked in some psychopath’s underground dungeon. Four locks. That piece of shit must really want to keep us here. And trust me, I never thought I’d be an “us” with Avery Capulet. Not after everything went to hell all those years ago.Surprise, surprise.It wasn’t hell, not back then.Thisis hell, and it’s a thousand fucking times worse than everything that came before.
Avery lies on her back on the mattress, breathing shallow breaths that scare the living fuck out of me. Her cheeks have gone pink, feverish. There aren’t any antibiotics in this hellhole. She needs those like she needs food and water. There’s none of that shit either.
And I could let her go. Shit, I could help her along, a hand over her mouth and nose until she smothered under my palm. It would barely take any effort, she’s so weak. I could let her slip away, then reach into my pocket and put myself out of my misery. But my fucked-up sense of honor says that’s not the best idea. What if I was wrong? What if she woke up to my dead body, here alone?
No. That can’t be the end to all of this. And I can’t bear the slightest risk that I’ll die and she will wake up, alone, without me to at least try to protect her.
The plastic over the mattress crinkles underneath my body. Time to roll over onto my back. My wrist has gone numb from propping up my own head, watching Avery hover at the edge of the chasm that separates life and death.
Time to stare at the ceiling and face facts.
Fact number one: the bastard who shot me with a tranquilizer dart hasn’t come back.
Fact number two: he told Avery that we’re going to die down here.
Fact one confirms fact two.
But fact number three—the pills in my pocket—definitely fucking confirms all of it. It’s a miracle that they haven’t found the little lumps like candies in my pocket. I’ve been resisting the shit out of the urge to reach into my pocket and check on them every fifteen seconds since we got here. You just never know when you might need some pharmaceutical assistance.
My pulse hammers, a weak thump. Deep down inside, some part of me doesn’t want to die. Itstilldoesn’t want to die, the resilience of the human condition. But I also don’t want to live here. And I don’t want to watch Avery die first, feverish and hurting. That would be the cowardly move. Fuck being a coward. I want none of it.
I give it a few more minutes. Or maybe it’s longer. Hard to tell down here. I listen as Avery breathes in and out a few hundred more times. She’s got a catch in her breath that gets deeper every time she exhales. If I don’t hurry up—if we don’t hurry up—then, eventually, her body will do the job for me. I can picture what that moment would be like. It would be the end of my fucking sanity. That’s what it would be.
I reach into my pocket as slowly as I can, as inconspicuous as I can manage, like I’m just shoving the pocket into place. Even touching the pills gives me a minor high.Almost there. They scatter onto the mattress between us when I roll over and face Avery.
This is going to be one of the last times I look at her alive. Or look at anything alive. My nerves lurch back from the finality of what I’m about to do. It’s like shoving my hand into a fire and holding it there.
I don’t want to do this. But it’s our only choice.We can’t waste away in this basement any longer. Or worse, get tortured to death. Orworse, have to do something the way I had to do what I did to poor Penny.
I’m done being somebody’s puppet. I’m fuckingdone.
My shoulder and chest try to protest the deep breath I take.Eyes on the prize. Soon, I won’t have to breathe this air in our own slice of hell. We’ll be elsewhere. On our way. It will be quiet and dark, and there will be no pain.
It’s time.
I give Avery a gentle shake. “Avery. Aves. Train’s coming.”
