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Who knows, if we have to stay here much longer, my proof of life wrist-slashing mission might become my proof of death suicide mission.
“Jesus, Avery,” Rome protests, using his considerable strength to wrench the knife away. “Stop.” He places the knife on the ground beside him, just out of my reach, and drops the newspaper beside it.
“No,” I cry, reaching for the rolled-up newspaper. “I have to get enough blood on the newspaper.”
I watch as scarlet liquid courses from the wound along my inner wrist, pooling at the spot where Rome’s heavily tattooed fingers are wrapped tightly around my hand. It looks surreal, the black ink on his tanned knuckles and fingers against my milky skin and my bright red blood. “You’re wasting it!” I struggle with him.
“Avery, look at me,” Rome demands. I meet his gaze, his normally indifferent blue eyes suddenly burning with emotion. “I’m going to get us out of here, okay? Do you hear me?”
I shake my head, grabbing again for the newspaper with my good arm, the one that isn’t currently bleeding. This time, I succeed in snatching it up. I shake it open, wrenching my arm out of Rome’s grasp, laying my arm flat across the newspaper to ensure I get the rest of my blood soaked in.
I stay there as the minutes drag past, squeezing my arm, trying to get more blood to rise to the surface. But it’s no use. In my weakened state, my blood pressure is probably too low to pump out enough blood to get more than a few drops on the paper. I know that might not be enough for the police to test for DNA, because I’ve watched a true crime series or two in my life, and I know whatproof of fucking lifemeans.
“Avery,” Rome tries again. I push him in the chest, hard, avoiding the side where he was shot. “Shut up,” I whisper, getting up on my hands and knees, snatching the knife from beside him. “It’s not enough,” I explain, gesturing to the drops of blood on the newspaper. “It’s not enough!”
“Okay,” he says helplessly. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
I want you to save me. I want you to get us out of here. I want you to forgive me for the way I betrayed you all those years ago.
“Cut me again.” I press the knife handle into his hands, guiding it toward the slash already decorating my wrist. “Make it deep. My pulse is barely registering enough to pump my blood out as it is.”
He hesitates over the cut. “You’ve lost too much blood already,” he says weakly.
I want to scream at him.We don’t have a choice! But I don’t have the energy to make words. I just look at him, and something in my eyes must tell him how important this is, how much I don’t want to be shocked again by the collar.
It kills him to do it, I can tell. His eyes film over with trepidation, with guilt, as he presses the blade down into my already broken flesh. It fucking hurts, it fuckinghuuuuurts, but I bite down on the inside of my cheek and will my blood to flow faster, because it’s better than the alternative.
A whimper escapes my lips, but I don’t fight him. I just watch, dead inside, as my blood drips steadily onto the front page of the newspaper sitting on the floor between us.
Proof of life,the masked man had said. Today’s copy ofThe Verona Times, its headlines too hard to make out in this dim light.
I swallow thickly, watching as Rome twists my arm this way and that, as gently as he can. He’s trying to get as much blood out of the cut along the inside of my wrist as he can. He picks the newspaper up and presses it to my arm, getting every last drop he can onto the inked paper. I know he doesn’t want to have to cut me again. His hands are covered in my blood, his fingers making sticky oval-shaped marks every time he shifts his grip.
“Your fingerprints,” I say, swaying where I sit. I should really lay down, but if I lay down, I’ll pass out, and if I pass out, I might die.
Rome nods, still focused on the task at hand. “I know.”
Whoever gets this - my father, Enzo, Nathan, the FBI … the evidence will be clear: Rome Montague’s fingerprints. Avery Capulet’s blood.
They’ll think he had something to do with this. They’ll think he took me, as payback for our family’s relentless greed for power. I can’t think about that right now. It’s too much to fathom, and besides: Who says we’re ever getting out of here?I have to get out of here.
I close my eyes and let him press the blade deeper, then even deeper, until it feels like he might hit bone.
“They’re going to think you did this to me,” I whisper, my throat aching as I swallow back tears.
“I think it’s enough, now,” Rome says, ignoring what I said, as he takes the knife away. I open my eyes again, peering down at the newspaper, now soaked in my blood. I reach down with my good hand and turn the paper over, making sure the blood has soaked through to the back of the pages. As I do, I notice the date in the top corner of the front page. My mind does the math, even as I try to force it not to.
“We’ve been here for two weeks,” I whisper to Rome. My entire body starts to tremble violently, and I can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t hear. “Two weeks. Why haven’t they found us?”
I’m bleeding all over myself, all over Rome, all over the damn floor in this fucking room that I can’t get out of. And Rome’s holding the knife, andhe did it. Hehurtme. He took the knife and drew it along my skin, a choked sound of disbelief coming from his throat, as my blood sprang forth.And we’ve been here for two goddamn fucking weeks.
“We’re going to die down here,” I choke. “You and me, in the dark. He’s going to murder us.”
“No,” Rome protests. “We’re going to get out of here.” And something shifts in his expression. Falls away. The armor he wears fades just a little, and I remember the face of the boy I fell in love with, underneath all of that violence and sorrow and tough-guy exterior he has to put on for survival.
Recognition flickers in his eyes. He knows I’m about to lose my shit and have a total fucking meltdown before I even know. He’s always been this way. He’s always known me better than I know myself. How could I have forgotten that about him?
I start to sob. I’m pretty sure I am losing my goddamn mind. “We’re not,” I cry. “We’re not getting out.”
