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“Cassie, I need you to stay awake. Okay?”
Smiling, she blinks up at me, blood coating her teeth. I have no idea if it’s from her lip or worse.
“Okay, we need to plug…” Mum looks around us, but there’s nothing.
Cassie’s blood is pooling on the carpeted floor of the car and she’s so cold and pale. Ghostly.
“Give me your vest.” Pressing her hands to Cassie’s chest she says, “We need to stop inviting you to dinner…”
They both chuckle lightly, and God, I need her to be okay. Cassie is my existence, without her there is no me worth being.
“You are not allowed to close those eyes, you hear me?”
“It’s okay,” she sputters. “I’m okay, Neat Freak.”
She’s well aware she’s not, I can see the panic in her eyes as I manage to rip off my jacket and then the vest. Wadding it in my hand, I press it to the side of her chest.
“Not too hard,” Mum eases the pressure I’m putting on it. “We don’t want to do any more damage. She needs to breathe.”
“I don’t know where the bullet came from. I was on top…”
“It doesn’t matter right now.”
Mum’s right, I just need her to be okay.
But Cassie doesn’t look okay.
Let her be okay, please. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll give her up. I’ll do anything, please don’t let her die. I pray silently to anything and anyone that might listen.
“Please don’t do this to me. Please, Cass.”
Her eyes are blinking and rolling, her lips are trembling because she’s scared. I’m fucking petrified of what’s happening to her.
“You do not get to do this. You don’t get to leave me!” My voice is strangled and cut through with tears I didn’t even realise I was crying.
Her hand wraps loosely around my wrist. And I press a little more on the wound.
“I don’t want to die.” She says, with her eyes closed. Her tongue licks at her lips and all it does is smear the blood.
I want to shout at her for saying the word I’ve skipped over, skimmed across and skirted the last God only knows how long.
“No one is dying.” Mum grits, brushing Cassie’s hair from her face with one hand as her other cups Wayne’s face. “He’s coming, and it’s going to be okay.”
“Open your eyes, Cass.”
She lifts her lids enough that I can see a little of the brown I love so much. Her lips quirk and I swear she sighs like she’s enjoying my pain.
The quiet is still like the dead of night, but I know they’re waiting for us to come out. I can feel their thirst for our blood. It mingles with my own hunger for retaliation, and I am completely overwhelmed by it. I’m stuck between doing the right thing and tearing out of this cage.
“Press.” Taking Mum’s hand from Cassie’s hair, I lay it over my vest and press it down before I pull my bowtie from around my neck and throw it to the side.
“What are you doing?”
I grab Wayne’s Glock and put it in her other hand, tightening her grip on it. “You don’t leave them. Stay down, press…keep her alive for me, okay?”
“Don’t you dare go out there!” she barks at me when I start to drag myself towards the back bench. The doors are bent and mangled, and as I look through the cracked glass, I see them.
“We need to get out of here.” They’re dousing the outside of the car in petrol. I can smell it as it runs down the cracked windows. “We need to get them out.”
