Page 78 of Diesel
…And she’s covered in blood.
The ground shifts beneath me. My head spins.
It’s on her hands, staining the hoodie she stole from me this morning. Streaked on her cheek. But it’s her eyes that scare me.
They meet mine, as if she sensed I was here.
And she looks fucking broken.
TWENTY-FIVE
MAKENNA
There isblood coating my hands. It’s sticky between my fingers, under my nails, half dried in the creases of my knuckles. There’s a tightness in my chest, my breaths coming unevenly, like they don’t belong to me anymore.
Dayna is saying something to me, Ivy too, but it sounds like they’re talking to me from underwater. Everything feels hazy, and there’s a buzzing under my skin, the same numb, hollow panic I had the last time my hands were covered in blood.
I swallow, but my throat is so dry I can’t move past the lump there.
Don’t go there. Don’t think about him.
But it’s too late. My mind flashes back to another time, another memory.Hisweight on top of me, his hands around my neck, and the blood. So much blood.
Mine.
There’s a buzzing in my head. It’s too loud to think through.
I’m not there.He’s not here.
But my body still vibrates, and if my voice wasn’t caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat, I would be screaming.
“Makenna—can you look at me?”
I try, but Dayna is a smudge in front of me, a wash of colour I can’t focus on.
“I think she’s in shock.”
“Of course she is,” Dayna snaps. “She’s sitting here looking like she just walked out of an abattoir.”
I flinch. The blood isn’t mine, but it feels like I’m bleeding out on this chair. Everything is too bright, too loud even as it’s too quiet. My heart is beating so fast it makes my head spin.
And then I feel it.
The air changes, feels static and electric. Like gravity shifted. Like there was a disturbance in the force. That steady pulse I always have around him thumps through my veins. Someone says my name, maybe Ivy, but I can’t respond.
I lift my gaze, and as if he draws me like a magnet I instantly find him. He’s standing like a statue, as if someone has pulled the power cord out of him. My fingers tighten around the sleeves of my hoodie. His hoodie.
Zane doesn’t usually wear his feelings, but he’s looking at me like I’m the one bleeding out. But the blood isn’t mine. I know what he’s thinking, where his mind has gone. He’s seeing that room, that moment I’ve tried so hard to forget.
Don’t look at me like that, Zane… Don’t see me like a broken puppet with my strings cut.
Of course he’ll blame himself for this. I can already seethe thought taking shape in his eyes. But this… This wasn’t his fault. Neither was that night.
Right now, he looks like he’s about to level entire cities to rubble because I’m painted in red and he’s seeing my blood, not hers.
He moves before he thinks, like his feet are in motion before his brain catches up. I flinch as he drops to his knees in front of me, not because I’m afraid of him, but because I know what he’s thinking.
What he’s reliving.
