So I can’t die. I trust Langston with my life, but not with Kai’s. Kai is mine to protect, to save, to love.
“No!” Kai screams when she realizes what Langston did.
She scrambles off Liesel’s lap. Her injured leg and dislocated shoulder do nothing to stop her from getting to me.
But then Milo moves into her path.
“Move,” she says, with a tear-stained face.
“Not until you surrender. Or should I give you the same treatment with the knife?” Milo asks.
Kai looks directly at me with so much pain dripping from her eyes. “I surrender.”
She shoves Milo out of her way and then grabs my neck. “Get a doctor, now,” she looks at Langston.
He presses a button on the wall, and doctor Patten runs down the stairs.
“Fuck,” he says, as I fall to the ground and he reaches for my wound. My eyes grow heavy, and the images of Kai get fuzzy.
“He doesn’t even feel that…why?” the doctor asks as he presses into his neck.
“I think he pumped him full of drugs,” Kai answers and points at Milo.
“What kind?” the doctor asks Milo.
“What fucking kind?” Dr. Patten repeats.
Milo mumbles something back, and then the doctor is looking at me. “The drugs may have just saved your life.”
Kai gasps when she hears him say Milo’s actions saved my life. I feel really weak, I feel cold like her, and I want to tell her that I’m not saved yet. I could still die.
If I died, she might just kill Milo herself. And then Langston would hide her away. The Black empire would finally fall, but that doesn’t matter as long as she’s safe.
She grabs my hand in hers and squeezes hard, realizing just how cold I am.
She stops crying, trying to focus on feeling me. On feeling how much I’m here or not with her.
“Enzo, don’t you dare die. You haven’t even given me a chance to convince you are in love with me,” she sobs, kissing my hand.
“I—”
“Shh,” she strokes my face.
I already love you. But I realize now isn’t the time to say it. If she thinks I love her back, she would never let me go.
“I need to pump some blood into him,” the doctor says.
“Go get the blood, asshole,” Liesel says to Langston.
Langston cringes. “We haven’t restocked after—”
“You fucking idiot! Then why did you slice open his neck and spill his blood everywhere if you weren’t sure how to replace it?”
Kai’s eyes look at the doctor, and I know he’s worried.
“Then we need to get him to a hospital, immediately,” the doctor says.
“What about my blood?” Kai asks.