That moment, for me, is when the bullet hits Rome Montague’s shoulder and embeds itself in his body. And the moments after, as I watch him hit the wall behind him and slide to the floor, his eyes wide with shock, his bullet wound spurting blood.
You don’t shoot your co-kidnappers.
And that’s the moment I realize the man I thought was part of my kidnapping - maybe even the mastermind of it - isn’t a part of it at all.
Rome Montague is a hostage, same as me. I didn’t understand at first, because he was unbloodied and untouched and I was — well, very bloodied, very touched — and he was just so fucking arrogant when I woke up.
He gave you his clothes, and you were a bitch to him. Guilt crashes into me like waves crashing into rocks, hard and fast and unrelenting.
He literally gave you everything he had on him, save for his underwear, and you thought he was your enemy.
Well, he’s still my enemy, but in this room, in this hell, he might be the only ally I have.
My ally who is bleeding to death before my eyes.
We’re alone now. After our captor finished with me, he left, the heavy steel door leading into the room closing with a resounding thunk.
The room is almost dark again, save for the tiny kid’s nightlight in the shape of a puffy blue cloud that sits in the corner. It casts an eerie glow across the room, making Rome look like some kind of tattooed vampire. A tattooed vampire covered in blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much blood in my life. His and mine, all mixed together in here, wherever here is.
With difficulty, I crawl down from the table to the floor, fresh blood slick between my thighs as I try to ignore the sharp throb in my belly. I tug Rome’s shirt back over myself, the edge grazing the tops of my thighs. I forget the jeans. By the time I find them and put them back on, Rome might be dead.
If he isn’t already.
“Rome?” I whisper, crawling to him. He’s slumped on the mattress now, his eyes closed. “Fuck,” I whisper. Tears bite at my eyes, and I’m too tired to stop them from falling. I pull Rome onto my lap, using my hands to apply pressure over his wound. “Rome!?”
He doesn’t rouse. He’s still breathing, though, and that spurs me. Instinctively, I know I have to find something to stem the bleeding. If I have bandages on, then there must be some, somewhere. I look around the room, and that’s when I notice the cameras for the first time.
“Oh, God,” I choke. I want to know who’s watching us. I want to kill them. But first, I want to get their attention.
“Hey!” I scream, looking up at the cameras in my sight. “Hey, asshole! He needs a doctor or he’s going to die!”
I look back down at Rome, my hair falling over his face like a veil. His eyes are open, now, bloodshot and blue, and he’s trying to sit up.
“Oh my God, you’re awake.” Without thinking, I lean down and kiss him on the lips. It’s nothing, really, barely a brush of my lips across his, but some of the color returns to his cheeks. His eyes widen when I do that. I swallow back panicked sobs, nervous laughter bubbling through. “Don’t move. You’ve been shot.”
One side of his mouth quirks up, with difficulty. “No shit.”
I ignore his sarcasm. If he’s still able to mouth off, he’s not that close to death. At least, I hope.
“I thought you were dead,” I say, still holding one hand over his bullet wound, my other coming to rest on the side of his face.
Rome’s eyes roll back in his head. “I will be in about five minutes,” he coughs, fresh blood appearing on his lower lip. Shit. I think blood in his mouth means he’s got a punctured lung, or something.
“Bullshit,” I say, even though we both know he might be. “Rome Montague isn’t about to let one little bullet kill him. Montagues are more stubborn than that.”
He coughs again, more blood trailing from the side of his mouth. “Are you okay?” he asks with difficulty. I fight the urge to roll my eyes. Really? He’s literally dying in my arms, and he’s asking how I am?
“You should see the other guy,” I mutter.
“Avery,” Rome says slowly. “I’m sorry. If I can’t stay awake. I’m sorry.” He’s pressing something into my hand with his. I look down to see what it is — a pair of scissors.
“Hide them,” he mumbles, taking a ragged breath in that makes his whole body shake. “Stab him. Get yourself out of here.”
I grit my teeth, closing my fingers around the scissors. “Don’t fucking die on me,” I demand, but really, I’m begging. For a girl who’s never begged for anything, today sure has been full of it. I hate it, but I’d beg Rome for the rest of my life it meant he wouldn’t die right now. We might be enemies, but I loved him once, a very long time ago. And he only got shot because he was trying to protect me from that fucking psychopath who put us here.
“I’m trying really hard not to,” Rome mutters. Still a smartass, even with his dying breaths. Well, fuck it. I’m not going to just sit here with him in my lap and watch him slowly fade to nothing. I look up at the cameras, formulating a plan. I ease Rome off me as gently as possible so he’s laying on the mattress, getting to my feet. My legs are shaking uncontrollably, and I’m on the verge of passing out, but somehow, the thought of losing Rome and being left in this room by myself gives me the strength to stand.
“Hey, motherfucker!” I yell, my voice hoarse, but still loud. I pull my hair away from my neck with one hand, aiming the pointy end of the scissors at my jugular with the other. “Get him a doctor or I swear to God, I’ll kill myself right now!” Would I have the courage to stab myself in the neck? I’m not really sure, but my voice sounds confident enough.
I look down at Rome, whose eyebrows are raised slightly as he watches me silently. It occurs to me, in that moment, that it probably wouldn’t be the worst thing for Rome to see me kill myself with a pair of surgical scissors. He blames me for ruining his life, after all. What’s a little suicide between mortal enemies? But he doesn’t look amused. He’s shaking his head. “Don’t— " he says to me. I don’t get to hear the rest of his sentence, though, because the heavy steel door in the wall bursts open, the man in black brandishing a new gun. I blink, staring at the weapon he’s pointing at me. I’ve seen one of those before. It’s not a gun with bullets in it. He pulls the trigger and I feel a sharp sting in my chest. “Ow,” I say, staring down at the tranquilizer dart now lodged neatly above my left breast.
It hurts. Everything seems to move in slow motion. I yank the dart out of my chest and it clatters to the ground, forgotten. The sedative burns as it spreads through my chest, as my already weak knees buckle and I end up kneeling on the mattress beside Rome. The scissors are still clutched in my hand, my arm hanging loosely by my side. It takes a couple of minutes for the sedative to work its magic and send me off to sleep. I crawl around on the mattress, moaning, trying to stay conscious, and then I feel a hand over mine. I look down to see Rome’s hand clutching mine. That’s the last thing I see before I fall face-first on the thin bedding beside him.
Chapter Seventeen
ROME
For someone who shot me, the motherfucker wearing a mask sure does go to a great deal of effort to keep me alive.
After he shoots Avery with the tranq dart and she passes out cold beside me, Masked Motherfucker dresses my bullet wound silently, with more gauze and bandages from the never-ending medical kit. I’d like to say I get him into a headlock and break us out of here, but this isn’t a fucking Tom Cruise movie. I’ve been shot. In a very fucking painful place. I couldn’t put a kitten in a headlock right now if I tried.
After he’s done playing doctor, he cuffs my wrists and ankles, throws a bag over my head, and drags me out of the room by my feet.
I fight him as much as I can, but every time I jerk around, I feel more blood spurt up out of my bullet wound. A few ill-placed kicks that barely hit the asshole, and I’m almost dead with blood loss.
I decide to stop fighting and play dead instead. Or, at least, play unconsc
ious. At least if this guy is dragging me out of here, an almost-corpse for him to dispose of, he can’t hurt Avery. I mentally catalog everything as I drag along the ground; from the rough concrete floor of our dungeon for two, to another room, the one that’s behind the one-way glass, where I presume this sick fuck has been watching over Avery with his dick in his hand. The floor in here is carpeted, soft. It smells like fresh paint, and I wonder what kind of person paints a room with a fresh coat of paint in preparation to turn it into a viewing platform for their own personal torture chamber. I mean, what kind of fucking color swatches does one pick up from the Hardware store for such a room? Did he go straight to the reds, or has he chosen a more ironic shade?
I hear more locks, more doors. My head bounces on something hard, maybe a brick, and then over damp grass. I’m outside. I hear the rustling of trees, the thunk of a key turning inside a metal barrel, and then, before I know what’s happening, I’m thrown into what I think is the trunk of a car.
I feel someone close to my head as I lay awkwardly on plastic sheeting. Great. This is the part where I get wrapped up with a bunch of bricks and thrown off the Golden Gate Bridge. I hold my breath, squeezing my eyes tight, waiting for the split second of recognition that a bullet has been fired into my skull. It never comes, though, just a distorted voice in my ear, a threat uttered through the calico bag over my head. “Try anything, and I will gut her and make you wear her skin.”
I very much doubt I would fit into Avery Capulet’s skin, her narrow frame no match for my bulk, but that’s not the message contained in the threat, is it? No. I imagine her being splayed open as punishment for my disobedience, and part of me dies, a part I didn’t know was still buried underneath all of the festering hate I have for the Capulets. The trunk slams shut, and despite every cell in my body screaming to attempt some kind of escape, I don’t try a damn thing.
I pass in and out of consciousness as we drive, straining to hear anything outside that might indicate where we are. At one point I think we might be on the Golden Gate Bridge, but I can’t be sure. It could be the Bay Bridge. It could be the goddamn surface of Mars.
Eventually, we come to a stop, the trunk is cracked open, and I’m lifted from one car to another. Something stabs into my arm, and I don’t wake up again or what feels like a very, very long time.
When I do rouse again, it’s so fucking bright, I assume I’ve died. I’m on my back, cold steel underneath me. Am I dead? Is this my autopsy? Jesus Fuck, am I trapped in my own dead body?
“Is this hell?” I mutter.
A deep voice sounds beside me. “Probably.”
I blink rapidly, trying to get my bearings. It’s so damn bright. I can vaguely make out two heads, faces wrapped in surgical masks. As my vision clears, I look from one side to the other, of what must be a metal gurney I’m laying on. Two dudes, both black, both tall, performing surgery on me, without any goddamn anesthetic, judging by the pain in my shoulder. I try to gauge if I recognize them, taking in their features as best I can with my screwed-up vision. One is slightly taller, his head shaved, dark eyes the only thing I can see above his blue surgical mask. The other one, digging around in my fucking shoulder, has dark hair, cut close to his skull. As soon as I see them, I have my suspicions about who they are. But I don’t say anything.
“Some drugs wouldn’t hurt,” I say, coughing. “Since you’re digging around in my fucking shoulder.”
One of the guys leans over to address me. “You’ve got enough downers in your system to kill a horse,” he says. “I give you any more, you’re gonna die right here.”
Well, at least that confirms that I’m not already dead.
“This is gonna hurt,” he warns, placing a mouthguard in between my teeth. “Bite on this if you need.”
Great. With a giant piece of rubber in my mouth rendering me mute, I feel this dude slice into my shoulder. I roar around the mouthguard, the pain white-hot, and then I pass the fuck out.
The pain is still there as I slip under a shallow sort of unconsciousness, but it’s slightly dulled. A self-protective coping mechanism the body provides, I suppose. I dream while the bullet is dug out of my body.
I dream of Avery Capulet.
She was leaning against the back wall of horse stables at the spot where our properties met the first time I saw her smoking. Alone, her dark wavy hair stacked on top of her head in a messy topknot, dressed in cutoff denim shorts and an old Metallica t-shirt. Clothes too plain for a rich girl like her, but they suited her perfectly. Made her look less prissy bitch and more ordinary fifteen-year-old girl. Though, there was nothing ordinary about Avery Capulet. Even dressed in rags, she’d be more beautiful than any girl in Verona, and beyond.
I was standing in my kitchen; or, what used to be a kitchen, when I noticed her. I hadn’t been back to the house in a long time, not in the years since the place had burned down, my brother perishing in the fire before my mother could get him out. Now, I was here to meet a bank assessor, part of the conditions of my trust fund that controlled the property. The single crown in the destroyed Montague crown that had been left unsold. Because the house and its surrounding property, much to the ire of Avery’s father, was mine, and I wasn’t letting it go without a fight. The house itself had been long since condemned; the Town of Verona kept insisting it was a danger that needed to be sold off and razed to the ground.
There was only one way the Capulets were taking the last thing my family had to their name — from my cold, dead hands. And I didn’t intend on dying any time soon.
I was almost eighteen. Almost an adult. And the moment the house left the security of my trust fund and became mine to do with as I saw fit, I knew they’d circle like vultures, looking to dismantle the property and force a sale. To them.
I’d never sell it to them. I’d sooner burn down their house than let them have what was left of mine.
Avery Capulet. I saw her, alright, without the protection of a thick woolen skirt and long-sleeved cotton to cover her up. All the blood in my body rushed to my dick when I saw her like that, one knee bent so her foot rested on the wall. She saw me, too, across the overgrown orchards and waist-high grass that flanked my giant, fire-damaged eyesore that loomed from the earth like an open wound. The bank assessor in my kitchen kept talking away, but I stopped hearing his words. All I saw was Avery Capulet, looking exactly as I’d imagined her dressed in something other than the navy tartan knee-length skirts and pressed white shirts that formed the girls uniform at our school.
She looked like a lamb to a lion like me. And I’ll admit: my mouth watered at the thought of biting into her pale flesh and leaving a mark.
I cut off the bank assessor abruptly, signed the forms he needed to keep my house in trust until the new set of obligations had been fulfilled, and ushered him out of my house as quickly as possible. The moment he exited the rusted gates that led to the street, I made a beeline for the boundary fence that separated the Capulet property from mine. The wall was impressive, except for the fact that there were holes in it, probably cut by Avery and her sister to sneak out without Daddy knowing.
If Avery saw me approaching, she didn't react. She just kept her shiny brown eyes leveled at the empty pool behind my house, the spot where snakes liked to explore and mosquitoes laid their eggs. I pulled a hole in the wire fencing apart wide enough to step through, and then I was right in front of this strange girl I'd once been supposed to marry.
“Those things’ll kill you,” I said, puncturing the silence. Avery just smiled, a secret smile that I would eventually learn was only for me. She took a drag of the cigarette, taking a step closer to the invisible line that ran between us. She tilted her head up, a foot shorter than me, and breathed out a cloud of smoke that made my eyes water. Slender fingers offered me the half-smoked Marlboro with a smirk. “You wanna die with me?”
Her words were a dare. Maybe, even then, they were a premonition of our future. But to my ears, they were just smartass words from a pretty girl??
?s mouth. A girl I had no business being near, much less trespassing on her property.
I looked at her mouth as she waited for my response, glossy lips in a perfect rosebud shape. I imagined what it might be like to kiss a girl like Avery Capulet, and the thought made my mind go to dark places, to flashes of pink nipples and insistent tongues.
I took the cigarette and put it between my lips, sucking the toxic shit into my lungs. The burn wasn’t entirely unpleasant. That was my first mistake.
I tasted her cherry lipgloss on the stub of the cigarette, and I was a fucking goner.
“Selling?” Avery asked, gesturing to the bank assessor who was still at the front of my property, talking on his cellphone. The edge of my mouth curled up in a smirk.
“I bet your father would like that.”
Avery shrugged, taking another drag of her cigarette. “Of course he would. He has to look at it every day. I’m sure he’d prefer it bulldozed.”
“Mmm,” I replied, raking my eyes up and down her legs. Fuck, she wasn’t that tall, but somehow, her fawn-like legs went forever. I licked my lips again, tasting that cherry gloss, laughing inwardly at the irony.
“What’s so funny?” Avery asked.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of what old Augie’s going to say when he realizes he can’t buy my house. Ever. Not unless I get married, that is. Until then, that piece of shit is untouchable.”
She tilted her head to the side, looking me up and down the same way I’d appraised her. I thought of what she must see: a piece of Montague trash, in torn-up black jeans, a t-shirt, tattoos peeking out from the bottom of my sleeves.
“Maybe I should marry you,” she said dryly. “If that’s what it’ll take to stop my horses getting spooked by the snakes living in your garden.”
I tipped my head back and laughed. “Should I get down on one knee?” I deadpanned.
I had expected a comeback. What I hadn’t expected was for her to motion with a curled finger for me to lean in to her, so she could whisper something in my ear. My skin got hot in the places where my body brushed against hers, and I caught that smell of her shampoo for the first time, oranges and honey.