The Games We Play

47. Forty-Six - X

Forty-Six - X

I’m tackled from the side, and the air is knocked from my lungs. I wrap my arms around Puppet’s warmth as she lies on top of me. It spreads across my body as if her presence is thawing me and settling the beast back into a slumber within my soul. My vision is spotty, and I murmur against her hair as it brushes my cheeks.

“You’re safe, Tess.” My limbs are heavy, and they fall to my side.

“X?” she pushes back, and I try to bring her into focus, but I can’t. Where her blue eyes should be staring down at me are black spots that mottle her features. I just want to see her before I die. One last glimpse. Is that too much to ask for?

I guess for a soul as black and scarred as mine, it is.

She touches my stomach and gasps, then her hand presses firmly into my abdomen, and her screams of pain have me terrified she’s been shot.

No, she’s safe. I killed him. He killed Nadia. There isn’t anyone else to hurt her .

They say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die. For me, it’s images of Puppet running through the woods, chewing on the end of her pen at school, strutting through the clown house covered in blood and mud. It’s her blonde hair blowing in the wind at the lake house and her blue eyes staring at me through the mask that mirrored my own. My soul found a home within hers.

And I can’t imagine a better way to go out than finally feeling whole and knowing what it’s like to love someone on an infinite level.

“Move,” a voice orders, and my one eye springs open, searching for the betrayer of my bliss.

“Get the fuck away from him!” Puppet shouts.

I have to wake up. I have to protect her. I was wrong. This isn’t over yet.

“Unless you want him to bleed out, move,” the voice orders again, and her weight abandons me.

I try to reach for her and tell her to come back. I don’t want to die without her touching me, but all I can get out is gargled mumbles that don’t make any sense.

“Call Doc. Tell him GS to the abdomen. I can get him stable, but he needs Doc!”

With the unfamiliar voice, memories of the fight come back to him. He punched at me with a blade but missed, and I caught his wrist. He pulled me in close and told me Doc sent his regards and let me grab the knife from him. I slid it up my sleeve, then pretended to stab him in the stomach, and he fell to the side. I just had to stay alive and conscious long enough for Darius to get close.

When he thought it was over, I slid the knife from my sleeve and buried it in his neck .

“Doc? Where is he? Who are you?” Puppet screams the questions. Her hand squeezes mine, and I’m thankful for it, even if I can’t tell her.

“I’m a friend.”

“X doesn’t have friends,” she hisses, and if I could smirk, I would because she’s right. I’ve made it a mission not to have friends.

The man laughs, and I want to roll my eyes as my life fades under his hands.

“Doc is his friend, and any friend of Doc’s is a friend of mine.”

I groan as pain comes to the forefront of my senses.

“You ready, Tess?” the man asks. “We’re going out through the kitchen. We have a car ready for us, and Doc isn’t far. We have to hurry, or Xane will die. Are you with me?”

I fade in and out as I’m lifted, floating through the air. I’m lost in the darkness, but this time, I’m okay because the woman I love is okay, and I told her how I felt.

I left the world a better place than I was born into, which has to count for something.