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These rich boys had no idea who they were messing with. Ashley Bonds from the city, poor girl, charity case. What none of them knew was that I had seen a lot, done a lot, and even staring death itself in the face didn’t scare me anymore.
If Declan didn’t make it out of tonight alive…then I’d make sure to make Travis pay.
He wouldn’t get away with this. Karma was a bitch, and I would gladly put on her mask and be her instrument.
Chapter Two – Ash
Minutes passed, though the minutes felt more like hours. The ambulance took its sweet old time getting here, that’s for sure. There was another knock on the door, and I practically leaped off the tub’s edge to answer it, wholly expecting it was the medics, the team ready to sweep Declan off his feet and save his life.
But it wasn’t.
My heart nearly stopped when I opened the door to a stranger. Not Travis, at least, but another stranger entirely—and I’d had my fill of strangers for a while. Tonight wasn’t about meeting new people; it was about saving the one guy in my life who didn’t deserve to go out like this.
The man standing in the hallway was a few years older than me, taller than me by maybe eight inches. Short brown hair, combed to the side. Muscles on a body that looked pretty tan and eyes that were a beautiful, clear hazel, the kind of eyes you could easily get lost in. An attractive guy, for sure, but I wasn’t in the mood for a boyfriend, or even any flirting at the moment.
“Sorry,” I said, “we’re busy.” And then I sought to close the door, not wanting to say anything else to the man, but he pushed his way inside, walking right past me as if he owned the place.
“Where is he?” the man asked. He spotted the open bathroom door, rushing to it. He let out a swearword when he saw Declan crumpled on the floor, and he knelt beside him in the blood.
I had no idea who this guy was or why he was here, acting so concerned, but I’d never seen him before in my life. “What are you doing?” I asked in horror, watching as he picked Declan’s motionless body up, a bit awkward seeing as how they were both two guys and neither one was particularly small.
The man answered me, barely tossing a look my way, “I saw an ambulance heading down the street. I assume it’s coming here?” He paused, half in the dorm room, half in the hall.
I nodded dumbly, watching as he started to hurry down the hall, taking Declan with him. I trailed after him, locking our door before going, doing my best to hide my injury. I didn’t know who this guy was, but it was hard to say no to him, mostly because he barged in and did whatever the hell he wanted.
Who was he?
Since most of the students had gone home for the long weekend, ninety-nine percent of the doors we passed as we headed to the elevator were shut. Once we got on, I hit the ground floor button, and the doors slid closed silently.
The man holding Declan glanced at me. The expression he wore…it was one I vaguely recognized, but I couldn’t place it. Almost like I’d seen him before, but not really. A face like his, I would recognize. A face like that, I’d definitely know. “You don’t have to come,” he said.
“I’m coming,” I told him with a glare.
We said nothing else as the elevator took us down to the ground level, and when we walked past the front desk, the student working at it froze, watching us walk out, all three of us bloody and one of us unconscious. By the time we made it to the turnaround, the ambulance was there, and the medics were in the back of it, unloading the stretcher.
“He’s here,” the man carrying Declan said, and one of the medics, a middle-aged woman looking pretty tired, gestured for him to place Declan on the gurney.
As the other medics went to strap Declan in and check his injury, the woman asked, “And you’re the one who called?”
The man was about to answer, but I cut in, “No, I did. I’m his roommate.”
“And you?” The medic pointed to the man.
“I’m his brother,” he said. “I just got here.”
I didn’t hear the next things either one of them said, mostly because I was stuck on the brother part. Declan never told me he had a brother; then again, it wasn’t like I ever asked. I just assumed he was an only child. But it would explain why the man’s face was both familiar and different, why his expression was like one I’d seen before. I’d seen it on Declan’s face, only his was a few years older, more weathered, more stubbly. Good looks obviously ran in the family.
The medics had loaded Declan into the back of the ambulance, and his brother was climbing in with him.
They were going to leave me behind. What the fuck?
“Wait!” I called out, rushing to the doors before the woman could close them. I held out my injured hand, and the woman’s eyes fell to the dislocated thumb and the skin that had been scraped off when I got myself free in Travis’s room.
Just when I thought she’d tell me no, that I had to get my own ambulance or something—because let’s face it, the American healthcare system sucked ass—she said, “Get in. We’ll need to ask you what happened to your friend, and then we’ll take care of you.”
I climbed in, sitting beside Declan’s brother, my stare on Declan’s still form on the gurney on the opposite side. Two guys were currently applying pressure to the wound and checking his vitals as best they could since he wasn’t conscious. The woman near me and Declan’s brother had a notepad on some clipboard, writing down something. Intake papers, maybe?
Honestly, I didn’t know. I also hoped that this would be billed to Declan and his family, because I was as uninsured as a person could be.
