Page 29 of Kiss Slay Replay

It’s Ravi. He’s got the microphone.

“Everyone, listen. Please,” he says, his voice calm and steady. He’s always been good in a crisis. Small stressors take him out, but he can lock in for the big stuff. I think it provokes his need for control. “I understand that you’re scared, but let’s take a breath. Whatever we do next, we have to do it together, all right? We’re going to help one another out of this.”

Look at him, playing the hero.

“First thing I’m going to need is for you to move away from the windows. The front door is locked, but I’m going to ask Luke and Wyatt to check the back because there’s likely another door out through the kitchen.”

“No!” Cassie says. “Luke.”

“I got this.” He winks, trying to lighten the mood, but it only makes her cry.

“If anyone else wants to volunteer to go with Luke and Wyatt, I do think a bigger group would be better.”

“I’ll go,” Danny says, standing. He sniffles, wipes his nose with his sleeve.

Panic sears through my chest. Part of me wants to stay here with Ravi, to keep listening to the sound of his voice—because it’s so familiar, so known to me, and there’s a cellular-level comfort in that—but the thought of separating from Danny has me completely distraught. He was with me when this all started. There’s no immediate future I can fathom without him at my side. He said he wouldn’t leave me. I don’t want to leave him. An attachment has been forged in this fire.

“Me, too,” I say. “I’m going. We need to see if there’s a phone back there.”

Ravi looks at me, makes eye contact for the first time all night. For the first time in weeks. Months.

He blinks. He doesn’t react when Danny takes my hand.

“Then let’s go,” Evan says.

Cass sighs. “If you’re all going then I’m fucking going.”

“Thank you,” Ravi says. “While they check to make sure all the doors are secure, we’re going to keep up our attempts to make emergency contact. Text, call, email. Something will get through. We’ll get help. We’re going to stay together, stay calm, and I’m here to talk you through it.”

“Come on,” Danny says, keeping me close as the group crosses the dance floor. Right now, we’re all supposed to be dancing to some classic, cheesy wedding music. Forming a circle around Steph and Jace. Jace is a notoriously bad dancer who loves nothing more than to dance. A lesser partner would be embarrassed by his moves, but Steph always hypes him up because she thinks it’s the funniest thing. Her face lights up watching him, swaying at a safe distance to avoid a rogue elbow, manic limb strikes.

“This isn’t right,” I mutter to myself. I feel like I’m wearing clothes that don’t fit. There’s a chafing. I swear the air is wrong. Everything about this is wrong.

I pass by the DJ booth. By Ravi, who continues to reassure the crowd. He doesn’t look at me. This could be the last time that I ever see him, that he sees me, but he doesn’t look my way.

Tanya sits behind the booth, trembling and whispering indistinctly, her legs tucked to one side, her hair pulled in front of her face like a shield. I miss her being the worst thing to happen to me today.

There’s a doorway at the back of the space that leads to a dim hall.

“He could be hiding,” Cass says. “We could be heading right for him.”

“He?” Evan asks. “How do we know it’s a man?”

“Statistics.”

“He’s wearing a mask. It’s…it’s unsettling,” I say. “I don’t want you to be caught off guard.”

“Not sure there’s any preventing that,” Wyatt says, stepping ahead of us to be first into the hall. Evan follows. Luke. Cassie.

“Hold on,” Danny says. They don’t hear him. Or they do but don’t listen. They press on, leaving just the two of us. “Shit. Shit.”

He runs his hands through his hair. His eyes are swollen from crying. I miss his arrogance. If I could heal him, turn him back into who he was before all of this, I would in an instant. Wouldn’t that be nice? A fairy-tale kiss and poof. His crooked smile, not a care in the fucking world.

“Willa? Danny? You guys coming?” Luke calls from the hallway.

Danny drops his hands, shakes out his arms, rolls his shoulders back.

“Together?” I ask him.