CHAPTER 50

HELENA'S POV

The sirens got louder.

Then they were right there, red and blue cutting through the gray morning, but they weren’t for us. Not yet.

Two cops stepped out of the cruiser and behind them, in the passenger seat, cuffed, was Dell.

His wrists were bound. His knuckles were raw and split. And the first place his eyes went wasn’t to the cops, or to me. It was to Jarett.

He looked at him the way you look at a scoreboard while checking and counting.

“What the hell did you do?” The words tore out of me before I realized I was standing. The rain hit me sideways and soaked straight through the hoodie.

Dell didn’t answer. He just tilted his head, studying the black lines under Jarett’s skin like he was reading something I couldn’t see.

One of the cops put a hand on my arm. “Ma’am, step back.”

“Don’t touch me.” I jerked away and dropped to my knees again in the puddle. Jarett was heavier now. His breathing was shallow, wet, like he was drowning on dry land. “Jarett. Stay with me, keep your eyes on me.”

His lashes lifted. The gold in them wasn’t his. It was the sky reflected back. “You shouldn’t have come.”

“Shut up.” I pressed Grandma’s scarf harder against his palm. It was already soaked through. “You traded yourself for me. So now I’m trading back.”

I didn’t know what that meant. I just said it because if I didn’t say something, the silence would eat me.

The cop with the radio was talking fast, clipped. “We got a 10-52, possible OD, possible self-harm. Need EMS at Old Bridge, River Road.”

“Not OD,” I said, looking up at him. Rain ran down my face. “Poison, there's something in his blood and it's spreading.”

He frowned, rain dripping off the brim of his hat. “What kind of poison?”

I almost laughed. The kind you brew with grief and desperation and a promise to a girl in the ground.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I just know it’s killing him.”

Dell made a noise. Not quite a laugh, it was more like satisfaction. “Told you she’d find him.”

I turned on him so fast my knees screamed. “You gave him the box.”

“I gave him a choice,” Dell said, calm, like we were talking about the weather. “Same as you did when you came back.”

The word hit me like a fist to the sternum.

Jarett’s hand tightened on my wrist. Barely there, but there. “Hel... don’t listen to him.”

“I’m not,” I whispered. “I’m listening to you.”

The ambulance came then, the lights bounced off the wet concrete, the sirens swallowing everything else.

Two paramedics with a gurney tried to pull me off him.

“I’m not letting go,” I said again.

“You have to,” one of them said, gentle but firm. “We need to work.”

So I did. I let them lift him. I watched them cut the sleeve off and the black was worse. It had climbed past his elbow, past his shoulder, creeping toward his collarbone like ink spilled under glass. One of the paramedics swore under his breath.

“His BP’s dropping. Eighty over fifty. We need to move, now.”

They loaded him in. I climbed in after. No one stopped me.

Dell was already in the back of the cruiser. Through the rain-streaked window I saw him watching us pull away. He didn’t look scared. He looked like a man who’d placed a bet and was waiting to collect.

In the ambulance they put oxygen on Jarett. An IV. They called it “unknown toxin” and “possible sepsis.” They asked if he’d taken anything.

“No,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. “He didn’t take anything. He gave something.”

The paramedic glanced at me, then at the monitor. “What did he give?”

“His life,” I said. “For mine.”

Jarett’s eyes opened when we hit a pothole. Pain flashed across his face and then smoothed out.

“Don’t,” he breathed.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make deals.”

I took his good hand and pressed it to my forehead. The scarf was still wrapped around the other one, useless and wet.

“Too late,” I said. “I already did.”

The hospital was too bright. Too clean. The smell of disinfectant and blood hit me and I gagged. They took him through double doors.

“Family only,” a nurse said.

“I’m it,” I said.

They let me follow them to the bay. Monitors. Machines beeping. A doctor came in, young, with tired eyes and a tired mouth.

“We’re going to try to flush his system. Do you know what he was exposed to?”

“No,” I said. “But I know why.”

The doctor waited.

“Because of me,” I said. “And because of her.”

Maren. The name felt like a splinter under my skin.

Jarett’s monitor beeped continuously then settled into a rhythm that wasn’t steady but wasn’t dying either. He turned his head a fraction toward me.

“Helena.”

“I’m here.”

“If I...”

“Don’t finish that sentence.” My voice cracked. “Don’t you dare.”

He closed his eyes. “The photo. In the box. Did you see the back?”

I hadn’t. I’d been too busy trying to keep his heart beating.

“No.”

“Look at it,” he whispered. “After. Please.”

The doors opened and two more nurses came in. They started herding me out.

“Wait,” I said.

“Miss, we need to work.”

I looked at Jarett one more time. The black was on his jaw now. But his chest was rising. Falling.

“I’m not leaving,” I said. “Not this time.”

I stepped into the hallway. The doors closed with a soft, final sound.

And that’s when I remembered the photo. Still face down in the puddle back at the bridge.