Page 30

Chapter 30

Elijah Grant

It felt like my world had been flipped upside down. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening. Why was Benji here, holding me in his lap? Why did my head feel like it’d been crushed under a car tire? Why was Zack currently running toward Benji with a needle—holy fuck.

“Watch out!”

The words were ripped out of me. Benji twisted just in time to dodge the needle and stop it from plunging into his neck. The move brought me closer to him. He cradled me almost as if I was a baby.

Memories began to form, to sharpen. My audition. My fear. A cold and sharp pain sinking into my neck before the curtains dropped on my vision.

And now Zack was here? What was he doing here? Why did he have a needle? Why…

I lifted my head and locked eyes with my best friend. He had his back against the wall. The room wasn’t large, but Benji was already getting to his feet, and in one swift movement, he pulled a gun out from a concealed holster.

The room suddenly became a hundred times smaller.

My breath hitched. A gun. I’d never seen one in person before, this close and lethal. He held it out in front of him, feet braced on the dirty ground. Zack’s eyes widened before he looked to me. He had a crazed appearance to him. He wore dirty dark blue scrubs, his hair long and unruly. He was nearly unrecognizable.

My best friend. The closest person to me besides Benji.

He was also my stalker.

Zack was Nomad.

“Why?” I asked, getting up onto my feet. I rubbed at my neck, which was still sore. I hadn’t realized there were tears forming until they slipped down my cheeks, wetting my lips. Benji thrust a protective hand onto my chest and gently pushed me back. Zack’s attention shifted back to the barrel of the gun, pointed directly at his head. My mouth was ash dry, my heart beating like a sledgehammer against my ribs. “This entire time. It’s been you. Why? Why, Zack?”

“Because I love you, Eli! Isn’t that obvious? Because I’ve loved you since we were younger. I fell even more for you once we hooked up. You’d given me the best couple of nights of my life. You were always there for me. You, you, you cared for me. When I felt abandoned and lost, like I couldn’t make anyone around me happy or proud, you lifted me up. Reminded me that—fuck!—reminded me I was worth something. I asked you out, wanted you to be mine, but you kept rejecting me.

“Then I started watching your streams. Eli, I couldn’t get enough. The obsession I have for you is—Eli, fuck, I want you. That’s when I saw Damon commenting, when I saw how much he hated you. That night I came up with the Nomad character—flipped his name backward, thought it would be the perfect way to push you into my arms. I’d be there to protect you from the crazy stalker. But… you didn’t come to me. And if I can’t have you, then no one can. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I can’t see you with anyone else but me?”

Zack looked like a cornered and rabid dog. Spittle foamed at the edges of his mouth. His pupils were blown wide open. I wouldn’t be surprised if he said he’d railed back seven lines of coke before this.

I didn’t recognize my best friend at all. I was staring at a monster. A complete and utter monster, devoid of any heart, wanting to simply feast on mine. A mixture of absolute shock and stomach-twisting nausea washed over me. I wanted to drop to my knees again but somehow managed to keep upright. Benji’s hand held the gun steady.

Jesus fucking Christ. A gun. This could all go very, very badly.

“My apartment… did you break in?”

Zack nodded. “I was going to wait for you. I was done waiting for you. But then you text me to meet up. I changed my mind. Then I thought I could use that moment to get you to stay over. You didn’t.”

“What were you planning on doing to him?” Benji asked. I could tell all he felt was raw anger. His face was red, his attention pinned to a trembling Zack. He held the needle out like a gun of his own. How did this happen? How did we get here? I was just with Zack a couple of days ago.

His knuckles. They were all cut up.

He’d been the one to break into my apartment. Had he planned on dragging me right out of my bed?

“I was going to end it. End it all. Eli, you’ve said it before—you’ve told me how when you find your one true love, you never want to let them go. I don’t want to let you go. Ever. So I was going to wake you up, kiss you, then kill us both.”

I blinked as if that would suddenly clean the slate and make this all okay.

There it was. A full confession. He was going to kill me. I didn’t know what got into me—maybe a heavy dose of adrenaline could be blamed—but I laughed. Literally fucking laughed. Shock was giving way to the same anger that radiated off Benji as if he were a flickering blue flame. “Here? You were going to kill me in a shitty casting office? What the actual fuck?”

Zack’s head reeled back. He looked around the dingy room. “It was… the only place with last-minute reservations open. I faked a casting company. I knew you’d come if I made the audition sound big enough.”

“Why not just invite me to your place? At least there, I could have died on the couch I lent you money to buy.” Benji tilted his head and glanced in my direction. This was fucking insane. I felt like I was losing my mind. How could this actually be happening? “Zack, we could have been best friends for the rest of our lives. I would have always had your back. Always been there if you needed?—”

“Don’t you fucking see! That’s what makes this even worse. You’re always so close, and I still can’t even touch you. Like at the masquerade party. I wanted to fuck you so bad. When I saw you leave to the private room, I almost killed everyone in that fucking party. I was about to find a knife and go on a fucking stabbing spree. That’s how wild you drive me. It’s fucked-up.”

Benji’s finger twitched on the trigger. It was clear in Zack’s tone that he wasn’t joking in the slightest. He meant every single word he uttered. He really was ready to kill everyone just because I let him down. How had I ever been so close to someone so broken? And not even realize it?

He dropped the needle. It rolled to a stop near my feet. I took a breath, hoping this was a sign it was all drawing to an end. Nothing needed to be escalated from here. There was no saving the friendship, but at least no one had to get hurt today. That’s what mattered most. I wanted us all to be able to walk away from here so that we could all eventually heal from this somehow. That wouldn’t happen if blood had been shed today.

“Just let us call the police,” Benji said. He didn’t lower the gun. Its presence in the room felt like being locked in a cage with a lethal tiger. I was just glad that it was Benji who held its leash. “We can get you help. Get you better.”

“No you can’t. Nothing except having Eli will make this better. I’m broken. Ruined. Eli, you ruined me.”

I shook my head, the anger turning into a hollow sadness. “I would have tried to help however I could.”

“No. You broke me.” Zack’s face turned into a snarl. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. It was small but looked lethal, the sharp steel glittering in the surgical white lighting. Benji looked like he was about to shoot. I was about to watch my ex-best friend’s brains get blown out all across the wall.

“Zack, please, put that down,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

Zack’s eyes darted wildly between Benji and me. Panic flashed across his face, his breathing rapid and shallow. I could see the exact moment something inside him snapped. A guttural, animalistic scream ripped from his throat as he lunged toward us.

“Eli, move!” Benji shouted, stepping protectively in front of me. My body froze, trapped in the paralyzing vise of shock and fear. Zack closed the distance in less than a heartbeat, the knife aimed straight at Benji’s throat. In one fluid motion, Benji twisted his body, sidestepping the knife’s deadly trajectory, bringing the grip of the gun up hard and swift against Zack’s temple.

A sharp crack echoed through the room.

Zack staggered, his knees buckling beneath him. He collapsed to the floor in a heap, his eyes rolling back, the knife slipping from his fingers. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the sound of our ragged breaths.

Benji stood over Zack’s unconscious form, chest heaving, gun still gripped tightly in his shaking hand. Slowly, he lowered the weapon, turning toward me.

Holy shit. It was over. This entire saga had come to an end. All my fear, my anxieties, my worries, they all had been leading to this. There would be a lot of time and therapy that was going to be needed to fully comprehend all of this, but at least it was over.

I was safe. We were safe.

I turned away from Zack and leaned against Benji, my heart still racing. He pulled me into a protective embrace. The strength and warmth of his body instantly enveloped me, grounding me back to reality, pulling me into the moment. Benji had come to rescue me. From the start. If it wasn’t for him, this could have all ended very differently.

“Fuck, Eli,” Benji whispered, his voice trembling as he clutched me tighter. “Fuck. I thought—shit, I thought I was going to lose you. Are you okay? Hurt at all?”

“No, I’m okay. I’m okay.” I buried my face into his chest, breathing him in, feeling his heartbeat pound steadily beneath my cheek. It was the sweetest sound in the world. “You saved me,” I whispered, voice thick with tears. “Benji, you saved my life.”

His arms tightened around me, his hand gently stroking the back of my head. “I would have torn this city apart looking for you. You’re everything to me, Eli. Everything.”

My vision blurred with tears. My best friend had betrayed me, nearly killed me, and the one man I’d been hesitant to fully trust had risked everything to save my life. There were no more questions left unanswered, no more doubts lingering in my heart.

“I don’t want to hold back anymore,” I murmured, lifting my head to look into Benji’s deep, soulful eyes. “Life’s way too short for that.”

He cupped my face in his large hands, brushing away my tears with his thumb. “What do you mean?” he asked softly, uncertainty flickering briefly in his expression.

“I mean I love you, Benji. I love you so fucking much, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the other day. I should have. I don’t want to live with any what-ifs.” The words spilled from me effortlessly, truth resonating with every syllable. I’d never meant those words more than when I said them to this man. He opened my eyes to a world that was full of love and companionship. He never once judged me, never looked down on me. He made me happy in every single way imaginable.

How could I not love this man?

Benji’s eyes widened slightly, surprise quickly melting away into pure, unbridled joy. His smile stretched wide, illuminating his entire face. Even under these terrible fluorescent lights in this cramped space, he still looked good.

“I love you, too, Eli.” He shot a glance down at the floor. I couldn’t even look at Zack. “Now, let’s get the police here so we can explain what happened and get us out of here.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I really don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Go wait outside. I’ll keep an eye on Zack until the cops get here.”

He squeezed his hand around mine. I leaned up and stole another kiss before I left the room. I stepped into the hallway. A couple of actors were milling about, likely trying to listen to what was happening in the room. It probably sounded like a wild audition to them.

I walked out of the building and sucked in a breath of fresh air for what felt like the first time in years. The sunshine was bright, the city loud. Everything felt so much more alive .

Well, I didn’t get the dream role, but at least I got the dream man.