Page 2

2

Starring in Our Very Own Shitshow

W ith a wince at the tug on my chest wounds, I pushed up farther onto my pillows so I could more easily see Brady, Hunt, and Layla. Griffin, well, I could scarcely take my eyes off him where he remained next to me on my bed.

That was going to be a problem—a freaking huge one. Lately it seemed we were racking up a whole long list of them.

My voice raspy, I told them all, “Given that every one of us has died— legit died— in the last few months, I’d say shit’s more than bad.”

Layla crossed and uncrossed her legs, trying to find a comfortable position atop the armchair. When she grimaced, I guessed she hadn’t found one that didn’t pull on her own healing injuries.

With a frown, she said, “If shit’s not as bad as it gets, then I don’t wanna find out how bad things can get. I’m calling us done, right now. Right the hell now.”

In turn, she glared at each of us, even her brother. “No more dying. And I fucking mean that.” As if we hadn’t gotten the message—as if any of us actually wanted to die—she meted out another round of glares, this time punctuated by a stabby index finger jabbing the air between us. “No. More.”

Hunt grunted out, “You got that right.”

But Brady gazed at his sister with wistful eyes—I might have gone so far as to describe them as adoring eyes.

Griffin wasn’t kidding. That was definitely new. After Brady had come back to life, it hadn’t taken long for Layla to resume treating him just as she always had: like he was an annoyance she only tolerated because he was her twin. Who would have guessed Brady had a soft, mushy side to him?

“Are our parents freaking out?” I asked before chuffing darkly. “They’ve gotta be.” I groaned. “They’re gonna have a field day with all their I-told-you-so ’s.”

“I’m sure they’re freaking out,” Brady said, swinging his legs against the edge of the bed a few times. “Mom’s probably got search parties out looking for us.”

My muscles tensed, causing another painful tug along my torso. “Wait. How come they don’t know where we are?”

Hunt scowled. “Because we can’t call out. None of our phones work, and before you go looking for it, we even tried yours. Apparently, we’re in a dead zone. Intentional, obviously.”

Layla nodded, brushing her long bangs out of her eyes. “Every time a doctor or nurse comes to check on us, we bug the crap out of them with questions, obvi. But it’s always the same answers.”

Brady grunted, and then he, Layla, and Hunt quoted at the same time: “Mr. Chase will be here shortly to answer all your questions.”

I felt my eyes widen. “Are we trapped here, then?”

Obviously restless, Layla let her head fall against the headrest of the armchair before immediately snapping it back up. “It’s looking like it. Just for now, though.”

“Yeah, ’cause we’re getting out of here no matter whose asses we gotta kick to do it.” Brady cracked his knuckles.

Hunt nodded, his dark eyes bright with his resolve. His jaw clenched before he waggled it to loosen it.

“Why haven’t you guys tried to see if we can get out of here yet?” I asked, but even as I did so, I realized the explanation.

Griffin faced me, gazing down at me with an open, guileless expression I might have also described as adoring if I hadn’t known better. He was just relieved I was alive, that was all. And why wouldn’t he be? We’d all been friends forever and a day.

“We weren’t gonna leave before we knew you were all right,” Griffin said, his voice gruff. “As much as I might hate this asshole for everything he’s done to us, and man do I have a hate-on for him, there’s no doubt he’s got the best medical care money can buy.”

Brady harrumphed. “You and I came back just fine at Ridgemore Hospital.”

Holding my eyes instead of turning to look at Brady, Griffin said, “True. But we all came back a lot faster than Joss. Who knows what might’ve happened at the hospital?”

“Why didn’t I come back as fast as you guys?” I asked.

“No idea, girl,” Layla said with a forced smile. “Maybe you were just enjoying some of that R and R we’ve been talking about. Maybe you just wanted a break from all this crap, so your subconscious kept you under.”

I arched my brows. That right there was a major stretch.

Her shoulders slumped at my expression. “We don’t know.”

Brady snorted. “There’s a whole lotta that going on. We don’t know shit about shit.”

Layla smirked bitterly. “At least we know that.”

Griffin’s gaze trailed my fingers as I gently pressed against the gown that covered my chest. “So what are the wounds looking like?”

Layla bounced in her seat as if she’d just remembered something, starting to behave like her usual self despite the grimace that followed the movement. I, however, doubted I’d be in the mood to so much as try bouncing anywhere for ages. My body felt like it’d gone several rounds with an angry, vengeful real ninja, not any of us and our wannabe skills.

“Oh my God! Brade tried to help give me a sponge bath.” She snorted. “Can you believe the bozo? A sponge bath .” She glanced at him, a modest dose of her usual mischief dancing across her face. “Admit it. I’m a total hottie. You’ve always known it. It was your chance to grope my fine-ass titties and you went for it.”

Griffin, Hunt, and I glanced between the twins, waiting for their inevitable reactions.

As one, their faces screwed up into mutual disgust, making their similar features appear identical.

Brady’s nose scrunched up into an accordion of lines. “Ew, Lay. Just … ew . Do you ever think before you speak? Seriously, man! That went too far.”

Layla shuddered. “It totally did. My bad, dude.” She didn’t bother promising she’d start thinking before she spoke; we all knew there was no point. Layla was Layla, and Layla would do what Layla did, no matter how crass or twisted. I was oddly comforted by the fact that some things never changed, even if most other aspects of our lives were so different they bordered on unrecognizable.

When Brady and Layla seemed like they’d be continuing the grossed-out spiel for a while, I prompted, “So, our wounds?”

Hunt was usually as agile as an alley cat. Now he inched toward the edge of his seat before aiding himself up with his arms. But then he stood without the aid of the walking stick, steady on his feet, and lifted the top of his scrubs. Unlike me, his sculpted chest was free of gauze. The skin was pink in five round, puffy spots. If I hadn’t known better, I’d say they looked like superficial cigar burns.

“Will they heal more?” I asked.

He shrugged, lowering his shirt. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Brady scooted forward across the mattress, his feet dropping to the floor. Like the others, he wore scrubs. Presumably, the t-shirt he’d worn to the pep rally was also riddled with holes, his pants at the very least blood-spattered.

When he lifted his shirt, I gasped. Even Layla, who always had something to say—especially when no one wanted to hear it—stared at him, mouth agape.

In addition to the scar from the rebar, five angry welts dotted his muscled chest. They looked like swollen mosquito bites. And the rebar scar? Last time I’d seen it, the flesh had been a sad, shiny, puckered pink, the size of a lemon. Now? It was the size of a jawbreaker.

“How’s that possible?” Layla whispered, when Layla never whispered.

He smirked. “What do you think? We’re immortals, Lay.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said. Though, why wouldn’t I? If we couldn’t actually die, what did that make us?

And why was I the last to come back?

As if following my train of thought, Layla offered, “My scars look about like Hunt’s. I’d show you, but then I’d be flashing my titties, and I don’t wanna tempt my gross and pervy brother.”

Brady huffed in exasperation, running a hand through dark blond hair that was currently styled with a fade that crested into a two-inch mohawk. Post resurrection number two, his mohawk sagged. “Oh for fuck’s sake. You’re the one who’s gross and pervy! You go too far. Waaaaaay too far. You can’t say that kind of shit! Not even as a joke. You’ve gotta stop!”

But Layla’s eyes were sparkling, telling me she was enjoying herself, despite the shitshow we were currently starring in. She thrived on doing precisely what she wasn’t supposed to. Brady telling her “can’t” was her version of catnip. The girl got off on dancing the cha-cha along the line that demarcated the taboo.

“I’ve gotta get under the bandages to look,” I said, more to myself than them. “See if I, you know, healed as well as you guys did. If I took that much longer than all of you to revive, who knows … At least my leg healed.”

Layla grinned a shit-eating smile. “Sure. Flash them titties, Joss. I’m sure Griff won’t mind.”

My eyes widened until they bulged as I did my best to shoot death rays at her. “LAY-la!” I scolded harshly. Had the girl lost her ever-loving damn mind? Maybe dying had rattled some screws loose. Even for her, this was all a bit much. We’d always been extremely careful not to blur the lines of friendship—let alone incest, for that matter. Girl was being nuttier than a freaking squirrel.

Brady was shaking his head. “I swear Mom or Dad dropped you smack on your head when you were a baby. The shit that comes out of your mouth …”

Layla turned her entire body in her seat to glower at him. “If they dropped me, then you’d better believe they dropped you first.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“’Course it does. If you think I say crazy shit, then you say just as much crazy shit as I do.”

By objective standards, no. No he didn’t. But Hunt, Griffin, and I had long ago learned not to get in the middle of the two of them until they started throwing punches.

Regardless, I waded right in. “Come on, you two. We have really important stuff to figure out.”

Brady crossed his arms over his chest and really settled into the glare-a-thon. Layla imitated his posture, making him snort and dip his head haughtily.

“Just ’cause you think you’re hot shit doesn’t make you any less of a steaming, stinky, wafting turd,” Layla snapped.

They were rapidly devolving into the kind of insults we’d endured years ago.

To be fair, pretty much every one of our classmates at Ridgemore High probably did think Brady was hot shit, and not the smelly kind.

Brady’s smirk grew, and Layla huffed, her cheeks growing pink as she became flustered. Letting Brady best her was top of her list of dreaded things, along with asparagus, which she inexplicably despised, nails across a chalkboard—understandable—and dying, which lost some of its dooming threat when its finality had grown so dubious.

“You know just as well as I do that Griff would eat up the sight of Joss’s tits,” Layla said combatively, as if somehow proving a point.

My breath froze in my lungs so abruptly that I couldn’t tell if I’d been mid-inhale or exhale.

“What the fuck , Layla?” I growled. Then, before she could defend her statement, and she would—oh, she most definitely would—I added, “Could we please focus already? All of us but Griff literally just died. I don’t know about you guys, but that’s rattling the shit out of me. I’m not okay. Not okay at fucking all. We’re possibly trapped with a filthy rich lunatic who had no problem setting a fucking school full of kids on fire, and who sent actual hitmen into said school after us, for fuck’s sake. Our phones don’t work, and I’m assuming there are no landlines.” Hunt shook his head in confirmation. “Our parents are probably losing whatever was left of their sanity right now as you guys argue over … well, whatever the fuck it is you’re actually arguing about!” I threw up my hands in case they’d missed my growing agitation, and winced when that movement pulled at my IV line and injuries. I was guessing my chest wounds weren’t as far along in their recovery as my friends’.

Layla’s eyes glistened as she redirected her glare at me. Right then, with how pink they suddenly were, her eyes appeared more blue than their usual gray. “Why do you think I’m spewing so much bullshit?” she asked in a high pitch.

“Because you usually do?” Brady suggested.

She whipped her glower over to him, but the next second it was back on me. “I’m losing my ever-loving shit over here too, you know. What the fuck? I mean, WHAT THE FUCK? We all just got gunned down at school. Gunned the fuck down. How … what … how does that even happen? What the fuck is happening with our lives?”

Her tone was getting increasingly squeaky. Hunt reached over to pat her forearm, and Brady’s shoulders slumped.

“Not only did they kill me,” she went on, “but they messed with the people I fucking love the shit out of. I am gonna murder the motherfucker responsible the very second I set eyes on him, and then I’m gonna pray he somehow comes back to life just so I can do it all over again. And then I’m gonna piss on him, boy style. I’m gonna stand right over him and splash all over his stupid face. And then maybe I’ll set him on fire. I dunno. I’m still deciding on that last bit.”

“Hell, yes,” Brady growled. “That man’s got no idea who he messed with.”

“He messed with family ,” Hunt snarled in that stoically quiet way of his that carried so much strength despite a low volume. “ My family .”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Griffin said in a rolling grumble of menace. “I had to watch you all die,” he seethed. “Every single one of you. I had to watch it happen, knowing I couldn’t stop it.” He shook his head. “You were all lying there, dead, dead, dead, fucking dead, and I was the only one left. Just me. I will never forgive him for that. He’s gonna pay in flesh.”

“Right on,” Brady said. “We’ll make him pay together.”

“Together,” the remaining four of us chorused as if it had been planned.

“We’re always in it all together, through thick and thin. Now, even through death,” Griffin echoed before opening his mouth as if to say more. He stared off into space for several beats, then glanced over at me.

Oh no . His eyes were as intense as I’d ever seen them.

Turning from me, he looked from Brady to Hunt to Layla. “Actually, that’s why I have to say something. Now that Lay brought it up in her special way.” He chortled.

“Damn right,” Layla interjected.

“There’s something I’ve gotta tell you all.”

No, no, no, no, no . He wasn’t about to say something about him and me, was he? No, no, no . He couldn’t mess things up, especially not now when we had a billionaire mofo to murder. Talk about some group bonding.

“Griff,” I warned, unsure there was reason to. Though his expressions were as familiar to me as my own, maybe I was reading him wrong this time.

He kept his stare pinned on our friends and, without looking, reached behind him to grab my hand. He knew right where it was, and he laced his fingers through mine.

Although he’d touched me thousands upon thousands of times over our years growing up together, my hand zinged as if with pins and needles.

Then, like it wasn’t going to blow up our world, in a steady voice he announced, “I’m in love with Joss.”