Bound to You

”Where the fuck is Leana? Why won’t anyone let me see her? Why won’t anyone tell me what’s going on?”

“You haven’t told him yet?” Eliza’s voice asked Matt silently as she too stepped into Leigh’s small cubicle. She barely passed a glance at the injured girl before going back to looking at Matt and Val, who had both gone as pale as the sheets covering each of the cots.

“We knew he’d react badly, so we chose to wait until he was fully awake and aware.” Matt told her, meeting her gaze carefully. “We didn’t want to risk him going in to shock and comatose like Johnny did for awhile.”

“What happened to—“ Leigh started, before Eliza looked over at her, irritation all over her eyes. She had kept her distance from Leigh for a reason—she didn’t trust the redheaded, blue-eyed girl Johnny had coincidentally met the day he’d escaped from Sean. She may not be a vampire, and she may not know anything about the security the guys were keeping, but if there was anything she could do, it was mistrust people. As far as she was concerned, Leigh was guilty until proven innocent, and she was going to make her thoughts clear right here and now.

“Butt out, Leigh.” Eliza told her sharply, cutting the girl off. “First of all, you don’t even know Jimmy. You have no place in this conversation. Secondly, none of us here except for Johnny trusts you one-hundred percent. Some of may be friendly with you,” She said, nodding at Val and smiling at her, letting her know that she wasn’t mad at her. “But you’re not totally out of the clear.”

Matt stood there, not saying anything as Eliza ripped Leigh a new one. By the end of her short speech, Leigh was close to tears, the corners of her mouth wobbling just slightly. Eliza rolled her eyes at the sight, and then turned to look at Matt. “I know I don’t know what goes on here all the time, either, and that sometimes I get a little ahead of myself. But she needed to be told that she’s not above suspicion.”

Matt nodded, understanding what she meant before he cleared his throat. Jimmy was screaming again, his words jumbled in indecipherable sentences, and he knew that someone needed to confront his friend quickly before the tall man did any serious, permanent damage to himself.

“I’ll go talk to him.” Brian said quietly from the outside of the cubicle, sticking his head in and looking at Matt, his chocolate brown eyes somber. “He might listen to me.”

Matt nodded, pushing a hand over his cropped hair before looking at Eliza and Val. “We should leave her here alone.” He suggested before looking at Leigh, who said nothing at the sentence. “Zack will have to come have a talk with her, as well. It’s about time we figured out just where her loyalties will lie.”

“Matt, she’s still quite weak.” Val said softly. “Perhaps we should wait for a day, maybe two?”

Matt shook his head, causing the blonde woman to sigh, though the look in her eyes said she trusted Matt’s decision. “We can’t, Val. We need to figure out who the rat is.”

Eliza walked out of the room quickly before trying to find Zack before Matt. She had seen something flash in Leigh’s eyes when Matt had said Zack was going to talk to her; something had changed. Eliza knew the girl was hiding something, she just wasn’t sure what it was. She found Zack sitting on the cot, his eyes closed as he rested for a few moments.

“Zack, we need to talk.” Eliza whispered, her voice urgent. “Leigh’s hiding something.”

Zack sat up, looking on either side of him to make sure no one was within hearing distance. When he confirmed that no one was there, he pulled Eliza onto his lap and moved his mouth to her ear, making it look as though they were flirting rather than having a real discussion.

“What’s up with her?” He murmured, moving his hands to her back. She fought the urge to be distracted by his touch, knowing that she needed to let him know her suspicions before something happened that would hurt them all.

“I don’t know.” She whispered back, pushing her hand through his rumpled black hair. She inhaled his scent quickly, taking a deep breath; he smelled of Marlboro’s cigarettes and a woodsy scent she didn’t recognize. It was an intoxicating combination for her, and she found it harder and harder as each second on his lap passed by to keep her thoughts focused on Leigh.

“What are you suspicious of?” He asked her, stopping his touching for just a few moments. He too was becoming distracted, and right now, they couldn’t let that happen. Not only were they essentially visible by everyone in the complex, but they had larger issues at stake than satisfying their sexual needs.

“I’m not sure, Zack,” She replied quietly. “I just know that I saw something in her eyes change when Matt mentioned your name. I think she knows something. I don’t know if she’s guilty, but she has information. She might be being used.”

Suddenly a gunshot rang out, and both Eliza and Zack shot up, running towards the direction the sound had come from; the area where Leigh, Johnny, and Jimmy’s cots were set up.

“Jimmy, put the gun down.” Eliza heard Brian’s voice say calmly when she and Zack reached the area. Eliza thought she saw a shadowed figure leaving one of the sheeted-off areas, but this was no time to pay attention to what the other guys were doing.

“No! I will not put the fucking gun down!” Jimmy screamed at Brian, his voice erratically high as he let the gun fire off again, this time the bullet shooting a small hole in the ceiling.

“We’ve got to stick together, man.” Brian said, his voice still soothingly calm. He was holding his hands in front of him; Eliza only then realized that Brian was standing less than four feet away from Jimmy, who was sweating and bleeding profusely. “We’ll get him back for this, Jimmy. You know we will. Now, just put the gun down, and we’ll figure out a plan. Okay?”

“No!” Jimmy yelled at him, shaking his head. Eliza studied his face. She was surprised by the emotions she found. Instead of looking homicidal, as she’d thought he was, he appeared to be suicidal instead. His clear blue eyes, which she’d never seen looking anything short of happy and mischievous were now sorrowful, brokenhearted-looking. The hand he was using to hold the gun shook slightly as he held the heavy metal object.

“Leana wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself, Jimmy.” Brian told the tall man. “She wouldn’t want you to join her in death. She’d want you to—“

“Stop talking about her! You don’t know what she would have wanted! You don’t know what she would have said about this! It’s the only way I have to be with her again, Brian!”

“You’re right. I don’t know what she would have wanted, or what she would have said. But tell me this, Jimmy. Was Leana a selfish person? Because if she was—and I never, not once in the 10 years that I knew her, thought she was—she would ask you to kill yourself. So, was she selfish, Jimmy?”

The gun wobbled a little bit as Jimmy tried to lift it towards his head, but he stopped at Brian’s words. “Don’t talk about her like that, Brian! You know she wasn’t fucking selfish! She was the most giving person I ever fucking knew!”

“Then she wouldn’t want you to do this.” Brian restated, his tone of voice suggesting that he was becoming irritated with his friend. “She’d tell you to put the fucking gun down, get back onto that cot, and let Val help you fucking heal up.”

Eliza’s breath hitched in her throat as the next few moments played out. She watched as Brian took two slow steps closer to Jimmy before extending his hand towards the one Jimmy was holding the gun with. Several seconds later, she took a deep breath of relief when Jimmy let Brian take it, nearly collapsing on the floor in sheer heartbreak before Brian grabbed his shoulders, stopping him from falling to the ground. She watched as Jimmy cried, his tears soaking into Brian’s black and white pinstriped shirt, his eyes clenched shut as he tried in vain to stop the tears from falling.

Eliza felt tears welling up in her own eyes when she heard the tall man whimpering in pain she’d never felt; a heart-wrenching pain, the kind of pain that someone could only feel when they lost the person who was an extension of themselves.