Chapter 144 You all deserve to burn!

Chapter 144 You all deserve to burn!
Tegan

I headed straight for the ambulance. The wail of a secondary police siren echoed from the main gates, but right here, in the restricted loading bay beneath the stadium, the only sound was the metallic rumble of an ambulance gurney.

My feet carried me entirely on raw, stubborn instinct toward the open back doors of the emergency truck.

Noah was lying flat on the elevated ambulance bed, a neck brace stabilizing his spine, his face looking like an absolute, broken ruin.

Hayes’s bare, tattered knuckles had done catastrophic structural damage to his skull, his nose was packed with bloody gauze, his left eye swollen shut into a deep, bruising purple mass, and his lip was split wide open. He looked like shit. He was shaking, a sterile white blanket draped over his uniform, making him look like a mummy.

Sophie and Charlie were already standing at the edge of the vehicle, their shadows cutting through the flashing red lights.

Charlie looked like a ghost, her hands shoved deep into her furry jacket pockets, while Sophie stood stone-faced, her fingers tightly clutching the broken cloner motherboard. The evidence of Noah Fieldstone being Tessa Bloom.

"Wait," I commanded, my voice dropping into an ice-cold, quiet register as I stepped up to the back of the ambulance, stopping the two paramedics right as they were about to lift the gurney into the truck. The medics hesitated, looking at my oversized jersey and the curve of my pregnant belly, before stepping back just enough to give us room.

Noah turned his head slowly, his single open eye widening with a frantic, desperate panic the second he locked onto my face. Even with his face covered in blooming crimson stains, he instantly tried to pull his shattered "nice-guy" mask back over his features. He looked at me with a watery, trembling gaze, his voice cracking through his broken teeth.

"Tegan... please," he choked out, coughing as a trail of dark blood leaked past the gauze. "You have to tell them. Tell the police. I’m being set up. I'm not running any anonymous account, and I swear to God I didn't attack you in your apartment. I’m just a hockey player, Tegan. I’m your friend. Someone is trying to tear us apart."

A low, entirely humorless laugh escaped my lips, the sharp sound cutting through the flashing sirens like a scalpel. I stepped directly onto the metal step of the ambulance, my sharp wit locking the parameters of the confrontation down with absolute, untouchable authority. He still had the nerve to deny it. Even after being caught.

"Drop the act, Noah," I scoffed, my voice completely steady, devoid of a single drop of pity.

"Your time is over, the feds are waiting at the campus gates, and you're still lying to me. We aren't guessing anymore. While you were out on that ice. The school called the detective in charge of the case. They breached your room back at the hockey house. They found the hard drives, the proxy routing units, the secondary server lines, and every single piece of encryption hardware they needed to prove you're the hacker. We know you're Tessa Bloom."

Noah blinked rapidly, his chest expanding violently against the gurney straps as the sheer velocity of his panic broke through his facade. "No... no, that's a mistake! I didn't do it! I don't have any systems in my room! Someone put them there, Tegan! You have to believe me, I would never hurt you—"

"Shut the fuck up" I fiercely snapped, stepping closer into his space, my hands tightly clenching the metal railing of his bed.

"Don't you dare play the victim. You threatened people, you leaked my pregnancy to humiliate me, and you've been terrorizing this entire campus from the shadows while sitting in our support meetings smiling. Completely fooling all of us."

"You don't know anything!" Noah suddenly shrieked, his composure completely, violently fracturing as his voice turned into a raw, agonizing roar that shattered the remaining fragments of his sweet-boy persona. That's it, show me your true colors, you fucking cameleon.

He thrashed against the gurney straps, a manic, demonic fury flaring in his single eye as he screamed right into my face. "You rich, untouchable, arrogant elite kids have absolutely no idea what real pain feels like! You think I give a fuck about your cyber-harassment rules? I came to this goddamn campus for one single reason, to find my brother! To find Ethan!"

Charlie let out a sharp, ragged sob behind me, her hands flying to her mouth as she trembled against the brick wall.

"Only to find out…..Ethan is dead!" Noah screamed, his voice cracking under a suffocating weight of grief and vengeance as the tears finally spilled over his shattered cheekbones, mixing with the blood.

"He died in the freezing dark because of your sick stupid party, a fucking useless initiation. And his memory was long forgotten by this entire university before his body was even cold! The administration buried his files under millions of dollars of legal settlements! The police wouldn't help me! I couldn't get justice because the school bought the fucking judges! Just to cover up their name. I had to change my legal name from Fieldstone just to bypass the gate security and live under the same roof as the animals who killed him!"

He spit blood onto the gurney blanket, his chest heaving as he glared at the three of us with pure, unadulterated venom. "Nobody in this world gets to judge me! Nobody! And even your bitch friend, who killed him. Acting like some fucking saint—”

“It was an accident!” Charlie screamed at his face.

“Was it?” He asked letting out a dark chuckle while trying to hide his physical pain.

“I don't regret a single fucking second of the terror I put you through! You all deserved to burn!" He screamed back.

"Noah, look at what you've done!" I screamed back through my own tears, my heart violently slamming against my ribs as our words collided like weapons in the dark loading bay.

"Are you happy now? Was this how you imagined it was going to be after your grand revenge plan. Hm? You ruined your own life for a vendetta!"

"Yes I'm fucking happy. Seeing you all frustrated gives me a massive amount of joy!" he roared back, his face turning a furious, manic crimson under the red flashing strobes.

"Enough," the lead paramedic barked, stepping forward with a stone-cold expression and physically shoving me off the ambulance step.

"The patient is unstable. We’re moving."

With a heavy, mechanical clang, the paramedics slammed the gurney legs into place, lifting the bed completely into the rear hull of the vehicle.

Noah was still thrashing against the straps, his bleeding, broken face illuminated by the harsh interior light of the truck, his single eye staring at me with a terrifying promise of absolute destruction.

The heavy, reinforced double doors of the ambulance slammed shut, cutting his final, manic roar in half.

The driver hit the ignition, the monstrous diesel engine revving violently before the truck tore out of the loading bay, its red and blue lights throwing long, sweeping shadows across the concrete walls as it vanished into the dark night.

I stood alone on the pavement, my chest expanding in ragged, shallow gasps, my hands tightly clutching the warm curve of my stomach as the long night finally claimed its final, empty victory in the absolute silence of the loading dock.