from his face. He lifts the other person—who I'm pretty sure is a woman—up off the ground, and the two of them take off into the woods.
Ranger stands up, cursing and bleeding from a deep gash across the chest. For the briefest moment, I forget all about my secret identity and race over to him, leaving the wig on the ground behind me.
“Are you okay?” I ask, panting hard and shaking so furiously that I feel like I might just come apart at the seams and collapse. My hands touch the bloody wound in Ranger's chest, but he seems less concerned with that, and more concerned with me.
His hand comes up, and he grips my chin hard, lifting my gaze from his chest to his face. His eyes widen, and he starts cursing again.
“I knew it! I fucking knew it!” He releases me, and my face flushes red. “Holy shit, Carson, what the hell is wrong with you?” Ranger turns away from me, pausing when he sees the rope swinging there. I'm not sure he even noticed it before. The hot, high color in his cheeks drains away, leaving him as white as a ghost. “Jesus, what the hell is all this?”
“I don't know,” I whisper, heart racing. It hasn't escaped me that Ranger Woodruff might've just saved my life. “I came outside to get some air, saw a girl bleeding on the ground … Shit!” Grabbing Ranger's hand, I yank him back through the woods and find the blue-haired chick still lying where I left her. “Get a teacher,” I bark out, and Ranger pauses, just staring down at me like he can't believe what he's seeing.
“You want everyone to know?” he asks, gesturing at me, still breathing hard. “Maybe you should change first?”
We stare at each other, and I nod, standing up and pausing for a second.
“I … thank you, Ranger—”
“Just go,” he says, breathing hard as I take off for the cabin, pushing in the door, and grabbing my discarded hoodie from the bathroom. I slip it and my jeans on over the short dress, pulling it up so that it's hidden beneath the sweatshirt's heavy folds.
A quick scrub down with some makeup remover takes care of that, and then I'm slipping my sneakers on, changing my glasses out, and heading back outside. Ranger's right there waiting for me at the bottom of the steps, and I realize he's prioritized my safety over the girl's.
I'm not exactly sure what to think about that.
“Let's go find your dad,” he says as I grab his arm hard, feeling the hard muscles taut beneath my fingers. He looks down at me with those sapphire eyes of his, and my breath explodes in a rush. I'm not even sure what the hell I was going to say in the first place.
“Okay.” That's the only thing that'll come out. I feel numb as we work out way back across the camp, only to find out the blue-haired girl is gone. Ranger and I exchange a glance, and then we both start running, back through the woods to the clearing.
The rope is gone.
“What the fuck?” he snaps, raking his fingers through his dark hair and spinning to face me. “Tell me I'm not going crazy. There was a rope here just a few minutes ago, right?”
“There was,” I start, but I don't know what to say. Ranger's chest is still bleeding, but it doesn't seem to be too bad. That's the only real proof that anything actually happened here tonight. We're both panting so badly, and there's this charge in the air, an attraction born of danger. “We really do need to find my dad then.”
Ranger nods, looking down at me again, his face tight. I imagine that we'll probably end up having a long conversation later. For now, the danger's too real, the sight of that rope stark and awful in both our mind's eyes.
On the way back, Ranger stops at his cabin and retrieves a hoodie to hide his wound. I’m not sure why. Maybe he just doesn’t want to scare anyone?
We head to the dance hall next, and there she is, the blue-haired girl sitting in one of the chairs with a drink in hand, talking with her friends. Ranger and I exchange a look before going over to stand beside her.
“Kesha,” he says, voice hard but with the slightest hint of a quaver. She glances over her shoulder at him, grimacing slightly and reaching up a hand to touch