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Instead, I grab my backpack—pain shooting through almost every muscle, knuckle, and rib in my body—and head toward him on my way out the door.
I pause right before I pass, placing a hesitant hand on the kid’s trembling shoulder. “Fuck ’em,” I spit out, my eyes fixed on the empty hallway beyond the door and the empty life waiting for me beyond that. “Say fuck ’em and survive anyway.”
April 25
Rain
I wake from a dreamless sleep, only to find myself lying in a pitch-black nightmare.
When I sit up and blink into the darkness of the tree house, my shirt tumbles off my bare chest and lands in my lap. My right hip is sore as hell from lying on the plywood floor. I rub it absentmindedly as I wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I must have slept all the way through the afternoon and into the night. There isn’t a speck of daylight filtering in from the hallway anymore.
But I don’t need light to know that Wes is gone.
I can feel it.
His heat, his scent, his quiet, simmering intensity—all of it. Gone. The only evidence that he was even here are the clothes draped over my naked body and the pocketknife tucked into my fist.
He might as well have stabbed it into my heart.
I squeeze the textured handle as hard as I can. I squeeze it until my fingernails cut into my palm and my biceps begin to shake. I squeeze it even harder than I squeeze my eyes shut as I fight to keep the tears at bay.
Supplies. Shelter. Self-defense.
Wes left me with the last thing he thought I needed to survive.
Without him.
Stop it. Maybe he just had to pee. Maybe he went to find water.
I pull my shirt on over my head and feel around for my jeans.
Oh God. Maybe he’s in trouble.
Worry swallows my despair and sends me scrambling down the tree house ladder. I trip over my boots at the bottom, pausing just long enough to shove my feet into them.
My vision adjusts to the dark, allowing me to avoid the edges and corners of the bookshelves as I trudge past. My footsteps sound flat and heavy, as if the grief I’m carrying has actual weight.
Please let him be okay. Please, God. I’ll do anything.
The hallway is silent, except for the occasional cricket or frog, but I shatter that silence with every puddle I accidentally splash through and every broken tile I send skidding across the filthy floor.
My brain lies to me, my eyes seeing Hawaiian prints and haunting eyes in every reflection and shadow I pass. When they finally land on the fountain, I gasp as the silhouette of a man rises beside it. Hope fills my heart and then gushes out through a fresh tear when the figure lifts a rifle to his shoulder.
“Don’t shoot.” I hold my hands up. “It’s Rain.”
“Holy shit, Rain! You’re still here?” Carter’s voice echoes through the atrium as he lowers his weapon and jogs toward me.
When his long arms pull me to his chest, another wave of déjà vu from last night crashes over me. Carter hugged me like this before he knew that Wes and I were together. When he still thought I was his.
The only reason he would hug me like that now is if—
“He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Carter’s body goes stiff. Then, he nods against the top of my head.
“Nobody’s seen him since yesterday afternoon. Or you.” Carter drops his arms and takes a step back so that he can look down at me. “But here you are.”
I can’t see his face, but I know he’s smiling from the tone of his voice.
