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Keep telling yourself that, kid.
Kade takes a corner so fast the right side of the car’s wheels leave the ground, but he doesn't care. He has to get back to the dorms, get back to Elara, before it’s too late.
It’s been too late since you decided to stalk her. It’s been too late since the night at the falls. It’s been too late since she enrolled in college!
He turns his stereo up as loud as he can get it. Rock music blares, so loud his ears feel like they’re bleeding, but finally he can’t hear himself think. Finally, there’s silence in his mind, and he can focus on what he needs to do and not his overflowing lists of regrets.
Kade’s tires screech as he pulls into the parking lot at the dorms. He jumps out of the car without even turning it off and runs towards Elara’s building. He takes the steps to the front doors two at a time and rips them open, plowing through a group of young girls who were just about to walk out.
“Not cool, dude! No chick’s worth that much angst!” one of them yells, but he ignores her. The steps to the upper floors are to the right, zigzagging up and up to the fourth floor where he’ll find Elara. He makes it to her door, not even thinking about what he’s going to say or how he’ll explain himself, and knocks loudly.
No answer.
He knocks again, so hard he can feel the door reverberate under his fist.
Still now answer.
He rears back and kicks the door in. It breaks and splinters, falling on the ground in a heap of hardware and broken wood.
“Dude, what the hell?” Kade hears from behind him, but it doesn’t matter.
He steps through the threshold of Elara’s dorm room for the first time and is encased in the smell ofher.Warm amber lotion sits open on her bedside table, her blankets ruffled and unmade on her bed. There’s food plated, untouched, and cold in her kitchenette, but there’s no sign of the woman herself.
“Umm, hello, psycho?”
Kade turns, glaring at a very tall woman behind him. He expects to look down, but ends up looking up, and up. This woman could be a linebacker, but where she’s tall and strong, she’s also beautiful with long white blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
“Elara isn’t here, and thank god she isn’t. What do you want from her, little psycho? I swear if you’re planning on hurtingher…” The behemoth of a woman lets her voice trail off as she cracks her neck and pops her knuckles at eye level with his face.
“Where is she?” Kade snarls, squaring up to her.
“Far the hell away from you, psycho!” the giantess snarls right back.
“You don’t understand, it’s a matter of life and death!”
She narrows her eyes, and he sees a flicker of doubt flash in them for a moment before her shoulders sag. “She hasn’t come back from her parent’s place yet, I?—”
“Thank you!” Kade shouts, slipping past her and dashing down the hallway and back down the stairs as fast as he can.
“Hey, asshole, what about her door?” the giantess screams behind him, but there’s no time to answer.
Elara is out there, alone, terrified. She’ll be in pain like she’s never known, and she deserves an explanation. She deserves to be prepared for this.
Shedeservesto never have met him.
10
Elara
Elara leans out her window, drawing in a steady breath. Except it doesn’t help. Her entire body aches, and she has no idea why. She was going to get her stuff together tonight, get ready to move back into her college room. But at the moment she's in too much pain to even consider trying to leave.
She squints, angling her head to gaze up at the moon. Her vision starts to turn yellow, and for a second she thinks it’s the windowpane tinting the view. But the window’s open. There’s nothing between her and the world beyond. And when she lifts her hand in front of her face, the yellow is on her skin as well. Breathing a little faster, she turns and narrows her eyes at her bed, and the strange filter turns her sheets a sort of jaundiced tan color.
It’s her, not her surroundings.
Suddenly, Elara doubles over with a gasp. Pain roars through her body, so deeply ingrained it feels like it’s starting in her marrow. She stares in horror as first her fingers, then the bones of her wrist flex and twist, agony burning through every joint. She clamps a hand over her mouth with a gasp, fighting tocontain her screams as they claw their way up her throat. If she does, her parents will come running, and there’s no way that she’ll be able to explain what’s happening to her. She doesn’t even know herself.
There are more snaps and crackles. Surely it can’t be her bones. This time they’re in her feet and hands, as if something’s rearranging itself in there. Elara stumbles across her bedroom. She has to get out of the house before something even worse happens. She can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is happening to her. Something dangerous. She can’t be around her parents right now.
