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He chortles. “Now you’re just getting sappy.”
“No, I mean it,” I say. “If you weren’t here right now, I don’t know who I’d be or what I’d do. You’re a piece of me, one these snakes could never touch. And...” I look down as I remember the thrill of a gun in my palm. “I want you to be there to remind me of who I am if I lose sight of it. All right?”
Elijah squints, though I know he understands. He’s the only one who would understand.
He pushes my tattered hair behind my ears and cups my cheeks. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, his voice rigged and confident. “Ever. And neither are you. All right?”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “All right.”
Elijah pulls me closer and kisses my forehead. I rest my head against his chest, feeling instantly at home again.
Feeling safe.
Maybe for the last time.
Chapter 23
Lilah
Now
I wake up the next morning in my own bed with no memory of how I got here.
There’s a glass of water on the bedside table. I stare through the clear liquid, making out the familiar faces in the picture frame behind it by the lamp.
Me and my brothers when we were teenagers. Bright eyes and smiling faces. Young and full of life.
We didn’t know any better back then.
I bury my head in my pillow for another hour or so before pulling myself out of bed.
I hear the two of them talking but their voices quickly fall as soon as they hear my feet on the stairs.
Lucy meets me at the bottom and offers a kind smile. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey…” I repeat, stepping around her.
Dante sits in his chair at the kitchen table with a full plate of breakfast in front of him, but he hasn’t touched a bite of it. There’s a fresh bandage on his forehead, haphazardly placed over the cut on his left eye. I can’t help but think what Elijah would say if he saw it.
“Are you hungry?” Lucy asks me.
I shake my head. “No,” I say, plopping into the chair across from Dante.
“Coffee?”
“No.”
I don’t mean to sound rude. I know she won’t take it that way, but I still offer her an apologetic look. Lucy smiles again with understanding, quickly embracing the care-taking role. We did the same for her after her father was killed. It makes sense that she’d step up now.
She fills a glass of water and sets it down in front of me anyway before taking the seat next to Dante.
I look at the empty chair beside me. Elijah’s chair. I still feel like his feet will come skipping down the stairs at any moment. Strangely, I never want that instinct to leave me.
“We left him there,” I say, though I don’t mean to.
The words slip off my tongue before I even realize it. But what’s done is done.
Dante stares at the table. “We didn’t have a choice.”
