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He hugs me close. “Bravest dude.” He kisses my hair. “Don’t forget it. Ever.”
We stay at the party just a few more minutes. Then we walk toward the garage. Vance stops as we near his atrium.
“Hey, you want to go outside and see the flags they talked about?” Everyone stuck rainbow flags on the front lawn, or so we were told.
“Yeah. I think I do.”
We step outside and find the whole lawn covered.
“Wow.”
Vance drapes an arm around me. I’m a mess. I wipe my eyes.
We take the path that leads to the sidewalk in front of the church and stroll for a minute. “Could you ever live here?” I ask, turning toward him. “Anywhere around here?”
Vance snorts. “Could I live in one of the best places in the country? If I decided that I should so I could be near you? That’s an easy one.”
With my back to the road beside us, I take both of his hands. “Vance Rayne, I don’t know what I’d do—”
I stop because his face is stretching into the Vance version of The Scream. There’s a low roar—a rev—and then I’m shoved so hard, I topple face first toward the sea of flags.
By the time I get up, it’s already after.
Vance is on his back in the grass between street and sidewalk, his eyes blinking quickly at the dark sky, his mouth opening and closing. I notice his arm is bent behind him weirdly. I hear shouting. There’s a car parked just a little bit in front of us. Someone’s shouting at us through its window. I’m so focused on Vance, I don’t even process that.
I drop down beside him in the grass, my whole body tossed into some transcendental realm—my hands shaking so much I can barely get them to reach for him—my soul racked by the most primal terror.
“Vance?”
His eyes are wide and dazed. His mouth is bloody.
My hand touches his forehead. “Vance? Are you okay?”
He tries to answer me, I guess. That’s how he ends up choking on a mouthful of his own blood. I push my hand back into his hair, draw it back because it’s warm and sticky.
“Vance?” My eyes fly from his gray face to the screaming moron, who jumps back into his car. The car that hit Vance. A wave of helpless fury fills me—so much so that I don’t look back down until my Vance’s eyes are closing.
“Vance! OPEN YOUR EYES!” I shake him, and he starts to choke again. I stand up, fall down to my knees. I don’t know what to do! “Please! Vance please Vance please Vance please...” His eyes squeeze more tightly shut. A tear slips out. “Vance! You gotta look at me! I love you.” At that, his eyelids flutter.
There are people running up behind us.
“Do you see those tire tracks?”
“—heard that loud rev—”
“—someone sped off—”
“Pastor!”
“Vance!” I shake him hard, and—nothing. “Vance, please!”
I grab onto his shoulders and drag him into my lap. “Oh Vance, no. Please, please…no, no, no.” Someone is sobbing. Then someone is screaming.31Luke“Luke?” Something soft and warm rubs my back. I recoil from the touch, lift my head from the bed.
“Hey.” It’s Pearl again. Her palm traces a circle on my shoulder, and I grit my teeth to keep from screaming. “I brought soup. And more clothes. Just in case you want to shower? Or have something to eat? The soup is good. It’s more—”
“No.”
I can’t see her—she’s in the plastic chair that’s slightly behind mine—but I can see her face in my imagination. Wide eyes, parted lips. Oh. So surprised.
“Thank you Pearl.” I let my breath out slowly. Inhale through my nose, holding the air in my lungs for a second before slowly releasing. I shut my eyes and try to sound more human. “Thank you. You can go now.”
“Luke, it’s been two days and—”
“You can go now.”
“You smell like a wild boar.”
My lips twitch before I press them flat. “Later.”
“There’s still blood on your shirt.”
“And his hair.” I don’t mean to say those words aloud, but I do, and Pearl sees them for what they are—a crack in my fortress.
“I don’t think he much cares. He would wash it out if he could. He would tell your wild boar self to get a freaking shower.”
I rearrange my arms on the side of his bed and push my face into them, the warm skin of my forehead seeming hotter than it really is when pressed against the cool skin of my bicep.
“Just be honest, why don’t you? If Vance could see you right now, he would hate it.”
Beeps and whooshes, clicks and snuffs and squeaks and hums fill up the silence in between us. Music of the ICU. The silent drips of IV medication into tubes that disappear into his body give me something to watch when I can’t stand to rest my eyes on his face, on his gauze-wrapped head and taped, half-open mouth and tube- and on his gorgeous body, propped in such an odd position, held at the right angle by pillows and rolled up towels.
