The last time I’d seen that flesh it had been a charred crisp that flaked off the bone. Or perhaps worse, it had been covered in red boils and blisters, the meat beneath the skin not yet cooked. The smell … oh God, the smell. Too reminiscent of putrid barbecue when I knew I was smelling the burnt body of the man I loved.
His car—this car, sort of—had blown up like a cask of gunpowder. The explosion had brightened the night more than the plumpest moon. There’d been nothing to dampen the senses, to disguise the visceral signs that Griffin was burning with us mere feet away and unable to do a single damn thing to prevent it. The adrenaline that pumped through my veins had made the sizzling smell, the popping and crackling of the consuming fire, the taste of meat in the suddenly sweltering night air, and the sight of the Mustang reducing to its steel skeleton all the more vivid.
“Stop the car,” I mumbled on a cresting wave of nausea.
Already slowing, Griffin’s eyes were on me immediately. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Fuck no, I’m not okay. I’ll probably never be okay again.
With my hand hovering around my mouth, I said the first thing I could think of for our invisible audience’s benefit. “A rock. In the tire. On my side.”
Griffin’s eyebrows arched at the glaring absence of the clicking against the pavement that signaled said stone lodged in the tread of a tire.
“Pulling over,” he said.
The moment he drew to a complete stop on the shoulder—I’d never jump out of a moving vehicle again, thank you very much—I hopped out, bolting for the nearest bramble of bushes.
I puked, heaved, then puked again before I finally realized I was shaking, and that at some point Griffin had begun rubbing a soothing hand over my back, not saying anything, just being there for me like he always was.
When I couldn’t bring up even bile anymore, I staggered away from the patch of vomit and collapsed onto my butt on the grass. Griffin lowered himself next to me, still rubbing my back, still waiting. When I swiveled to point my face away from the curious looks of passing drivers, he turned with me.
“You okay, baby?” he eventually asked, his voice deep as always, but as calming as a swaddling blanket. I could wrap myself up in the sexy lull of his voice and remain there forever.
I shook my head, tucking some of my loose strands behind my ears. “I must’ve eaten something that didn’t sit well.” My voice was a croak, inconsistent with my first story of a stone in the tire.
“Don’t worry. I’ll remember to check the tire before we get back on the road,” Griffin said.
He’d always been sharp. Didn’t matter that he’d essentially been thrown into the deep end without knowing how to swim. He was treading water like a champ regardless.
“I’m only worried about you right now.”
“I’ll be fine,” I lied. “Just need to catch my breath for a few, that’s all.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder, breathing in his fragrance: his usual soap that reminded me of fresh, crisp mountain air, and today the faint scent of sawdust and leather, as if he’d been working on cars, not coming back from the dead. I willed this smell—of him so wonderfully alive—to overwrite the memory of his burning flesh.
I shuddered.
“Hey,” he soothed, rubbing a hand along my thigh. “I need to get you home.”
“No,” I said, too fast, too forcefully.Homewas the place our not-parents lived, though it seemed he wouldn’t know that.
“I’ll stay with you.”
I was shaking my head again but had to stop when another wave of nausea rolled through me.
“I don’t have to stay with you if you don’t want,” Griffin offered.
I squeezed his hand. “Of course I want you to stay with me. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” He bit his lip, probably remembering how I told him our conversations weren’t our own.
“Like I said, just something I ate.”
I sucked in a fortifying breath, rubbed my tongue along my teeth—no longer minty fresh, yuck.
I told him.
He stiffened but didn’t say anything. Whether that was because he didn’t know how to or because of the gravity of the news he likely wasn’t expecting, I didn’t know.
