Page 250 of Barinov

By the time the first verse begins, a curtain of rain crashes around them.

Someone whistles behind me. Another claps further down our row. I don’t turn to see who. I can’t look anywhere except at my sister.

Josh catches her as she throws herself backward into the water, her onyx hair whipping through the rain before her body melts into his strength. He steadies her, guiding her upright before she slips from his grasp.

Like she’s trying to fall.

My throat tightens as the hold on section of the chorus swells. Josh reaches for her again. This time, Bella doesn’t take his hand. She pulls away and stumbles in the rain, crashing her knees against the hard, slick stage.

A sharp breath catches somewhere behind me.

Josh kneels down beside her and offers his hand. Waiting patiently for her to take it. When Bella finally does, he helps her slowly stand.

“Healing isn’t something you rush, Zeke,” Dr. Monroe’s voice slinks back into my head from our session the other day.

A tear slips down my cheek.

Beside me, I vaguely register Lex whispering something.

I don’t answer him.

Bella spins beneath the downpour. Her arms reach toward the ceiling once before folding back around herself. For one awful second, my sister looks exactly like she did in Eden.

She looks small, broken, and all alone.

Then Josh is there again, catching her. Reminding her that someone else is here for her. That she’s not alone.

My chest aches so damn hard I have to press a fist against it as the fucking hold on chorus explodes through the speakers once more. Bella spins away from Josh one last time. She refuses to fall this time. She stands strong as her steel-gray eyes find mine across the gym and smiles.

The rain shuts off and the gym exhales in screams and cheers around me. I don’t remember standing. Or running across the gym and up onto that slippery platform to my sister.

“Bells.”

She barely has time to turn before I wrap my arms around her and lift her clean off the soaked stage.

She’s laughing through her tears. Water drips from her hair onto my shoulder.

“I’m ruining your shirt,” she sniffles.

“I don’t give a shit,” I say, my voice shaking as I set her down gently. “Thank you.”

She squeezes me tighter. “I love you, Zeke.”

A heavy hand settles on my shoulder.

I freeze.

“Yes,” his familiar voice murmurs beside my ear.

Cold floods my veins.

I know I shouldn’t look back.

But I do.

I’m greeted with Luca’s emerald eyes, sparkling in the pale-blue lights as he smiles over the both of us.

“Our Izzy did very well.”