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But.
But I have to protect myself from him.
From Dare.
I feel it now, stronger than I’ve ever felt anything.
It’s a heavy foreboding, centering my chest and spreading through every blood vessel in my body. It’s real and it’s tangible and it’s a warning.
It’s intuition.
I draw my knees to my chest and look away, taking a deep shaky breath.
“I know I sound crazy,” I admit. “I know it. But I can’t help what I feel. I have to protect myself from you. I know that much is true. My heart is telling me to be afraid of you.”
And it is. It’s telling me there’s a reason.
I feel it in my bones, in my hollow reed bones.
Dare closes his eyes, and it is minutes before he opens them, and when he does, they’re so empty, so lost.
“Fine,” he says simply. “Protect yourself from me. Hell, I’ll protect you from me. But come with me to Whitley. That’s where you’ll find the answers. There are answers to questions you haven’t even thought of yet.”
“At Whitley? Is
that where you’re from?”
I stare at Dare, at the body I love, the eyes that I can fall into, the heart that has held me up… and hidden so many secrets.
He nods like I should know that already, and it’s like the movement is painful for him. He doesn’t want to go to there, to Whitley, but he’s willing to go for me. I see that.
“Your dad wants you to go,” he adds. “Can you do it for him?”
Why would my dad want me to go to England?
Nothing makes sense.
That’s the story of my life.
The ominous feeling cripples me, almost sending me to my knees. I don’t know. I only know… if I don’t find answers, I might lose my sanity and end up just like Finn, back where I started.
The answers are at Whitley.
I exhale, realizing that I’d been holding my breath.
“Ok. I’ll go. But only if Finn comes too.”
Dare agrees immediately.
“Of course. Obviously. He needs my help, too.”
Obviously.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“We live a little ways from Hastings. It’s close to Sussex,” Dare tells me, after we land at Heathrow and drive through the country. He speaks of England as though I know anything at all about it. I nod like I do, because so much of what we say is a pretense now. We go through the motions.
Thirty minutes later, our car is still gliding over the winding ribbons of road, but I finally see a rooftop in the distance, spires and towers poking through trees.
