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“We should talk sometime, sassenach,” he says, his eyes shining brightly. I try not to pay attention to the muscles in his arms or the calluses on the fingers still trailing across Danny’s back.
“Talk? Why would I ever want to talk to you?”
“Aye, good point,” he says, clucking his tongue. “It’s like words are no’ necessary when we have such a deep, magnetic connection.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Why would you want to talk to me when you think I’m the one who trashed your room?”
There’s a mysterious tilt to Finlay’s lips. “I’m no’ sure ye are.” And then he walks away, leaving me as lost as ever before. Danny shakes his head, equally bemused.
Maybe refusing to confess has done me a favor if Finlay’s starting to come around to the truth.
My fingers dance down the insides of Danny’s arm, over the jagged red incision that runs down his skin. “You haven’t… right?”
He rolls his eyes. “No, I haven’t been cutting.Theyhave. The gremlins, or whatever you called them. They’re vicious little bastards, to me especially.” He turns his arm away from me, shielding it with his hand. “You get the psychological torture, I get the physical torture.” With a shrug, he turns away from me completely. “What’s with the sassenach stuff, anyway?”
“Don’t ask.” It makes me feel all weird and wrong, the wordsassenachfrom Danny’s mouth. The chiefs calling me a sassenach in that dark, teasing murmur had been embarrassingly arousing, an intimate nickname to be used only between us. But it feels like a cold bucket of water when Danny says it out in the open.
For PE, we’re doing cross-country running. Danny keeps up with my hobbling self, taking my hand to help guide me down the steeper slopes. I’m breathless and panting not five minutes in. Finlay’s zoomed off ahead, with Luke and Rory not far behind. I try not to stare. I try not to admire. But it’s difficult in this of all subjects. Their legs are corded with muscle, and Luke’s arms areobscene— I don’t think his T-shirt is big enough to accommodate the twin bulges of his biceps. I’d always thought Rory had been an aristocratic pushover strength-wise, but his shoulders are broad and he runs like it takes no effort at all.
It takes me all the effort. At one point, our instructor jogs beside us, blowing a whistle sharply at Danny and yelling at him to stop slacking at the back. With a sorry smile at me, Danny ups his pace to as slow as he can get away with, which still manages to make him a dot on the horizon. A couple of the girls are ahead of me, but they may as well not be there for all the attention we’ve been paying each other.
I jog lightly on my ankle, wondering when this torture will come to an end. The scenery at least is a pleasant diversion, the bright green hills gleaming against the iron-gray sky. In the distance, some of the highest hills are capped with snow. My feet crunch over hard frost.
And then they’re not crunching at all, because I manage to slide down a small grassy ravine and land with a crack to my ankle.
White-hot pain surges through my cold, quivering body. All I can do is whimper, small littleowws of pain when all I want to do is scream. I’m sniffling, snuffling, making all sorts of small, quiet noises like a frightened animal. Tears sting at my eyes when I find I can’t even maneuver myself upright. Panic tears at my heart. I’m alone and lost, I’ve fallen and failed, and no one is here to save me.
There’s the crack of a branch and I twist my head in its direction, deliriously expecting to see a wolf. But there are no wolves in Scotland. Instead, I see a figure dressed head to toe in black, darting between the trees in the distance. I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same person I saw in the forest before.
“What’s happened?” The words are urgently spoken above me, and I tilt my head back to see Dr. Moncrieff’s worried face. My brow furrows. Where the hell did he come from?
But that’s the least of my concerns, because suddenly I see two figures skidding down the ravine and loping toward me. I’d only just been admiring Luke’s firm arms, and I’d recognize the wave in Rory’s hair anywhere.
Anxiety flutters high into my throat. Surely they won’t do anything with Dr. Moncrieff at my side?
“I can’t…” My voice is tiny, and for the first time I note that my leg genuinely can’t move. Every part of my body is cold and shaking apart from my leg. “My leg. I can’t…”
Near me, I hear three loud blasts of a whistle.
And then I don’t hear anything at all.
* * *
“Ye fucked up, sassenach.”
The words tickle my brain awake. Part of me is insistent that these words arewrong. A larger part of me is nodding.
Yeah. Yeah, Ihavefucked up.
In my dreams I’d been surrounded by stone, and when I open my eyes, I see more of it.
Finlay’s leaning on my bed, his vivid ink-decorated arms crossed over one another as he positions them beside me.
I could ask a million questions. What happened? Where am I? How did I get here? Instead, the first croaky words that come out of my mouth are, “Why the ink?”
Finlay stares at me like he’s trying to decipher my question. But then he follows my gaze, glancing down at the vibrant mandala patterns that stretch across his bare forearms. He holds them up for me to see in the light. It must take forever to design — a ritual of temporary ink, washed away every night, reapplied the following day.
“Ye like?” There’s a sly grin on his face as he admires the ink for himself. “Good. Because it’s better than whit was there before.”
