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“I’ll take you there,” Donnelly says swiftly, wiping at his reddened lips. They must sting like mine. We weren’t that gentle.
“You sure?” I ask softly.
“Can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.” He shrugs like it’s a simple statement, but it really swells inside me.
I text Kinney that I’m on my way as I follow Donnelly out of our disco-mirror space haven. We go up a wide flight of stairs, stealing glances at one another.
He’s SB. I let that roll around in my head again. SB doesn’t exist. Not in the way I imagined, at least. SB was some guy on the internet that my dad didn’t actively hate. I’m not upset Donnelly is SB. The opposite actually. It feels like fated spools of thread. But now that I know my dad would hate SB and Donnelly, since they are one and the same, a wave of protectiveness crashes into me.
“I don’t want anyone to ruin this,” I suddenly whisper to him.
His eyes crinkle at me. “How do you mean?”
“My dad, my brother—I just want this to feel as good as it does tomorrow.” I try not to look at my feet. “What we have, I don’t want them to ruin it.”
“Yeah,” he whispers with a heavy nod, understanding. “I’ve never been in love before, and the idea of someone coming in and trying to murder that isn’t sitting well with me either. Plus, I don’t like…” He exhales a strained breath. “I don’t like putting you in a bad place with your family.”
“If it happens, it won’t be your fault,” I whisper, but that doesn’t make him ease any. “I’m a good secret-keeper.” I hook my pinky with his as we ascend the stairs.
His pinky hooks mine tighter.
When we climb into the dusty, dark attic, I call out, “Kinney?!” I hear nothing, and I expect a fierce shhh! in return, but it’s quiet. I walk along the creaky floorboards and peer behind a mannequin. Trunks are locked shut, and an old, deflated football lies among an even older baseball bat. “It doesn’t look like they’ve been here.”
“No candles,” Donnelly frowns. “They must be in the other attic.”
“There are two attics—” I cut myself off as my foot plunges into a floorboard. “Shit.” I wince in pain and try to wiggle free.
Donnelly rushes to my side. “Hold still, Luna.” He touches my ankle and tries to help me lift my foot. I’m wearing sandals, and a piece of the board has dug into my skin, pain flaring. He touches his mic at his collar. “Farrow to Donnelly, you there?”
My face flames, trying not to get upset at the turn of my luck.
“The attic,” Donnelly says. “Yeah, I need you. Okay.” He drops the mic. “Shh, shh, Luna.” He wipes my cheeks as tears leak.
“It’s the Hale Curse,” I look him in the eye. “Everything that could go wrong will go wrong to a Hale.”
“No, it’s not,” he says with pain in his face.
“It is—”
“I’m the one who made that up,” he interjects fast.
I shake my head, confused.
“The Hale Curse,” Donnelly says. “I made that phrase up a long time ago. There’s the origin. Me. I called your family the Bad Luck Crew—”
“Because you know it’s true.”
“I know I’m just as likely to meet bad shit as you are, but the two of us are the same.” He holds my hand strongly, lifting our fists up. “We don’t ever give up, even when it feels like we should. You wanna outrun a curse, that’s how. You’ve already been doing it, and you didn’t even know it.”
I take a soft breath. “How do we outrun this one if my foot is stuck?”
He smiles off mine. “I’m gonna get you outta here.” Digging his hands further in the hole, he gently tries to pry wood away from my ankle.
While he’s crouched, I hold on to his back, so I don’t keel over. Further out of the attic, I hear shrieks and screams in the distance.
“Kinney,” I murmur. The girls got scared, and I strain my ears and hear laughter that sounds a lot like Eliot and Tom. I’d know it from anywhere, and I picture them scaring the youngest girls in the secondary attic.
“Can you move it at all?” Donnelly asks.
I wiggle my foot a little, pain against my shin. “Not really. Let me try—” I try shifting in a weird direction at the same time that he plants another knee down, and the floor groans beneath our weight.
He wraps his arms around me as the floor caves under our bodies. My whole world rotates as Donnelly forces my weight on top of him.
We fall a short distance. His back thuds on squeaky springs of a butterfly-quilted bed, and I’m on his chest.
I wanted to stop floating and to crash-land. I just didn’t think it’d be a literal one. Through a ceiling.
