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I gave him a wry smile, glad he hadn’t found the words to finish that statement. Thinking about all the times the memory of him had drifted in and out of my conscious, all the times I’d prayed and dreamed for him to come for me, tosaveme…
Well, that hurt bad enough.
I didn’t need to hear it.
“I know,” I told him. “It doesn’t matter anyway though. Not anymore.”
“It matters to me that you know I would’ve done something, if I’d known.”
“I said I know.”
It was quiet between us again then, for several long seconds, making it hard to stand still.
Again.
“I’m gonna finish my run,” I said, and then took off without warning. I didn’t look back to see if he was following—of course he was following, if he was supposed to be my “protection detail”.
Something I’d already told Alicia I didn’t need.
To her credit, she’d never agreed to that.
Like Isaiah, she hadn’t known about the very private hell I’d gone through—something deeper, cruder, than the typical commitment of a Thorn or Rose. Not thatthatwas desirable either, but it was… bearable.
What wasn’t tolerable was what had come after I was taken from the Garden, before I was pulled from the clasp of evendeeperwickedness. The in-between time,thatwas the source of all my nightmares. The parts I could remember were ugly and terrifying. And the thought of what Icouldn’tremember… well, that was even scarier.
I’d been used as currency, as a cheap toy, as a vessel for… the worst things I didn’t have to imagine.
I didn’twantto remember.
I wanted to look forward andneverhave to look backward again.
Alicia wanted that too.
Insisted on it, actually, as much as she could.
My head was too fucked up to understand the gravity of it at the time, but now? Knowing what she’d taken on for my sake - mentally, emotionally,physically—to destroy the nerve center of so much of our pain…
Fine.
I wouldn’t make a fuss about the protection.
As much as I didn’t want to need it, she was probably right.
More and more, the story of thelong-lost Pelletier sisterswas a source of interest, which meant—to our chagrin—more and more eyes.
More attention.
More vulnerability.
And my penchant for running in the dark was probably not the wisest thing in the world.
So I got it.
It didn’t take me long to get home—now that I knew exactly who was following me, there was no true rhyme or reason to variating my path. If a Thorn decided he was coming into my home, there was extraordinarily little that would stop him.
And there was nothingIwould do to stopthisone.
In fact, he stopped himself, hesitating at the door of my cozy little house tucked into the Las Vegas hills. “Are you going to tell Alicia that you caught me?” he asked, barely out of breath as I bent over, panting before I keyed in the code that allowed access to my lock, then pulled the key from around my neck.
