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“Why?” I see her say it in a lightning flash.
“I don’t know. Maybe your leg will fall off if I lift you off the ground.”
“Itwon’t, you asshole.”
“Okay.” I move to her side, stick my arms underneath her body, and gather her up. Lily’s head drops to my shoulder. She’s sodden, covered in mud, and she’s small in my arms. She’s like a broken bird. More sobs shudder through her shoulder blades like she might still take flight.
“I thought I could get away,” she says, miserable.
“You did great.”
“Shut up.”
Rain batters my shoulders and arms on the walk to the cabin. In my rush to find her, I didn’t turn on any lights. Good thing I know where it is, because the rain is heavy enough to hide it.
Lily shivers and tries to fold herself closer to my body. I help her, my chest aching with relief and with a sadness I didn’t expect. It’s amazing to hold her like this instead of carrying her over my shoulder as a captive.
I know I’m not supposed to think of her as anything other than a means to an end, but…
I can’t do it tonight.
I’ll start again in the morning.
“Snowball was worried about you.” It’s an excuse to lean down, to get my lips closer to her skin. “He was losing his shit that you were gone.”
She’s silent for a few steps while the storm circles in the sky above us.
“What about you?” she asks.
Sirens. I’m surrounded by sirens. Alarms, everywhere, warning me not to do this, not to cross this line.
Too late.
“I was losing my shit, too.”
14
LILY
So…that didn’t work out.
I got to the end of the dirt driveway and went right based on absolutely nothing, and tripped over a piece of gravel.
My first flight as a winged creature of the night ended with an awkward hop, followed by a collapse to my knees in the mud, topped off with crawling the last few feet to a giant tree.
Jameson walks back to his cabin like we’re walking through a war zone, determined but careful, pushing through the most stinging rain I’ve ever felt in my life. I force my eyes open after a few minutes and I’m surprised when the cabin appears in a flash of lightning. The storm is making the entire world disappear, showing us glimpses of it when we’re most in danger of dying by electrocution.
Things keepthwacking against the ground.
“What is that?” I ask into Jameson’s neck. “Are those birds?”
“Jail,” he answers.
“What?”
“Hail,” he shouts. Then, quieter, almost drowned out by the rain: “Could’ve hit you.”
“It didn’t,” I point out, but he doesn’t answer.
