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The rain pounds down on us, heavier than ever. I don’t know where Adrik is going—only that we can’t ride far in this weather. I can’t see in front of us, I don’t even know if he’s following the SUV.
After only a minute or two, he makes a sharp turn, then pulls to a halt in the narrow space between a silver bullet trailer and a filthy brick wall.
I sit up, looking in his face for the first time.
We stare at each other, water running down our faces, shivering, freezing.
Then Adrik seizes my face in his hands and kisses me.
The pain is excruciating. My lip bleeds everywhere. My jaw aches.
Still I kiss him and kiss him, taking in as much of him as I can. I want his taste and his scent, I’m desperate for it in the drowning rain.
I kiss him like I’ll never get enough. I know I never will.
His hands are all over my body, as warm and strong as ever they’ve been. When he reaches a part that’s too painful, I cry out, and he tries to touch me gently, but it’s impossible. We’ve been apart too long.
We don’t stop until I realize he’s bleeding all down his side.
“You were hit!” I cry.
“So were you.”
He points to the deep groove on my left arm.
“It grazed me.” I try to peer at the wound through the blood and rain. “Or it went right through.”
I remember the bite on my calf and examine that too, but it proves to be only a pencil-thick splinter of wood kicked up from the floor. Adrik pulls it out.
“We’d better go inside,” he says. “Before we fucking freeze.”
We limp into the trailer, the steps creaking beneath our combined weight.
Jasper, Vlad, Andrei, Hakim, and Chief are already inside.
Once we’re up the steps, Misha slams the door behind us and locks it. She turns off the neon sign and most of the interior lights, plunging us into a cozy darkness illuminated only by the lamp over Alla’s prep station and the soft golden glow of the jukebox in the corner.
Vlad has ripped the sleeve off his shirt to make a tourniquet around his thigh. He’s sitting in a vinyl booth, eating a plate of Alla’s fries, ignoring the small puddle of blood around his boot.
Andrei and Alla are fussing over Hakim. Hakim sits at the counter so Alla can examine his shoulder. She clicks her tongue in dismay, trying to roll the sleeve of his shirt up over his shoulder without hurting him. She dyed her hair bright green since the last time I saw her. It suits her.
When she goes hunting for a first-aid kit, Hakim throws me the delighted grin of a little kid at his first birthday party. He resumes his expression of pained anguish as soon as Alla reemerges.
Chief sits down beside Misha and starts leafing through her science textbooks, asking her questions so complicated that I can’t understand either of them.
Adrik and I sink into Jasper’s booth. Jasper regards me wryly, the bones on his knuckles resting against the tattooed molars and mandible on his jaw.
“So you’re back,” he says.
“Yeah. Is that okay?”
“God, I hope so,” he says, jerking his head at Adrik. “He’s been a fucking mess without you.”
“Have you?” I say, turning to Adrik. “You looked so hot when you showed up Krystiyan’s house … it made me feel like shit.”
“I was dying inside, believe me.”
“So was I.” I take his hand and press his knuckles to my swollen lips. “Every fucking day.”
