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She’s free for less than five minutes and she’s already ridiculing me and nearly giving me a migraine in the same breath.
Mine lids narrow. The terseness of her voice rips me back to reality. Maybe we should’ve kept at least her mouth taped up. My grim smile tells her that’s exactly what I’m thinking.
Her head jerks, panicked and alarmed all over again.
I only humor her, because she’d distracted me from my train of thought, as I follow her line of sight. Not like I made a whole lot of progress anyway.
She’s talking about my bracelet, and I flick my wrist. The slight shift causes the light to dance off the shiny metal crescent. The exact same way it had the gun before it was taken away.
“Can you give it a rest?” she berates with more fervor. Squinting now, I cover it while shooting another scathing glance in her direction.
I hold it firmly before I flick my arm. The pendant gleams under the small batch of light that’s peeked through the curtained window.
We’ve been through a lot, old friend.
Peering up through my lashes, it’s not Abram I expect to be studying me. He’s watching me with the same intensity as everyone else had on a lucrative Silas earlier.
His focus shifts back down. The move is subtle but I know his stare has landed on the threaded fabric that makes up the base for my bracelets.
Something flashes in those keen pupils of his, but he never voices it. Continuing to stand there, scratching at his chin, while deep in concentration.
Strange.
Tracing, I start at the top, running my digits across the cool metal. They come to a stop at the center, and the movement is paralyzing. As if my limbs were forced to stay, stuck at where the hook clasps to the pendant.
How hadn’t I spotted the bizarre uniqueness of the pinch clasp’s location before?
Why would it be at the center and not directly around the top? Not unless it was meant for something else. Held a dual purpose…
My eyes shoot to Cole’s. My neck cranes with the elasticity of a rubber band stretched too thin.
How hadn’t I spotted this before? Thought more of it?
All these years… this time…
I don’t understand my emotions, so it’s impossible to understand my reaction to them as well. Part of me wants to laugh and the other part wants to kick myself for being so ignorant.
I’m thankful when my choked-up airways are the only thing to push out a much-needed lungful of air.
Those thick brows of his dip, shoving so close together you could’ve confused them for one. He watches as I do the one thing I haven’t done since Alma tied them on that night at the diner when I was a child.
Over a decade ago, the items were placed and now they are being removed from its home for the first time. I take it one step further and unhook the crescent moon pendant from its clasp and shove it his way.
More fits of my hysteria bubble out. Does he see it? How could he not?
A crescent moon is special. Darkness will always have light if you keep it. You keep it, you have the answers.
“The moon is key,” I blurt out.
I’ve had the answer the whole time.
“Don’t you get it?” I say, worked into a frenzy now. My veins are charged and pulsating.
He’s not understanding. It’s not dawning, same as everyone else so I show them what I mean. That I’mnotcrazy.
Taking the baton, the charm of my bracelet slides into that notch at the end. Too perfectly does it go, does it fit.
It snaps, clicking in place and the action is so smooth it’s as if it’d always been meant to be there.
