The motion of her hand slows as Sloane watches me. “And your mom?”
“Died giving birth to Fionn.”
Sloane’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep, heavy breath. Her bottom lip folds between her teeth as she holds my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Wouldn’t have wound up here if everything hadn’t happened the way it did,” I say. I fold a lock of her hair behind her ear so I can see her freckles. “I have no regrets about where I am.”
And there it is. That blush. A pink so addictive that it haunts me. I want to hoard these images of Sloane, her face flushed, her eyes dancing, her smile desperate to be freed.
“You’re the worst. You know that, right?”
“Technically, I’m the best. Because I just won.”
Sloane might groan, but she can’t help but huff a laugh too. “And I’m sure you’re going to remind me of this regularly.”
“Probably.”
“You know, even though I didn’t win, which totally sucks, by the way,” she says, pausing to narrow her eyes at me before her expression softens into a faint smile, “I had fun. I feel…good. Better. Like this is what I needed. So…thank you, Rowan.”
She smooths the adhesive of the last bandage over my skin with a slow pass of her thumb and then her touch falls away. Then she rises and backs away to stop at the threshold of the door, her hand curled around her arm.
“I’ll go start on the driveway,” Sloane says, and with a final flash of an unsure smile, she disappears.
I wait for a long moment. Her quiet footsteps lead to the front door and then all sound in the house dies away.
She could slip away into the night. Leave all this behind. Do whatever it takes to never be found.
But for the next three days, every time I think she might disappear, she proves me wrong.
8
UNDER GLASS
SLOANE
You know what I did this morning?
deep sigh
I decorated my toaster strudel.
Fascinating. I’m riveted.
Also, toaster strudel? Isn’t that meant for hormonal teenagers who need significant quantities of processed sugar to function in the AM? I thought you were a grown-ass man.
A man who appreciates mass-produced flaky pastry and icing that can be used to spell “WINNER” in vanilla-ish frosting.
I’m 100% positive that I hate you.
And I’m 100% positive you’ll love me one day!
I t’s been six months.
Six months since I last saw him. Six months of daily messages. Six months of Rowan telling me about how he’s celebrating his win. Six months of memes and jokes and texts and sometimes calls, just to say hello. And every day, I look forward to it. Every day, it warms me up, lighting places that have always been dark.
And every night when I close my eyes, I still picture him in that sliver of moonlight on the driveway in West Virginia, bent on one knee, like he was about to swear an oath. A knight cloaked in silver and shadow.
‘I think you were going to watch her and then your plan was to kill her,’ he’d said. Francis begged for mercy in the grip of Rowan’s hand. And whatever Rowan said next was just a whisper, but those words unleashed the demon at the heart of him. There was nothing between him and the rage that burned him from the inside. No mask left to hide behind.
“He really beat the shit out of him,” I say to Lark as I glance one final time at our latest text exchange before setting my phone aside. I place a bowl of popcorn between us and pick up Winston to plop the perpetually disgruntled feline on my lap. It’s been six months since I’ve seen Lark, too. In her typical fashion, she was offered a last-minute opportunity to tour with an indie band and seized it, and has been bouncing around from one small town and hipster city venue to the next. And she looks happy for it. Glowing.
“Was it hot?” she asks as she piles her long golden waves into a haphazard bun at the top of her head. Somehow, it always comes out perfectly messy. “Kinda sounds hot.”
“Pretty hot, yeah. Had me worried for a minute, though. I’m used to…controlled. And this was raw. Definitely the antithesis of control.” My gaze falls to the crocheted throw beneath my legs, one that Lark’s aunt made for me the year we left Ashborne Collegiate Institute, when Lark’s family took me in and repaid a debt they never owed. I stick my fingers in the little holes between the looped yarn, and when I look up again Lark is watching me, her clear blue eyes fixed to the contours of my face. “I nearly left him there.”