Chapter Thirteen

I woke up to sunlight bleeding through the curtains, my body sore and stiff, a major headache pounding behind my eyes. I squinted at the clock on the bedside table: it was two in the afternoon. My back was warm, an arm thrown over my waist.

I blinked sleep away and rolled over towards the source of the heat. Fang was awake, his eyes studying me. He pulled his arm away and spoke carefully, "Okay?"

I swallowed and closed my eyes. No bad voices. No ugly pictures. I was still wrapped in the bubble of clarity and serenity from last night. I doubted it would last, but I was going to suck up every bit of peace it gave me until it was gone. I smiled and opened my eyes. "Yeah. I'm good."

I watched dust moats dance in the rays of light that fell across Fang's bed and thanked whoever was listening that I was good.

We spent the day tangled in sheets, ordering room service and watching horrible television game shows and laughing and talking. The topics started out light—favorite foods, books, movies we loved. As the day passed and turned into night, things got deeper.

We were propped up on pillows against the headboard, the TV droning in the background with some late night talk show. There were the remains of a pizza in its box on ground by our bed.

My fingers traced lazy patterns across Fang's bare chest. His arm was around me, his fingers twirling my hair. "I'm going to tell you something and you have to promise not to think I'm crazy."

"Scout's honor." He gave me a lazy grin and settled back into his pillow a bit more.

"This is serious. You might actually have me committed for it." I took a deep breath and looked away. "Sometimes I have dreams about killing Sam just so I can feel safe again. JJ had a gun hidden, and I know where it is. I could do it. I know that makes me a terrible person, but I think about it a lot."

I held my breath and pressed my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat. It was steady and strong, and didn't change even after my confession. I peeked up at him through my eyelashes; his face was soft and sad, but there wasn't a trace of judgment to be found. Relief coursed through my veins and made me feel weak.

"Doesn't make you a terrible person, Max. Just human. And scared." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, and I let myself sink into him.

Saying it out loud hadn't changed anything like I'd hoped it would. I was still scared of Sam. And I didn't think that would ever end. Fang wouldn't be around forever. I mean, this was my life we were talking about. I didn't get a happily ever after.

But, for now, I would take this, for however long he would give it to me, and it would give me something to cling to when he was gone.

The next morning, I gave him the number Franki gave me for Veronica.

He held the slip of paper between his fingers, both elbows planted on the small desk in the corner of our room, and stared at it. I stood behind him and crossed my fingers behind my back.

"I can't."

The breath left my chest as it hollowed out, my heart cracking under the strain. "It's okay."

"I can't know anymore. I know too much. This was a mistake."

He put his head in his hands, the paper fluttering to the table top beneath him.

"Okay. That's okay, I understand."

There was a length of silence that stretched out in front of us. I wanted to touch him but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to, even after what happened, and I wanted to say something but I didn't know what to say. But it didn't matter, because he saved me the trouble.

"I want to go home." He turned his body a fraction of an inch toward me, dropping his hands into his lap. His shoulders were sloped and defeated. I'd never seen him like this. I hadn't know him long, but still. This was out of character. He was showing me something not many people saw, if any.

I stepped forward and let my hands fall on his shoulders, pressing my fingers in to let him know I was real and I was here. "Okay."

He looked up at me, his face bathed in the light coming in through the curtains, casting half shadows on his features. "Come with me."

And my broken heart said again, "Okay." My voice was barely above a whisper, moving gently through the still air.

He pressed his face against my stomach, his arms winding around my hips, and I forced the bad noises away from my head as I wrapped mine around his neck and held on. This was Fang and he was safe and he needed me and I couldn't let him drown in this by himself. My fingers carded through his hair and I held him until he pulled away, leaving my arms empty and aching.

The windshield wipers hushed softly over the glass, pushing the falling snow out of our way. The radio was playing quietly; something by Coldplay, I think. We were doing sixty down the highway; fast enough that nothing could touch us.

As soon as Fang had reappeared from the bathroom earlier, we'd gotten a quick bite to eat and packed all of our things. He'd taken me to the Rockefeller tree, but the whole thing had seemed hollow somehow, and I think we both just wanted out of the city. It was early evening, but dark in the way only winter nights get.

"Thank you for coming home."

His voice broke the silence easily, gently.

"It's not home." I turned to look out the window. I couldn't see much because of the snow reflecting against the black of the night sky; everything was just a black and white blur. "It's an in-between place."

"What is it in between?"

I pulled my knees into my chest and hugged them. "I haven't figured that out yet." I smiled in his direction, keeping my gaze trained out the window. I was the master of fake smiles. The trick was to squint a little. Most of the time, fake smiles didn't reach your eyes, but a slight squint would fool them.

There was this heaviness in my limbs; some sort of sadness had snuck inside of me, somewhere between my sternum and my solar plexus, and it was a wriggling weight. Fang was right. The city was toxic, and it had poisoned me.

Today was a bad day. I missed everyone who'd left me with this awful ache somewhere deep in my being. I couldn't figure out where the pain was radiating from, but it was sucking the good things out of my head. When I blinked, I saw my mom's blue eyes like they were tattooed on the inside of my eyelids. The sound of my little brother's laugh rang through my head. I could feel my dad's hand clapping me on the shoulder after I'd brought home a good grade; I could feel JJ's arms tightening around me in a hug. I was floating off on this sea of pain and loss and grief. I didn't know how to ask for help.

I grabbed a pen out of Fang's cup holder and scribbled Breathe over my bandage, tracing and tracing until the white gauze was smudged with bleeding ink, blue and wet. I wrote it until the vice squeezing my lungs released, and air flooded my chest again.

"Max."

I blinked away the fog that had settled over my brain and cleared my throat. "Hmm?"

"Come back to me."

I looked over and made eye contact, smiling slightly. It felt fake, like plastic, on my face. "I'm not sure if I can right now. I wanted to disappear there, Fang. I never thought I'd come back."

"I think that you just think you want to disappear," Fang said slowly, his hands gripping the steering wheel at ten and two. "You want to keep hiding so no one will know your story, will feel your pain. You're hiding, but I don't think you're hiding from other people."

"Then what am I hiding from, O Wise One?"

He sighed, flipping his blinker on and shaking his head a bit. "Don't know. Yourself maybe?" His right hand left the steering wheel and laid palm up on the seat between us. He was offering me a lifeline. "You know it doesn't matter how far you go. You can't run away from yourself. You can't hide from yourself. Don't hide from me. Stay."

I looked over and saw myself in the reflection of his dark eyes like two murky pools. Something caught in my throat when I tried to swallow, and tears burned in my eyes, much to my humiliation.

I let my hand settle over his, accepting the help he offered, and opened my mouth—

There was a bright flare of light, the brilliant sound of a windshield splintering into billion glittering pieces, and then we were spinning, spinning, spinning.

Blinding white, spinning wheels, a crash.

I came back into myself all at once, and the effect was jolting, like being dunked into ice water.

My face was pressed into the snow, which should have been impossible because I was still inside the truck. It took me a second to realize that my window was broken, and the truck was laying on its side. I lifted my head slightly, wincing at the pain in my temple, and noticed that the radio was still playing softly. Glass fell from my hair when I shook my head, trying to right myself.

Shattered glass twinkling in the moonlight.

I looked to my right, and saw red creeping across white, then felt the burning sting in my hairline. Everything was tilting and fading in and out of gray zones. I looked to my left, and saw nothing. There was a myriad of flashing lights pulsing in the background of my vision. My ears were ringing, and everything sounded like it was under water.

Flashing red and blue, wailing sirens.

My heart squeezed in my chest then kicked into overdrive, beating erratically.

"Fang," I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Fang?"

"I'm here."

Relief almost made me pass out. I looked out the broken and now-missing windshield towards his voice. There were shadows moving in and out of the lights. I couldn't see him, but he spoke again.

"Stay calm. They're going to get you out."

I unhooked my seatbelt with numb fingers, groaning when I fell sideway and hit the door, the window crank digging into my leg. My arm was crushed under me, breaking my fall, and pain shot up through my shoulder and chest. It was like nothing I'd ever felt before; I thought I was going to be sick from it.

"I think my arm might be broken," I yelled, a sob catching in the back of my throat.

"It's okay. They're going to get you. You're okay."

I tried to move towards his voice, but my arm gave out almost immediately when I pushed myself up on it. My vision flashed black, and I tumbled headlong into a fog of pain and quiet. When I opened my eyes again, someone was shining a flashlight into them.

"Can you tell me your name?"

I squinted and moved to put my hands up to block the light, but they wouldn't budge. Fire burned up my right arm whenever I tried to move it against whatever was holding it down, and I bit out a groan. I looked down: I was on a gurney, my arms and legs secured and my neck immobilized by a brace. I could feel the ground moving underneath me, and the sensation mixed with the throbbing pain in my head made me want to vomit.

Strapped down, flat on my back.

"Let me go." My voice was soft and slurred. I struggled feebly, pain making me see stars. I gasped and yelled out.

"Max, it's okay. You're okay."

Dead eyes, staring down at me, their vacancy holding me, paralyzing me, making it impossible to move.

Fang's face appeared over mine, a halo of light coming from behind him. His fingers laced through mine, and I held on as tight as I could so he wouldn't leave.

"I'm scared," I whispered.

"Sir, please step away—"

"Hey, fuck off man, she's going to have a panic attack."

"We need to get her mobilized, now. Somebody get this kid out of here."

I couldn't move my head, and my eyes were doing weird things and I couldn't focus on anything so I didn't see what happened, but there was some sort of struggle. Somebody wrenched Fang's hand out of mine, and my throat closed up.

"No," I mumbled, trying to reach out in the direction he had gone but my wrist wouldn't move and my fingers clenched around open air. "No."

Cold skin, fingers pulled out of my grasp.

I tried to thrash, my breath coming in short rasps. It sounded too close to my own ears. "Fang," I yelled.

"It's okay, it's okay. Don't struggle. I'll be right behind you."

They lifted me up into an ambulance, the wheels of the gurney folding up neatly underneath me. I slanted my gaze downwards at my feet, eyes desperately searching for a glimpse of Fang's dark hair. I caught a sliver of a scene right before they shut the doors on it: Fang's truck laying on its side like an abandoned toy, the bed folded in on the driver's side, and Fang himself with his hands running through his hair, backed by the wild light from his headlights and the red and blue still flashing all around us. I closed my eyes against all of it.

Screaming. My screaming. Sirens screaming. Wind screaming. But me screaming loudest of all.