A dull rumble makes me spin around. Bren is at the other end of the roof following me.
“Leave me alone! I want to be alone!” I shout at him.
“Okay. But not up there! Come down!”
Without replying, I climb down and jump onto the next car. There, I climb onto the roof of the next car. My ankle hurts and I need to take another painkiller, but there’s no way I’m asking Bren for it now. I turn around carefully.
He stands in the middle of the other roof and swears.
“The next tunnel is going to hit you first!” I call out to him stubbornly.
Bren jumps to the other end with long strides and climbs down, but I keep moving. He’s following and of course, as always, he’s much faster. Over the wind, I hear Grey’s dark wolf bark fading into plaintive howls, but right now, I don’t care.
“Lou, wait!”
I am now on the third roof. Fortunately, the cars of this train are all the same. I can go on like this for half an eternity, the freight train seems to have no end, but Bren will soon have caught up with me. I don’t want to hear what he has to say, though, I just don’t want to know. The pain in my chest is like a seeping wound.
When I’m in the middle of the fourth roof, I hear metal rattling at the end. Bren is already up.
I turn to him. Gusts of wind hit my back and I struggle to keep my balance. “Promise me you won’t leave me!” I scream through the night. “It doesn’t matter for what reason!”
“Don’t ask that of me!” Bren looks at me, his face haggard from worry. It’s only now that I realize how miserable he looks, like he’s seriously sick. “I love you, Lou. I love you more than my life. You know I’d do anything for you!”
“Promise me, then!”
He approaches with his palms facing me. “I don’t want to leave, Lou, I just kept going through all sorts of situations. And I got scared. What if something happens to me and it puts you in danger? Lou, I would never forgive myself.”
I look at him. “I want you to promise!” I shout uncompromisingly. Anything else doesn’t interest me. “I don’t want to hear anything else!”
“Lou, don’t take advantage of my love! We don’t know what will happen in the future.”
It’s hard for me to breathe, everything hurts. I don’t want to have to part with him again. “Promise!” I yell at him. It’s all I can think about.
“Okay,” Bren whispers and I see the word rather than hear it. He shrugs in surrender, seeming infinitely dejected as if he were carrying a heavy burden. “Okay, if that’s what you really want, I promise. I will never leave you, no matter what.”
“And you won’t give yourself up voluntarily and leave me alone!”
“Lou…”
“No!” My heart is still burning so much, it’s like molten lava in my chest, and yet I’m cold with fear. Freezing.
Bren presses his lips together as if to hold back the next words, but he says them anyway, “I won’t turn myself in voluntarily, I’ll stay with you!”
I start to cry out of relief, but also because he looks so unhappy. Sobbing, I approach him and he comes toward me. Helpless like a child, I reach out and wrap my arms around his waist. Suddenly, I can’t stop crying even though everything seemed so perfect before. Maybe it’s still perfect or maybe it never was and I just really wanted it to be.
“It’s okay, Lou. I’m sorry.” Bren hugs me and I bury my nose in his hoodie, sucking in his scent, forest, wolf, and the blue night. Suddenly, I feel so lost even though he’s holding me. Just imagining losing him freaks me out. Bren strokes my hair and murmurs soothing things I can’t hear over the wind and the rattling of the train. I press against him, trembling, feeling his warm body. I love him so much that there are no words for it. I raise my head to tell him this, but all I can see is the massive rock face racing toward us.
Chapter
Thirteen
I’m paralyzed. Bren obviously notices my wide eyes because he turns his head immediately. The gray rock wall flies toward us. There is no time to lie flat on the roof or even to think about if there is enough space for us between the tunnel roof and the top of the train.
“Jump!” Bren pulls me down and all I can feel is us falling through space. Seconds pass through an hourglass as if in slow motion. Anything could be below us. Hard rock, earthy forest, deep water, or a bottomless abyss. I hear myself screaming and feel Bren’s arms around me, trying to protect me with his whole body. I want to protect him too but can’t. Panic races through my veins, then there’s a hard jolt, and I hear Bren groan.
The next moment, the night is spinning. Bren’s face, treetops, the night sky, and the dark ground pass by as if I were looking into a kaleidoscope. I reflexively squeeze my eyes shut and see the pain behind my closed eyelids, which transforms into splintering images; yellow and fiery red flashes like broken glass. I involuntarily claw at Brendan until, finally, we come to a stop with me on top of him.
I can’t move for several breaths, paralyzed by the shock of the fall. My heart is racing, I feel sick to my stomach, but then I blink several times to collect my bearings. In front of me is a steep slope with tall fir trees, which we just rolled down together. The train tracks are higher up and I can still hear the cars rushing by. Dazed, I shake my head and take stock of my body, which pulls and burns in different places. But it doesn’t seem too bad, maybe a few scratches and bruises, nothing else.
