Slap!
My cheek stings, and I focus on it. Use it to stabilize myself. Breathing in a few more times, I do my best to suture myself back together again. To not fall apart. There isn’t time.
“I’m sorry,” I wheeze.
Luna levels me with an impressive glare, she straightens her shoulders. She pushes me off her lap and gets to her feet.
I’m not sure what I expect, but it isn’t the hand she offers.
“I don’t want a useless apology. I just need you to do better. To fix this.” She pauses, her fingers wrapping around my wrist. “You promise she’s alive?” she whispers.
“Your mom is alive, Luna, this was a part of the plan.” I try to put as much conviction as I can into my words and it must have the needed effect as Luna loosens her hold.
She steps back, her attention dances around the room, skipping from the razor blade, to Carrie, and back to me. “Then let’s get the fuck out of here.”
31
October 7th
“The FBI is going to be here soon, the Thornes have to know they’re on the way,” Axel growls.
Grayson jumps out of the truck, his boots crunching on the foliage. “We need to find her first. Get her to safety.”
But how?
It’s just past midnight now and they are in the middle of the Thorne’s property. They drive up and through the woods as far as they can, but it is too overgrown to take the vehicle any further.
“Axel.” Grayson retrieves the gun from his pocket. It isn’t the first time he’s held one. In several of the loops he had killed men–Rayden, Maxwell, Mark–but this was different.
There would be no do-overs. The person he shot would stay dead. There would be real life consequences.
And he would burden them. It was his duty, his job. He should have taken better care of his brothers. He should have never let Sunday out of his sight. He should have steered Augustus away from this town’s evil depths.
But he had failed them. All of them.
It was time for him to change that.
“If anything happens, I want you to promise me you will find Sunday and Darius, you will take them and you will run.” He twists to Axel.
He and Axel had always butted heads, even in their youth. They strayed further and further apart, and it was only Sunday’s appearance that had kept them together at all.
Axel grunts. “Not this time, Grayson. This time it’s all of us together. No one is going to be left behind. We are going to finish this. And get our god damn happily ever after. We fucking deserve it.”
Grayson wants to argue, but he knows better.
“What if we’re too late?” he whispers, rubbing his chest. Every foot closer to the Thorne’s land, the pain had subsided ever so gradually. It still hurt, but it wasn’t nearly as crippling.
“You can feel her too, can’t you?” Axel follows Grayson’s movement. “My heart aches for her, but it’s not as bad now and I think”–Axel pauses–“this sounds crazy, but she saw the strands connecting us. What if…what if we can see them too? What if we can follow them directly to her? I’ve been trying toseeit, but maybe…maybe I can justfeelit, you know? Like my body is telling me to go further this way.” He points in the opposite direction of the Thorne’s main estate.
Grayson takes it all in, lets the idea circulate through him and land with ease. “I think you’re right,” he whispers.
The impossible task of finding her feels just a bit less hopeless now.
Axel and Grayson both knew that there were countless victims on the Thorne’s estate. Knew they would be hidden securely away. Knew they would be nearly impossible to find. They hoped she was in the main estate and with the FBI’s help they could locate the others, but maybe…
“Let’s go,” Axel says, marching away.
Maybe we can save her without their help. Get her out of here before everything goes to hell.
