One Was Lost(38)

“You’re smarter than this,” he says. “Think for just one damn minute here. We don’t have to talk. Just don’t run.”

“I can’t stay here,” I say around a hiccup. “I have to get out of here.”

“You will.”

I swallow hard, eyes jumping from tree to tree.

Lucas’s hands tighten on my arms. “Sera. You will get out of here, OK?”

“You can’t promise me that.” I hiccup over a sob. “You can’t rescue us.”

His smile softens all his sharp places. “Hell, what are you talking about? I’m planning on you rescuing me, Spielberg. Figured you could piggyback me back to town.”

A laugh finds its way through my sob, but I’m still shaky.

“I didn’t mean to make you run,” he says.

“You didn’t.” Which is why I can’t keep ignoring his questions. I don’t want to talk about us any more than I want to talk about the food in that cooler or look at the letters on his arm. But I have to.

I take a slow breath and look at him. “I don’t regret what happened, but it wasn’t supposed to happen. I can’t go to that place, you know? It’s just not something I can do.”

It’s a weird explanation, one that hints at rules he can’t possibly understand and wreckage from my mom he can’t possibly see. I wait for him to sigh, maybe to let go. But he doesn’t. He just accepts it.

Forest sounds stretch between us, and weird, twitchy energy hums beneath my skin like I’m an amplifier. I’m buzzing with too much power, primed to pop at the slightest provocation. Lucas’s hands spread over my shoulder blades, and I go still. The humming slows. I can feel the press of every finger. The heat of his chest.

Something stirs low in my belly, and I think of a dozen afternoons in the shop, his welding mask propped up on his head and his face streaked with sweat and grime. I always sat on the edge of a bench, swinging my legs and watching him work. Feeling as frenetic and confused as the sparks scattering on the concrete floor by his boots.

I feel like those sparks now, but it’s familiar. Almost comforting.

His thumb grazes my spine, and my stomach dips low. He does it again, and my whole world shrinks down to that single touch. The repetition of it crawls under my skin, bringing back all the times I turned the other way when I saw him, hand on my chest, trying to press my pulse back to something normal.

Regret turns bitter on the back of my tongue. Someone is hunting us, someone who thinks I’m a Darling, but I’m not. I haven’t been darling at all.

I’ve been a liar. I’ve been cruel to him. He is better than that, and so am I.

“Lucas.” His name is full of all the things I don’t have words for.

My arms go around his waist, so shaky it’s like I’m ill. His thumb pauses at the change, lifts away. An ache unfurls in the place he touched, spreading out through my middle.

I burrow closer and feel him take a sharp breath. Looking at him like this pushes confidence into me. For the first time since I woke up with this word on my arm, I’m in charge. This decision—this reckless, crazy choice—is all on me.

His hands slide down my back, and I’m pulling at the front of his shirt because I can’t stretch up any further on my toes, and this kiss is not like before. There’s no finesse to either of us this time. It’s too hard and hungry to be sweet, but I don’t want sweet out here. I want the scrape of his scratchy chin and the burn of losing my breath.

Lucas makes that certain sound again, and heat and adrenaline race neck and neck through my veins. Is this still wrong? Do my rules apply out here, with my whole world gone to hell and this thing between us gluing me back together?

He breaks off, sighs my name against my lips. I lean my forehead into his chest and take a breath that smells like moss and woods and dark, rotting things. I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what happens next.

And then I hear the screams.





Chapter 15


It’s Emily, and there’s blood. That’s all I can sort out at first when we stumble back to the fire. My brain flips through images like a slide show in fast-forward. A charred, still-smoking log rolled away from the fire. A hunk of dark hair hanging over Emily’s left eye. A smear of blood on her chin. On her hands. But she doesn’t look injured.

Is it Jude’s blood?

My focus widens, and the scene unfolds, making no more sense as a whole than it did in pieces. Jude’s shoulders are tensed, and Mr. Walker is sleeping again, head lolled on one shoulder. Emily is a trembling mess.

The cooler is pushed out, cockeyed from where it was. I can see that there’s a rectangular hole in the soil beneath it. A hole one of us was bound to find.

It was right there, waiting for us. A raw ache in my gut tells me whoever dug that hole was counting on us finding it.

I don’t want to look at what’s inside, the thing that has Jude and Emily so pale. The thing that left blood spatters on Emily’s fingers.

My first glance doesn’t tell me much. The hole is maybe ten inches deep and wet at the bottom. My insides shrivel up. Please don’t let it be a part of Ms. Brighton inside that dirty hole.

I lean closer, spotting the bundles of sticks. I think they’re tied together. Like they’re supposed to be something.