White Rabbit(92)

“Okay,” I whisper at last, my lips so dry that the skin across them feels tight. “Okay. We should move. I think … I don’t think she saw where we went, but I feel like a fucking bull’s-eye just sitting here. We should go before she doubles back or something.”

“Rufe.” Sebastian shakes his head, looking pale and worried. “I’m staying here.”

“The sun’s up, though. If the fog starts to lift, we lose our cover, and it’s our only advantage!” I have to convince him; there’s no way we’re splitting up now. “We can make it to the Jeep, I know we can.”

“No. Rufus—”

“Listen, if we stick to the edge of the park, where there are trees and stuff—”

“No.” He says it so forcefully I fall silent and just stare at him. He winces, his dark lashes fluttering, and mumbles, “I’m saying I think I need to stay here, Rufe. I don’t … feel so good.” He pushes himself up into a sitting position, and panic wraps around my throat like a noose when I see his left flank soaked in blood. Lifting his shirt, he reveals an ugly furrow of ragged flesh, raw meat exposed where Peyton’s bullet carved a channel across his skin, and I feel my gorge rise abruptly in my throat. “I think … I think she hit me.”

Tears spring to my eyes instantly, bile stinging the inside of my nose, and my voice is like a busted harmonica—seventeen tones all at once. “Sebastian—”

“It doesn’t actually hurt all that bad,” he says, a dopily proud smile on his beautiful face. “But I’m kind of a little bit dizzy?” He shakes his head. “I think I need to stay here. I’ll just slow you down—”

“Sebastian, no, no, no.” Air rattles as I suck it in, my lips wet with tears. I feel like I can’t breathe. I try to make the universe reshape itself, to make Sebastian’s wound as insignificant as the one on my own flank, but I can’t. I want to trade. This is wrong, all wrong. “You can’t stay here—we have to get you to a hospital! Put your arm over my shoulders and I’ll help you—”

“Rufus—”

“I’ll carry you,” I sob as he shakes his head, looking terrifyingly beatific, like a martyr who’s already accepted his fate. Digging into his pocket, he wrestles out the keys to the Jeep and pushes them into my hand.

“You know how stupid that sounds?” He cocks a brow, still relaxed, still flirting with me. “Get my car and go for help—I’ll be okay. It’ll be better for both of us if I stay here and just … you know, rest.”

I kiss him, because I don’t know what to say—because I can’t take him with me, and I can’t stay, and because suddenly I cannot possibly kiss him enough. Pulling the jersey over my head, I bunch it up and press it to his wound, making him flinch. “Hold this here, as hard as you can for as long as you can. I mean it. It’ll slow the bleeding, okay? Promise me.”

“I promise.” He gives me that dumb grin again, eyes traveling drunkenly over my naked torso as his thumb traces my bottom lip. “You’re so beautiful, Rufus. I love you. I love saying that. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” I whimper, overwhelmed, sandbagged by debilitating emotions I’m not accustomed to. I’m used to being alone and angry. I’m used to fighting back and wrapping myself in a protective shell of combative resentment. I’m used to distrusting people and second-guessing their motives.

I’m not used to this—this wretched feeling of needful love and utter, paralyzing helplessness. This feeling that for the first time ever, saving myself just isn’t good enough. I kiss him again, then again. And then I leave him there.





29

The return trip to the parking lot is agonizing. Even adhering to my own simple plan—following the shore until it gives way to dense woods, and then trusting that the trees will lead me back to my destination—I feel totally lost, my confidence destroyed by the pressure I’m under. I’m so shaken, I can’t even be sure I’m heading in the right direction, that I’m not actually going deeper into Fernwood Park instead of out toward the road.

The fog is dissipating much faster than I expected, and the added visibility unnerves me; every sound I hear sends me scrambling into the trees to hide. Even so, I move as quickly as I can, risking the attention-grabbing crack of twigs underfoot and the rustle of bracken at my ankles, determined to save Sebastian before it’s too late. I have to believe that he’ll be okay. He has to be okay.

After what might have been five minutes or five hours, I abruptly find the parking lot spreading out before me, like a lake of fire I’ll have to cross to reach the road. This is where Peyton was the last time, waiting for us, knowing that it’s the only way out. I hesitate, breathing hard, anxious sweat prickling my scalp and under my arms, and look in the direction of Race’s car. It’s still where it was, just visible in the slackening mist, an apparition against a hazy backdrop of faded gray. Is she there?

She’ll know that, short of diving into the lake and swimming north, our two best options for getting help are the Jeep or the emergency phone. It’s plain to me that the phone is too risky, an obvious trap with a bright yellow light that would make it real easy for Peyton to pick me off while I stood there trying to figure out if the damn thing even works anymore. To hedge her bets, though, she’ll probably be on the opposite side of the lot—close enough to the phone to watch for shadows, close enough to the road to listen for footsteps.