All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(128)

But I kept walking, and I rapped on the glass. Austin jumped in surprise, and when he saw me, his face went flat. It was like somebody had scraped all the words off a page, it was that kind of blank, and I thought, this is it, you can run, you can throw the orchid at him and run, and he’ll never be able to catch you, he’ll never be able to hurt you, but only if you run, right now, run God damn it.

Then, to my surprise, he started the Charger. The engine roared to life, and I watched as his hand flew to the gear shift. The next set of thoughts didn’t really cross my mind, not consciously, but I unraveled them later, when I was alone. There was shock, of course, and a surprising amount of anger. But most of what made me act was the certainty that if I let him go, I’d never have the courage for this again.

So I jumped in front of the car. The Charger lurched a fraction of an inch before Austin slammed on the brakes, and through the glass I heard his muffled swearing. Planting my hands on the hood, still gripping the orchid’s tiny clay pot, I met him stare for stare. He gestured furiously for me to move. I shook my head. He glared at me, and when that didn’t work, he tossed his head back against the seat. After a moment, the killed the Charger, and it grumbled into quietness.

I knocked on the glass again.

He just shook his head, still staring up at the Charger’s roof.

“Austin.”

He shook his head again.

“Look, I’ll make it easy for you,” I said. “One minute. Sixty seconds. That’s all I’m asking.”

It seemed a lot longer than a minute—it seemed like an eternity—before his face came down, still empty of expression, and his eyes met mine. Then he slid out of the car and leaned against the open door, keeping it between us. Like a shield, I thought. Like a barrier. Because he’s afraid of me.

“I thought you might like this,” I said, passing him the orchid. He took it without comment. “And I . . . I wanted to tell you that I don’t blame you. So I’m going to make it easy. You should break up with me. Right now. You don’t have to say anything, you can just get in the car and drive away, and it’s over. I understand. But I wanted to say thank you. And I wanted to tell you I love you, and I’m sorry if that’s too much, but I just—I just figured it out, and I thought I should say something.” Hot, sweaty prickles covered my chest and shoulders. “And Jesus, this feels like the longest sixty seconds of my life. So I’m going to let you go now, and I promise I won’t go near you or your family anymore.”

He still hadn’t said anything, and he held the orchid in its tiny clay pot between two fingers, like he couldn’t wait to drop it and be rid of it. I tried for a smile, found myself scraping the bottom and coming up empty, and hurried back across the parking lot.

So that was it. It was over. I mean, nobody could blame him. Nobody. And I’d told him. I’d—

His voice, when he called after me, was so distorted by emotion that at first I didn’t recognize it. The words, though, were clear: “I didn’t know. Vie, honest to God, I didn’t know.”

When I turned back, he was crying. Not big sobs, but two steady streams of tears running down his face. He ran his arm over his face once, but that was it. The rest of the time, he was locked on me.

“I don’t—” I started to say.

“Jake told me. Jesus, Vie. I never would have done it if I’d known he was your brother. And I don’t know how you can stand there and look at me. I know you’ve got to hate me. Not as much as I hate myself. I mean, you saved my family. You saved Jake, after all the shit he did, and you saved Temple Mae, and you probably saved me and my mom and dad, and God only knows who else.” He staggered around the door, crossing the distance between us with halting steps. “Will you just hit me? Or scream at me? Or do something, anything, please? Jake told me he was your brother. Jake told me you’d already stopped him. Jake told me—Jake told me I didn’t need to shoot him, and when I close my eyes, that’s all I think about: his face, the way he was looking at you when the bullets hit him, and the way he fell, and the blood—”

I kissed him. It wasn’t a passionate kiss; there was too much darkness right then. But I kissed him on the mouth, and I pulled his head against me and kissed his neck and wrapped my arms around him. He stiffened at first, trying to pull away, but after a moment he relented, relaxing against me. His chest hitched with panicked breaths.

“I killed him. Vie, I killed him, and nobody knows. I killed him. Oh Jesus, Vie.”

“It’s ok,” I said. “It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok.”

I told him that for a long time, as we sat together in the dark. And at some point in that night, all the death, all the pain, all the heartbreak seemed to move into the center of my chest, into this spark like a new star being born. All of the sudden I didn’t want any more death. I didn’t want any more pain. I wanted life. I wanted fragile, beautiful, hothouse life, like the orchid, and I wanted to hold it in my hands.

And then the next kiss did have fire behind it, and my hands moved through his shaggy hair, forcing his head back so I could run a line of kisses to the hollow of his throat. His fingers ripped at my jeans. His breath had become a wild, ferocious thing, and I realized that my breathing matched. The sex, when it happened, was surprisingly perfect: we had our stumbles and fumbles, our awkward laughs, but the passion was there, the intensity was there, and soon we worked like two halves of the same whole, closer and closer, until his breathing stuttered into a series of sharp grunts and he bit my shoulder, and I cried out so loud I thought everything west of the Mississippi had heard us. And I didn’t particularly care.