Seventeen.
He rears back and snarls. I keep my face turned away, toward the cliff. Toward the setting sun.
It stopped hurting a while ago. I can’t feel anything at all now. Only the grass beneath me, the blankets ripped and torn. The stones in my back. My blood, slicking the ground around us.
I’m going to die here. In this meadow, with him on top of me.
Get him off.
I shake my head blindly. An almost silent sob catches in my throat.I can’t.
You can. Or you die.
You deserve more than to die here, Kennedy. Get the fuck up.
His heavy weight slumps on top of me, his breathing in my ear. He doesn’t say anything.
My blink is slow. I think I’ve lost too much blood. The mountains waver in front of me.
My lips crack when I part them. “I’m dying.”
A slap that I can’t feel. Brett’s face appears in my line of sight. There’s no red now. Only the white of his eyes, that pale green that always made me wary. “No, you’re not.”
But he doesn’t sound angry now. He sounds scared.
I lick my lips. “They’re… going to know. When I don’t come back.”
His face crumples. Brett presses his forehead against mine. “Don’t be stupid. You’re coming back with me. Just bite me, Kennedy. You and me. Just us.”
Just us.
My eyes slip past him. “You’ll go to prison.”
He’s shaking his head, denial across his face, but I can see the dawning realization in his eyes. “No.”
“Yes.” I take a breath, and it sounds like bubbles inside my lungs. “I have an idea.”
His lips on my skin. “Tell me.”
I swallow. And I tell him everything. Everything he wants to hear. Everything he’s been asking me to give him, apart from my bite.
It’s always been you.
I was scared.
Just you and me.
They won’t understand.
“They’ll take you away,” I breathe. “They’ll separate us.”
“I won’t let that happen.”
The next words are harder. “I love you.”
His eyes darken. There’s still a tinge of red to them. “Say it again.”
Over, and over, and over again, until he believes me.
