Maybe he’s not here. Maybe someone picked him up.
But my gut knew they hadn’t. Gus drove everywhere, so he had the freedom to dip any time he got flighty.
Tell you that, did he?Of course he hadn’t. But he didn’t need to. I knew him.
I fucking loved him.
The realisation wasn’t as shocking as it might’ve been without the old door standing between us. It was already marked by mine and Gus’s combined bad moods. I booted it, leaving more scars in the peeling paint. The doorframe cracked. I kicked the door again, but somehow it held.
Desperation and real fear bubbled up my throat. I let out a growl of frustration and looked around for something to throw at the window before I remembered the back door.
I dashed around the cottage to the gate. Overgrown brambles were compacted in the garden, blocking the path to another ancient door. I trampled through them to the moss-covered patio. The back door was rickety and held shut by a Yale lock that was too rusted to pick with a bank card. I kicked at it, over and over, until it flew open and clattered against the wall behind it, shattering the glass.
The noise was deafening. If Gus was inside, he’d have heard me by now, but as I crushed broken glass beneath my feet, there was no sound from inside, and every nerve in my body told me something was horribly wrong.
I charged through the cottage and up the stairs. The loft hatch was open, and beneath it, Gus lay motionless on the bare wood floor.
For a split second I froze, horror building as I took in Gus’s pale skin, white lips, and the obnoxious bruise on his temple.Fuck. He’s dead.Then his chest rose with a shuddery breath, and I came back to earth.
I scrambled forward and dropped down beside him.
“Gus.Gus. Jesus fucking Christ, wakeup.”
Nothing happened. I shook him as hard as I dared, given the bruise on his head, but he fell slack against me, with no sign that he knew I was there.
“Fuck!” I fumbled for my phone. It was jammed in my pocket. I prised it out and swiped at the screen, but it didn’t seem to be working properly. The numbers on the keypad were blurred and in the wrong places, and the more I fucked with it, the less coherent it became.
I dropped it and searched for Gus’s.
It was on the floor by his foot. The battery was dead. I shouted again and tried harder to wake him up, but the more I shook him, the less he seemed to move. He was a dead weight, and my arms felt like jelly. I fell sideways and sucked in a deep breath. For a fleeting moment, it worked, and my head cleared, then a fog descended that was so profound, I couldn’t see the floor beneath me.
What the hell? The foreboding I’d carried all the way from Rushmere cut through the nausea blooming in the pit of my stomach, joining the fresh panic lancing my veins. Beyond the fact that Gus was out cold, something was really fucking wrong.
My brain felt like it was made of treacle. Thoughts entered and got stuck before they were clear enough for me to read them. My eyelids grew heavy. I fought them as they started to close, and crawled to where Gus was still lying.Get him out. You have to get him out.
I hooked my arms around him and tried to sit him up. “Gus, come on, man. We’ve got to get out of here.”
He didn’t respond. And he was a big dude. I struggled beneath him and dragged us both to the top of the stairs, as my heart beat too fast, and my hands stung with weird pins and needles.
His scarred knee hit the banister post. He didn’t make a sound, and another jolt of fear got me moving again. I couldn’t see how we’d make it down the stairs without breaking our necks, but that fate seemed better than whatever was killing us inside.
I looked down at Gus. His lips were beginning to turn blue.
“No.” I wriggled from beneath him and slapped his face. “No! Don’t fucking die on me, you stubborn fucking arsehole.”
I took hold of him again and tried to manoeuvre him down the stairs. My shoulder screamed in protest, and I latched onto the pain, amplifying it to keep me awake. We made halting progress and reached the halfway point, then my balance deserted me, and we slid the rest of the way down.
We landed in a heap. My head hit the stack of disconnected radiators in the tiny hallway. The impact made my ears ring, and I held onto that too, and staggered upright to unlock the front door.
The key was as prehistoric as the rest of the cottage. It stuck, and so did my brain. For long seconds I fought with it, until it finally turned, and the lock clicked in the right direction.
I bashed the handle with clumsy hands, retching as more nausea overwhelmed me.
The door didn’t open, and a desperate shout escaped me, echoed by a muffled moan from the bottom of the stairs.
Gus. Fuck.
I abandoned the door and crawled back to him. He was on his side, how I’d left him, limbs slack, olive skin bleached pale. “Gus. We’re nearly there. Come on. I need you to wake up.”
