“I’m not done!” I slam onto my hands and knees, whipping my neck, landing hard.
The impact jars through my bones, but the real pain is in my chest. I suck in a breath.
It smells wrong.
Dank tile walls. Cloying chemical odors. The distinct reek of petrol?—
No.
The truth is like a fist to the gut. I sit back on my heels, clawing the hair from my face, waiting for reality to shift. For this not to be real.
But it is.
A public bathroom. The twenty-first century.
“No!” The word has a satisfying echo, and I say it again, louder, a sharp bark of a word. “No, no, no.”
I’m furious. It’s so much easier than sad.
“What the hell, Callum?”
He pushed me away.
“I told you I wasn’t leaving you,” I shout. But I did. Because he made me.
If I act soon enough?—
I shoot to my feet. Black mist curls at the edges of my vision. My knees buckle, slamming me back onto the floor. I taste metal, my mouth flooding with spit, like I might vomit.
MacGregor blood. Mine will do.
His words loop in my head.
I love you. My heart is yours forever.
A prickly hot wave surges from my chest, scorching up my throat, stinging my eyes. My voice cracks as I whisper, “I love you too, Callum.”
I never got to tell him. That’s on me—my fault, my inaction—yet I want so badly to be pissed athimfor it.
But no. I’ll still get the chance.
I suck in a stuttering breath and expel it through my teeth. “No.I am so not done.”
My hands are so cold they ache, and I stare at them, modulating my breathing, willing my blood to pump life back into my limbs. Gradually, details come into focus. Mud clings in the cracks of my knuckles. The tips of my nails are black crescents of hard-packed dirt.
Why did Callum do it? We could’ve figured something out together. “We could’ve figured it out,” I say out loud—anything to silence the rant in my head. He’d said it himself:Together, there’s nothing we can’t do.
But there’s no morewe.
Callum detonated ourwethe moment he took it upon himself to shove me back to the modern era. Alone.
“Fine. I’ll figure it out myself.” I try standing again, slowly this time, pushing up to a squat, shaking out my hands, teetering to my feet.
Watery light filters in through high, cobwebby windows. So…midmorning. About nine a.m.
I know this simply from the quality of the light. Because I’m good at this. I can tell time without a watch, start a fire without a match, and forage for food. I give the walls a smug smile like it’s the mean parent who said I’d never amount to anything.
I can do this.Willdo this.
