“Do you remember her?” I said, not even sure why. “My mom?”
He stared at me like I’d just grown an extra head. “Not really. Just the stories.”
I nodded, donut gone, not tasting any of it. “She was always running too.”
The next lightning bolt was close enough to light up the world for a split second. In that second, I saw myselfreflected in the chrome of the gas tank—feral, drenched, eyes rimmed red. I looked like the daughter of a ghost.
“You don’t have to keep me,” I said, voice breaking. “You could just let me go. Maybe if you did, they’d stop.”
He snorted. “You think that’s how it works? Even if you disappeared, Saint Etienne would put your picture on every goddamn billboard from here to Mexico. You don’t just vanish, Melissa. Not from men like him.”
The name hit me like a slap. I wrapped my arms around my knees, digging my nails into my own flesh to stay present.
“You don’t know what he’s promised,” I said, rain leaking down my face like tears. “He said he’d kill anyone who helps me. Anyone.”
Augustine nodded, slow and deliberate, like a man who’s spent years making peace with his own extinction. “Yeah,” he said. “That tracks.”
We sat in the roar of the rain, neither of us talking. My mind replayed every hide-and-seek game from my childhood, every time I’d been told to stay out of sight, every threat that had ever ended with “…or else.” I thought about my mother’s last day—the final time I ever saw her—and how she’d looked at me over her shoulder as she ran, not saying a word, but her eyes doing all the talking.
I’d always hated her for leaving. Only now did I understand.
Augustine stood again, slower this time. I saw him put a hand to his ribs, pressing hard. The shirt was nearly black with blood where the cut had started leaking again.
“I can’t watch you die,” I said, a whisper, almost lost to the wind.
He barked a laugh. “You think you get a say in it?”
“Dammit, Augustine—” I surged to my feet, toes curling in my boots to keep steady. “This isn’t some romantic bullshit. They’ll cut you up and mail your teeth to your mother. You have to let me go.”
The words hung there, jagged and ugly.
He shook his head, a sad smile carving trenches in his cheeks. “I’m not letting you disappear. Not now. Not ever.”
A wall of thunder obliterated anything else he might have said. I staggered backward, boots squelching, and realized the overlook was a hundred feet above a river churning with runoff. Lightning crashed again, blinding, and for a moment I saw Augustine silhouetted against the sky, every muscle taut, every ounce of his willpower dedicated to staying upright.
He took a step toward me, then stopped when he saw my face. I must’ve looked like a cornered animal, ready to bite or bolt.
“I’m not your dad,” he said, and the words were so careful that it broke my heart. “I’m not them.”
He made a fist at his side, then relaxed it. “You wanna run, I won’t stop you. But if you stay, I’ll burn down the fucking world before I let them touch you. Melissa is now officially a national treasure.”
I started crying then, a stupid, loud, snotty sob that echoed off the cliffs. I hated myself for it. I hated Augustine for making me feel safe, even for one second.
He moved fast, closing the distance and folding me into him before I could fight back. His shirt was soaked, and I felt the heat of his wound through the fabric. For a long minute, we just stood there, shaking and broken, and the mountain raged around us.
He whispered into my hair. “It was my uncle James. That’s the last person I gave a shit about before you. He got clipped in a botched job out in Albuquerque. I was supposed to watch his back. I didn’t. I let him die.”
He pulled back, cupping my face in both hands. “I’m not making that mistake again.”
His thumbs smeared the rain and tears from my cheeks. I blinked up at him, surprised by the gentleness in thosefingers—like he was scared I’d dissolve if he pressed too hard.
The storm reached some kind of goddamn crescendo. The rain came in sheets, washing everything clean, at least for a second.
That’s when I noticed the blood. It oozed from beneath his palm, painting his shirt and the skin beneath in angry black streaks.
“Oh shit,” I said, panic cutting through the misery. “You’re bleeding.”
He shrugged, like it was no big deal, but I could see it in his face: he was graying out, running on fumes and stubbornness.
