Her head pops up. “Are you seriously doing a deathbed confession right now?”
I scowl. “These could be our last moments.”
“Are you trying to jinx it?”
“No, I’m trying to tell you how I feel,” I snap.
“Starting a conversation like we’re going to die here is—”
“Will you just be quiet and listen?”
She pulls back and glares at me. “Fine.”
This woman.I swear, if the tornado doesn’t kill me, she just might. I cup her hand to my chest and stare into her eyes.
“Rowe Wadley ...” The shelter shakes again, and she flinches. Her gaze darts around, then lands back on me. “Before I met you, I was on autopilot. My life was about the company.” A bitter laugh escapes me. “What I thought was important, I now see is immaterial. You have shown me that life is worth so much more. Don’t look so surprised. This place, this town, you—you have all become my home. Youaremy home, Rowe Wadley. You are my life.”
She blinks. “What?”
I nod. “You are my world. The people of this town are my world. This farm—”
“These animals?”
Oh, God. Even in the middle of dying, she’s cracking a joke. “Yes, they mean the world to me, too. I want you to know that when this is over, I’m not going anywhere.”
She peers into my eyes, really searching—for a lie, for the telltale sign that I’ll abandon her. But what she doesn’t realize is that I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want to spend my life out of a suitcase, packing up and going to the next hotel. I don’t want to do that ever again.
“Pane—”
The structure shudders, and the light flickers—once, twice—before blinking out.
Thrown into darkness, all I can hear is the sound of breathing before Rowe’s hands slip from mine.
“Stella?” she says.
The unicorn snorts.
“Stella?” Rowe repeats calmly. “It’s going to be okay. Just light your horn.”
Right. I’d forgotten that the unicorn is afraid of the dark.
I place a hand on Stella’s shoulder and feel her muscle quiver under my palm. She stamps her foot and backs up, breathing even harder.
Maybe touching her wasn’t the best thing.
“Calm down, girl,” Rowe says.
The air in the shelter shifts. Outside, the storm’s still raging, but in here, the scent of terror is thick. It’s like a cold blanket has cloaked itself over the room.
The unicorn stamps her foot and blows some more. She knocks into a shelf, and it crashes to the floor behind us. Piggycorns squeal and Buster the Cat hisses as they all dart over my feet, running for cover.
The unicorn neighs. Rowe keeps pleading with her, but Stella bumps into more shelves, and more concrete dust falls from the ceiling, peppering us.
Meanwhile, it sounds like the world outside is being torn apart, tree by tree.
Stella pounds the floor, and one of the piggycorns shrieks. The unicorn will trample all of us to death.
“I’ve got to get her out of here,” I say over the sounds of Stella’s panic attack.
