My hand starts brushing up and down his back. “She did.”
“Those girls were the first ones they decided to take. But I knew they wouldn’t be the last. Over those last few months, things within the group had been…escalating, and I’d known we were heading for something. Was part of the reason I stayed with them as long as I did.”
“You wanted to prevent it. Whatever they were heading for,” I say, already knowing too well by this point that would’ve been the case with him. “How many of them were there? In your group?”
“Eleven. Apart from me.”
I pause, thinking about how hopeless it had felt when the same number had surrounded the two of us. Yet Cypress had gone back on his own.
“I didn’t realize at the time, but one of them had already grown suspicious of me,” he says, his voice a little stronger. “And when I came back, they were waiting.” He takes another deep breath, his thumb tapping against his chest where it’s pressed between us, keeping time with another source of water that no longer drips. “Next thing I knew, they locked me up in some small shed nearby and…they held me there for a time. Not really sure how long. They kept hoping I’d eventually admit where I took them. They…”
“They hurt you,” I say for him, suddenly having to fight off a rising tide of rage, a rising desire to hurt them back when I know I won’t get the chance. “They’re the reason for the scars.”
Cypress nods. “They would come in and attempt to get it out of me until they’d give up for a while, and after they were gone, I’d try to sleep just so I could be somewhere else. When I could, I’d have these…dreams, I suppose you would call them.”
My hand continues its path up and down his back, an attempt to soothe myself as well as him, to remind both of us that it’s over. “What kind of dreams?”
“I remember being in a field,” he says, sounding almost wistful despite everything he’d just confessed. “And I could see the stars again. Always the same ones. After a while, I started to talk to them…since no one else was listening.”
I smile even as my chest feels like it’s going to split open. “They talk back?”
“Sometimes,” he says, and I think I can hear him smiling, too. “They sent me them.”
Them.My heart hammers in my chest as more of his words from the train return to me, along with Dolly’s. “Who isthem, Cy?”
He’s quiet again for a while, and I wait. Wait for what I already know is coming. “There was a wolf and—”
“A little bird,” I finish.
“Yes.” His head draws back so he can meet my eyes. “They stayed with me until I made it out, but after, I didn’t see them anymore. I told myself it was because they escaped, too.” His gaze searches mine. “So I went looking for them and hoped…I’d get lucky enough to find them.”
I was looking for you for so long. In every face I passed I looked for you, hoping that when I saw you, I would know.
And he had. He’d called me wolf the first night we met. He’d known, but…he can’t have. Things like that don’t happen.
As if he can hear my thoughts, Cypress smiles. “You don’t believe me.”
I let out the breath I’ve been holding and roll my eyes. “Give me a minute to wrap my head around it, would you?”
His smile broadens. “Take all the time you need, wolf. Although, I would like to point out, you did say you thought you had been looking for me, too.”
I did. I had said that. And in truth, I believe it. For so long, I’ve felt like I’ve been looking forsomething, but I’m also not one to…
“I’ve never put a lot of stock in fate,” I say, glancing down to where his hand is now clasped in mine, his thumb no longer tapping. “Or in luck.”
“But you choose to believe in God?”
“Suppose I do.”
“You choose to believe an unseen being can take things from you.”
My jaw ticks. “Yes…”
“But not that the universe might give you something instead?” he asks. “You only believe in divine providence when it’s to your detriment? Not when it’s to your benefit?” He frowns. “Rather pessimistic view of things, don’t you think?”
I open my mouth to respond, close it, then restart. “Are you the benefit in this situation?”
Cypress grins. “Of course.”