I pat the top tube in front of me, and even with the rain and coldness making her weirdly splotchy, I can tell the color in her face has deepened as she struggles in a very ungraceful way to wedge herself over the metal bar.
She’s definitely not going to have a career as a ballerina, but something about her clumsiness only further eases the weird tightness in my chest. I kind of want to hug her, and that desire is so sudden and strange that I don’t know what to do with it.
I put my arms on either side of her, holding the handlebars a little closer to the center than necessary, so that my arms squeeze against her. I breathe in her citrusy scent, a cheap shampoo odor made irresistible by her own natural fragrance underneath. And all of it heightened by the rain.
She wriggles around, and I smirk as I imagine the bar digging into her butt. I can’t understand how it’s possible for the urge to hurt her to coexist so peacefully with the urge to… well, protect her.
I spend a lot of time denying it to myself, but right now, my body is in too much pain for me to muster up the energy for yet more denial.
“Comfortable?” I ask, knowing she very much isn’t.
“Yeah.”
My smirk deepens as I begin to peddle. It’s a climb almost all the way to her house, but I don’t mind, because that means it’ll take more time. And the burn in my thighs makes the rest of the burn fade. The bruises, and the muddle of emotions that torture my chest.
Yet, after a while, it no longer soothes me to feel her frail, helpless body between my arms. I start to spiral.
When we get to her house, I can’t decide if I’m relieved or in the pits of despair. Both. Definitely, incomprehensibly, both.
“Bye, Quill,” she squeaks out, trying and failing a few times to pull herself free of the bike. I watch in amusement as she squirms, managing at last to lift her leg over the bar, then having to duck under the arms that I haven’t tried moved an inch.
Both because it’s fun to watch her struggle, and because I’m scared of what those arms might do if I unclench my hands from the handlebars.
“Thank you,” she adds, waiting a moment for me to say something. I don’t, so she awkwardly turns and hurries inside.
I wait until she’s disappeared behind the front door before peddling out onto the main road, heading slowly back to my house.
Her absence makes the pain from the bruises come crashing back, but that’s not the reason I suddenly start to cry, loud, embarrassing hiccups drowned under the boom of the incoming thunderstorm, while my tears mingle with the sheets of rain.
The truth is, I don’t know the reason.
Chapter 33
Quill
Istay frozen for several whole seconds, staring at the man pointing the barrel of his gun straight at me. By the time I realize what’s happening, the soldier I’d pushed past to get outside has managed to get to the car, and it’s now a distant point in the horizon, turning the corner onto the road at the far end of the driveway. I couldn’t catch up to it no matter how fast I ran.
Fuck. I’m so fucking weak. Fuck.
It’s not fear but utter shock that had kept me locked in position, unable to do anything as Piper was taken away from me. Again.
The man in front of me is the last person I ever expected to see right now.
“What’s going on?” I manage at last. “Logan told you to take her home?”
“Logan had nothing to do with it.”
At those words, I realize just how much I do trust Logan. Far more than the man who raised me. I know Logan would never hurt her. But I don’t know a thing about my dad.
What the fuck is wrong with me? Why the fuck did I freeze like that? Why didn’t I save her? Why am I so weak?
So fucking weak. So fucking weak.
“Come on,” says Dad, gesturing toward a second car with his gun.
Or what?
I’m getting in the car, but fuck it if I’m getting in withhim. I take a step toward him as he watches, far too relaxed.