Erik is a heap on the floor. Blood bubbles out of his mouth.
“Oh, my God!” Elise drops beside him. Her hands move fast—tilting his head, tearing fabric, pressing down hard.
My vision blurs. I edge back towards him. “Leave him. Leave him to choke!”
“Shit, Slater!” Jax yells while dragging me back again. “Think about the girls, you fucking psycho!”
“Konnor.”
Her sweet, shaky voice crashes through my rage, snapping me back to the here and now. Snapping me back to what I just saw and to what I now know.
To who she is…
And where I am.
“I’ll stop. I’ll stop!” I shake Jax’s hand off me and spin like a wild animal in search of Blesk. I’m covered in sticky blood and dripping with sweat. Every inch of me is twitching with fury and fear, a tangled combination of fight and flight.
The room is black at the edges, dotted in the blood on my lashes, but I can still make out silhouettes. My eyes strain. Her trembling frame comes into focus. Her hair, her face, that sweet girl, my everything.
My sunshine.
I remember.
We both stand like statues as the truth we've been feeling since we laid eyes on each other consumes us. I swallow, seeing her in a totally new way. Hair, yellow. Her song, hero boy. Was that about me? Thatwasabout me.Oh, fuck.I can finally finish the thought about why her? Why I feel this way. What is happening between us. I know why she’s familiar, I know why it needs to be her. Why since I saw her she seemed to be everywhere. Inside me.
I mouth her name first.
Then I yell.
“Liz!”
Her face breaks and tears burst from her eyes as she drops to her knees. “Oh, God, don’t call me that!”
I rush to her as she lands on the floor. Wrapping my arms around her shuddering body, I hold her desperately to me. Pained sounds explode from her.
There is no way I’m ever letting her go. No way I’m ever going to let anyone take her away from me again.
You died.
I thought.
She died.
“You died; you died!” I chant, exploding, splitting down the centre, making sounds I hadn’t realised a man could make. Tears fall hard and fast on her like rain.
Her little hands clutch at my clothes. Her face buries in my chest. I try to calm down. I try to calmherdown. Threading my fingers through her yellow hair, I grip it like silk against me, remembering how often I'd wanted to do just that—to touch her hair. She is finally in my arms. After all these years, I can touch her. Ever since I saw her at The Grill, a part of me had known it was her.
I'd felt it.
I couldn’t describe it.
Even in the hazy memories, searching the darkest parts of my past, I could feel her, knew her like a glimpse of light that blazed in the pitch air. I knew. And, yeah, I don't know much aboutBlesk, but I knoweverythingabout Liz: she loves to read and draw horses. She used to twirl and twirl. Her smile lights up the whole damn world which was once this basement. When she’s nervous she bites her lip. Her birthday is the 20th of March. Her favourite colour is the same green as my eyes. I want to ask her so many questions, like, do you still skip instead of walking? Do you still prefer white chocolate to brown because you said it’s sweeter?
It is; I’ve tried it now.
I feel like a small boy.
Liz is my best friend.