51. Lily
LILY
For the first time ever, Lily skipped class. She’d taken finals spiking a fever, given presentations on no sleep, but that morning she stayed in bed and skipped Latin. Learning a dead language seemed laughable.
She woke up just before dawn, not sure if she’d really slept. She felt like she hadn’t, but she knew she’d dreamed—fitful, jumbled things that were more sense memory than subconscious. More doors, more darkness, more blood, cold stone beneath her fingertips.
Next to her, Sebastian was asleep or unconscious.
All night his back had been a furnace, and Lily had sweated into Tori’s expensive pajamas.
She stared up at the high ceiling of his room, watching it turn from a bruised gray to butter white.
She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do now that she was awake.
Should she wait for him to wake up, try to go back to sleep?
Did she go home? Her bike was downstairs.
Eventually, she heard noise from outside and slipped out of bed.
She scooped one of Seb’s Cantrèa sweatshirts from the floor and joined Asher in the living room.
He clearly hadn’t slept. He’d clearly been crying.
He made coffee with none of his usual satisfaction, and they sat in near silence, waiting for the others to wake up.
Sebastian was the last up. Seeing him emerge, rumpled and morning-raw, wasn’t as charming as she’d imagined it. When she pictured their first morning together, it was sheepish and sweet. Sebastian looked like he’d been hit by a truck—they all did.
“I think we should give up,” he said, after they’d picked at breakfast, after they’d searched his room and confirmed that the disc was gone. His eyes lingered on Lily, on the gruesome bruise spreading beneath her eye. “It’s not worth it. It’s not worth this.”
“No,” she said, surprising all of them with her force. “That’s exactly what he wants. That’s why he’s doing this.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t want to win; he just doesn’t want you to.”
He looked at her, and he seemed like himself for the first time since the winery. “You’re sure?”
“We have to win now.”
“I don’t want anything to happen. I couldn’t live with—”
Lily took his hand, squeezing fiercely. “I can make my own choices. Let’s bury him.”
Seb squeezed back.
“On another note, Sebastian.” Tori fidgeted.
“I don’t want to tell you what to do, and if you never want to talk about it again, that’s one hundred percent your right, but…
have you considered therapy? Dr. Metcalf at the health center is great.
I think she could really help?” Tori bit her lip.
Lily had never seen Tori look anything less than completely self-assured.
He stared out the window as he contemplated. “Maybe.” He swallowed. “Yeah. I’ll try it.”
Around noon, back in her own dirty clothes, Lily biked home and showered. She spent the afternoon sitting on the striped loveseat with her head in her Gran’s lap, crying, as Gran stroked her hair and they rewatched their favorite trashy show, starting over at the beginning.