Chapter Sixty-Eight. Rory
Rory
Rory ran. The trees crowded around him. Birds perched on every branch, cawing shrill cries.
Why was he running? He didn’t know. Only that Daye was vanishing between the trees, the culmination of a disappearance act years in the making: first her attention, then her smiles, and now the whole of her, going, going, gone. He couldn’t lose her. Not her.
Not Daye.
Not with everything so off-kilter—the whispers rising and falling like tide, always just at the edge of hearing.
Hanna’s sneers. Noah’s distance. With even Elliott and Maggie nothing but a leaving waiting to happen.
Not when even the birthday cards from his parents had stopped coming; when even their absence lost its vividness.
He couldn’t survive Daye leaving him, too.
So he ran, calling her name.
The last sliver of Daye disappeared between the tree trunks, even the pink of her bathing suit no longer visible.
She was running so fast. One moment she was almost within reach, and the next she was growing farther and farther away, and he could do nothing but gasp her name, pleading with her to stop, to talk to him, to please, please stay.
His voice echoed back from the trees. It sounded strange. Distorted. Like it wasn’t his at all.
He kept chasing her, following glimmers of pink between the tree trunks.
Panic thrummed through his chest, and he couldn’t even tell which panic it was that was making his hands shake: If it was the blinding panic of seeing Daye fall apart again, or the horror-struck panic at seeing the new form the withering seemed to have taken, at the feel of his fingers sinking into her skin.
Or the gut-twisting panic of knowing he had just screwed up, badly, enough to make Daye run.
Of hearing her say, I’ll have no choice but to do what you tell me.
The rabbit stillness that followed, hollowing out his chest. Or if it was the breathless, searing panic of having Daye disappear before his eyes, leaving him.
Finally, finally leaving him, like he always knew she would.
All of these panics were snarling together, making it hard to breathe, making it impossible to keep running and unthinkable to stop.
The forest was a vast unknown of brambles and reaching roots, of clearings full of spring flowers thick enough to swallow a person whole.
The tree trunks pressed down on him, taunting him with glimpses of Daye that always disappeared the moment he came closer.
She wasn’t anywhere. The birds kept peering at him from branches, cawing and flapping.
Even if I can’t find her, she’s here, he reminded himself. She’s safe.
If nothing else, a small voice in the back of his mind whispered, she’ll still be here when I come back. She will.
She had no choice.