Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
KINGSTON
“Gwenna!”
Kai’s scream is like nothing I’ve ever heard.
Drenched, wild-eyed, he clamps her limp form into his chest, catching her weight. But he only holds her a split second before he tips back her head, touching two fingers to her neck.
Feeling for a pulse.
My stomach goes cold.
“Goddammit,” Kai cries. Wails, almost. “Goddammit.”
He maneuvers her to the ground, lays her flat on the sand, and falls to his hands and knees beside her.
“Is she—” Lanz rushes forward, but Kai snaps up, eyes bright and vicious.
“I know fuckin’ CPR,” he snarls. “Do you?” Lanz shakes his head. “Then get the fuck away from me.”
I remember to move. I step forward, grabbing Lanz by the shoulder
“Go,” I say to Lanz, nodding at Cal, who’s shivering violently, breath steaming as water drips off of him. “Get him inside and warmed up.”
“But—” Lanz’s face contorts, like it’s causing him physical pain to leave Gwenna behind.
“Go!” I bark. “You want Cal to die too? We’ve got her.”
Lanz squints, teeth clenched, and I feel the briefest flicker of irritation—that he’s acting so hurt, pulling focus when two others are genuinely, seriously in danger—but he nods.
And then all I can see is Gwenna.
And…Kai.
Hand flat on hand, compressing her chest.
No. Please. My mind is screaming and yet my body is frozen, gone colder than the night is cold.
“Come on,” I hear him say. “Come the fuck on.”
Somehow, I fall to my knees, scramble for them in the sand as Kai counts compressions, holds her face and breathes into her. Counts, breathes. Counts, breathes.
I do nothing—can do nothing, nothing but watch, hope, pray, if God even listens to someone like me anymore.
“Please.” Kai’s voice is a rasp. He pumps his flat hands against her again, knuckles white from the cold, and for a split second, he looks up. At me.
His eyes are wide. Flooded. Raw.
This is not the Kai who smirks or swears or scoffs.
This is someone I have never met.
Again, he leans over, seals his mouth over hers, breathes, and this time—
Kai rockets back on his knees as Gwenna’s body seizes violently. She burbles, more water escaping her throat. She gasps.
Alive.
My legs almost give with relief, the tension unconsciously gripping my muscles gone slack. She’s okay. She’s alive, she’s alive, thank Christ. I look to Kai, waiting for it. Waiting for him to fire his I told you so at me. Waiting for him to wink at Gwenna and coyly ask “Miss me?”
I wait for something. Anything.
Nothing comes.
He’s just breathing. Staring at her, breathing.
Then he sees me staring, and the moment implodes.
In one swift motion, he scoops her up, coat and all, and storms for Camlann.
I stumble getting up. The ground is like granite under my feet as I charge up the hill after them.
“Kai!” I bellow. “Wait!”
He doesn’t. Even carrying Gwenna, he’s moving fast, and had a head start besides.
I run—sprint—my breath steaming, my shoes sliding on grass that’s sparse as mud and slick with frost. I stumble as I round the corner to the porch, to where Camlann faces the rest of campus, and just catch Kai shoulder-checking the front door open.
I leap up the steps two at a time and barely slide in after him.
Inside, it’s dark and still. But warm.
“Gwenna.” I push forward to the living room, to where Kai’s depositing her gently on the rug, in front of the all-but-dead fire. I fall to a crouch and search her face, her body, my heart in my throat.
The faint light of the coals catches on the strands of her hair, sheened with water that’s crackled into ice and hanging in hanks. Her lips are blue, her skin shockingly white against Kai’s black coat.
She’s alive. But dazed.
And then, all at once, she starts shivering—convulsing, practically, shaking so hard she almost falls over, into me, and I grab for her, pulling her tight against me, her skin like marble.
Something soft hits us—a blanket. Two. Every blanket in the living room, maybe on the whole first floor, piling up around us.
“I told you this was a bad fucking idea.” Kai glares at me. And of all the hateful looks I’ve gotten from my brother through the years, this one is murderous.
Of all the looks he’s ever given me, this one might actually hit.
Guilt. Regret. Shame. All of it is flooding me, but I have to push it away. I know, I scream in my head. I know you did.
To him, I say nothing.
“Jesus. Are you fucking frozen too?” He lunges, grabs the collar of my coat, and yanks me away from Gwenna’s side. “She’s soaking wet. Here,” he says, to her. Softer. Kneeling. Easing his coat off her shoulders…
She isn’t shaking anymore, at least.
A few feet away, sprawled on the ground, I feel stupid. “Kai—”
He wheels on me. “Do something useful or leave,” he snarls.
“I—”
“Gwenna!” It’s Morgan, pounding into the foyer, her face flushed and hair in disarray from running. “Is she—are you—”
“Get out!”
Kai roars to his feet. Face livid.
Morgan, for once, falters. “But—”
“GET. OUT.” He flings an arm at the door so viciously that Morgan flinches, the first time ever I’ve seen her truly cowed by him. She glances at me, and all I can do is give her a nod.
We’ve got her.
Morgan nods back, and slips away.
As I turn back to the living room, Kai says nothing to me, just narrows his eyes, pure disgust written on his face.
But only for a split second, because then he’s back at Gwenna’s side.
“I know. I know. I’m gonna take this off you, okay? I won’t even peek. Promise.”
I feel suddenly awkward. An interloper, watching him take care of her like this, even though there’s no way I’m going anywhere until I know she’s all right.
Do something useful or leave.
A coal sizzles in the grate. Right. Yes. Fire. I move automatically: logs, two, three, from the pile, throw them in with a handful of resin that spits and flares into flame, throwing bright light and heat on all of us.
I sit back on my knees and look at her. At them. The dress is a sopping white heap on the floor. Gwenna’s back in Kai’s coat, with a blanket wrapped on top. And he’s holding her face in his hands.
“You’re okay, aren’t you?” he murmurs. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
The color is back in her lips, I notice, and relief I feel at the sight nearly floors me.
Kai tucks a strand of hair behind her ears, and Gwenna wrinkles her nose. “Your coat smells like an ashtray.”
Kai grins. “You’re fucking right it does.” He grabs her, slams her against his body in an embrace, clutching the back of her head and burying his face in her neck, and when, at last, he pulls back, he kisses her, gently, on the mouth.
Then not so gently.
Then fiercely, his hands framing her face and pulling her so tight up against him I’m surprised either of them can breathe. And maybe they can’t, because when Kai releases her, they’re both panting slightly.
Gwenna looks at me, her green eyes bright and brilliant even in the low light, her lips now very flushed against her pale skin.
But Kai only looks at her.
All at once he takes her again, grasping her waist this time, her hair, and my brief sting of angst that she doesn’t want it dissolves as soon as she arches against him, softens into his arms.
I don’t move. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to be anywhere but near her, but the air in the room has…shifted.
Kai breaks away from her. “Keep staring like that and I’m going to have to charge you for the privilege,” he sneers at me.
His words are a joke, but the glint in his eye is anything but. I know that look, have had that look thrown at me from across rooms and from inches away and from the far side of the piste before our masks slip on. I know exactly what that look means.
I dare you.
I dare you to stop me. To pull rank. To exert any kind of control.
No. Not this time. I won’t be so easily baited, even if all I want to do is stay by her side.
I stand—to leave.
But as I do, Gwenna catches my fingers in hers.
That’s all it takes. My exit forgotten, I fall to my knees beside her, wait for her, as she turns away from Kai, to tell me what she needs.
But when she does, she doesn’t speak at all.
She kisses me.
I’m startled. I fall backwards, and my palms land hard on the floor to catch myself even as I find myself kissing her back, the sheer joy of her touch and the perfect taste of her mouth lighting up my body like daybreak after a dark, starless night.
For a moment, I forget Kai is even there.
But then she pulls back, and my eyes open, and I see Kai’s hand wrapping gently around her throat, his lips at the corner of her jaw.
“Oh, so it’s like that?” I hear him whisper. “Whatever you want, angel.”
Her eyes fall to me. She grips the front of my sweater, pulls me closer to her, and kisses me again.
I love Gwenna. I am deeply, irrevocably in love with her. And I love her physically—I need her physically, I might as well admit—but this…this is something else altogether.
Something I’m not sure I’m equal to.
Her hands are still cold, even through the wool of my sweater. I swallow and grasp them in mine, partly to warm them and partly to push her off me, slightly. The coat and blanket have slid off her shoulders now, and she’s…entirely naked.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” I say. It’s the truth, of course. But that’s not why I say it just then.
Because Kai has not let her go—will not let her go, I’m confident.
Even as I hold our hands all but pinned between her chest and mine, Kai is still kissing her, openly, on her neck, her shoulder.
His hands have slid to her waist, which only has the side effect of pushing her more firmly against me.
Her spread legs press warm and heavy on my hips, and—
Oh, God. My eyes flutter shut, and I almost gag keeping down the sound that wants to come out of my throat. I feel the familiar rush of blood start to surge and I tense every muscle, steel every nerve, as if I can simply flatten myself into this carpet.