Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
GWENNA
I have to get back to Camlann.
The bruise-colored sky is streaked with clouds, and the ground is mushy under my boots as I walk, march, run back to the house, not even bothering with footpaths.
I need to go fast, to get away from what I just saw and is looping through my memory—Claire’s scream, the thud of Elena’s body, her wretched face, I’m sorry, Gwenna.
I can’t piece it all together, can’t even catch my breath as I fly up the stairs to the porch and into the foyer.
Quiet, now.
I stand, panting, heart thudding. Then shed my coat, my boots. Go to the couch. Fall back into my seat like a reflex, my knees giving way automatically. Stare into the stately silence that is Camlann House.
And then it hits. It all catches up. Everything I couldn’t process at Porter’s, everything that’s happened and happening, in all its full-volume, high-definition, horrific reality.
I let out a sob.
“Gwenna?”
Lanz. At the foot of the stairs.
No, I think. Not you. Not you too.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
I shake my head, nonverbal. Don’t want to talk. To you or anyone. I want to be alone to cry and scream.
Then the image of Elena’s mottled, scabbing, blood-blistered face surges into my mind, and I have to run, sprint past Lanz to make it to the kitchen in time to vomit into the sink.
When it’s done, I clutch the edges of the stainless steel, the smell of stomach acid and old beer prickling up my nostrils, and start to cry. Hard. Ugly, snotty, selfish, spasming sobs that do nothing but suck up all the air in the room—
Mom, did you know there’s a song on Sesame Street called It’s All Right to Cry?
Not the way you cry, Gwenna.
—and I have to stop, I have to stop throwing this goddamn tantrum and get a hold of myself, but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, and—
“Gwenna?”
Fuck. Lanz.
Hand trembling, I grab a tumbler and fill it with water to rinse my mouth, but my hand is shaking so hard I almost choke while doing it and nearly break the glass as I set it on the counter.
“Gwenna?”
Closer now. At the kitchen door.
“Go away,” I cry. “Please, please, just go away.”
Instead of answering, instead of listening, he crosses the kitchen in three long strides and crushes his arms around me from behind.
“Hey,” he says into my hair. “Hey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
I start crying again. Harder.
Not you, Lanz. Please.
I think of that first time he kissed me, after the fencing match, when I’d just cried my eyes raw and ripped out a chunk of my own hair—God, I’m disgusting. Unbearable. Why do you always have to find me like this, Lanz?
I tense and twist inside his embrace, swiveling so I can push my fists against his chest.
“Please, just let me go.”
But Lanz holds me firm, surprisingly so. “No, Gwenna.” He says it so sharply it actually startles me. “No. When you’re like this, absolutely not.”
No sooner has he said it than his face clenches in what looks like pain.
Binding magic. The bad kind.
But I blink, and then it’s gone.
“You…” I don’t know how I’m going to finish that sentence. I don’t even know what I have to say.
The color’s back in your cheeks, I think.
And I collapse into him.
“Gwenna,” his voice rumbles in his chest, against my ear. “Baby. What’s wrong?”
Baby. Vaguely, I feel like I should hate being called that—that it’s weird, literally infantilizing.
But I don’t. Not from him. Because when Lanz calls me that, it’s like nothing I could do is wrong, that everything I feel is okay, just because I’m...
Because I’m Gwenna.
I gulp, shake my head. ““Elena—she—” No. Hopeless, trying to explain that. “Everything’s wrong,” I say.
“Everything’s wrong, and it’s all my fault.
I don’t know what I’m doing and everyone needs me to be something and I just don’t know what that is, I don’t know what that fucking is and I can’t figure it out in all these stupid poems and hymns and now the earth is dying and the sun isn’t rising and… and…people are rotting, and, and…”
I’m hysterical. Lanz pins my head against him, letting me sob messily into his shoulder like a fucking lunatic, and I cry and I cry and I gasp and I cry until finally, gradually, I run out of steam, calm settling in from sheer attrition of energy.
My sobs even out into deep breaths. I can feel my nose running, my eyes gone swollen and my lips stuck with spit at the corners.
And yet he holds me so tightly it’s like I’m the only thing anchoring him to Earth. Or vice versa.
I push away again, and this time, he doesn’t resist. He winces, hard, grabs his chest, and immediately, instantly, I forget whatever idiotic emotions I’m stewing in.
He’s hurting.
“Lanz—you’re—”
“Gwenna. No.” He shakes his head, jaw firm. “I’m fine. I’m okay.” He looks into my face. “If you’re okay.”
I…am I?
“I’m…more okay than I was,” I say. The truth. His face brightens—with relief, with something more, something that makes my throat tighten and my stomach flip.
“What?” I say softly. Am I blushing? I think. God. I’m blushing. But the way you’re staring at me, Lanz…
“Nothing.” He glances down at his hands, like he’s weighing some decision. “You’re…”
He looks back up, then reaches for my face, holds it, gently thumbs the corners of my eyes where a few tears are still stuck.
“I just can’t believe I got to meet you,” he whispers. “I’m so lucky.”
I don’t know if he moves first or if I do, but the next thing I know I am kissing him, we are kissing, and it is so good and kind and unbearably sweet that I nearly want to cry again, because who says things like that?
Who shows up like that, runs towards me when I am at my most awful and hateful and ugly, not once but twice? As many times as I’d want?
I can’t believe it either.
There is no urgency to the kiss, no mad rush or wild abandon.
He is taking his time, kissing me as if kissing me is all there is to do, slow and smooth as melting honey.
And I want it like that, neverending and steady, even as I feel the warmth of building need welling up inside me.
I clutch his arms, the lean, easy strength of them, and he pushes me back in response, then up onto the counter, just like that—like I’m light.
Like I couldn’t ever weigh him down. Gently, he pulls me into him by the back of my neck, places kiss after kiss on my mouth, my neck, my collarbones.
All at once I need more.
I grab him, pull his face to mine, and open my mouth.
I drop my hands to his wrists, guide his hands to my hips, and wrap my legs around his waist, kissing deeper, deeper, deeper the whole time.
I feel him nod, feel the soft push of my sweater up my ribs and over my head, the careful skim of his fingers over the cups of my bra.
I arch my back and contort my wrists to undo the clasp and peel the stupid thing away, and when I’m like that, naked to the waist, wrapped around him still, Lanz looks up at me.
Those big, blue eyes. Asking. Hoping.
“Please,” I say.
He shuts his eyes and parts his lips and takes me, his mouth hot around one nipple while his fingers find the other.
I gasp, shudder, clenching already just from that, and wet, so wet I’m sure he can feel me even through tights and panties and sweater.
His eyelids flicker as he works his tongue, his lips, firm and pulling as his fingers are light and brushing.
The contrast, the difference in sensation overwhelms me, and I have to lean forward, onto him, and bury my face in his neck to let out a moan so loud it surprises both of us.
“Gwenna.” With a swirl of his tongue he lets me go, breathes my name against my own damp skin. I grip his neck, not too hard, and pull him back so I can see him.
“Can you…”
I don’t have to finish. He nods. Undoes his belt, his pants as I strip the tights and underwear from my legs, then guides me closer, pushing at the small of my back until I feel the tip of him slide against my entrance.
I pause, a little unbalanced, and shift my weight so I’m leaning more on my wrists, trying to find the right angle, and when I look at him for confirmation, I see it.
A tear has spilled out of one clear blue eye.
“Lanz?” My heart stutters in my chest. “What’s—”
“Nothing.” He swipes it away with the heel of his hand. “Nothing. You’re perfect, Gwenna.”
He grips my right hip and tilts me just slightly back, then plunges in so hard and deep that I gasp and he hisses through his teeth.
Slowly, he steadies my weight, and then he fills me, rolls his hips in perfect pressure against my clit.
I sigh, grind against his rhythm and then whimper—his mouth, his teeth, pulling my nipple taut, then his tongue sweeping warm and wet.
Suddenly, I can’t be far away from him. I flex my legs and pull him closer, to kiss him, to pour myself into him. As I do, his hand slides between us and his fingers find my clit, stroking softly where I’m unbearably swollen, unbearably wet.
“Lanz.” I rip my mouth from his, panting. “I’m—”
He just pulls me closer, fingers never stilling.
“That’s it, baby,” he says into the curve of my neck. “Come for me. Come hard.”
That’s all it takes. I come apart around him, easy and fluttering and full. He pins my hips down, thrusting up, until he spills into me, groaning a gorgeous masculine sound that sends an aftershock clamping down my body.
We stay there a moment, breathing. At last, Lanz pulls out, steps back, squares his shoulders. Stares at the ground.
“Lanz—”
I wait for him to say I’m fine or I’m good or whatever other automatic response he always gives.
But this time, he doesn’t. He just looks up. Stares at me. Eyes soft, like he’s taking me in.
Like he’s memorizing me.
“Yeah?” he says.
I forget what I was going to say. I shake my head.
“Come here.” I hop off the counter, straighten my skirt over my hips, and hold out a hand to him. “Lie down with me.”
“Anyone fucking home?”