“Right,” I said slowly. “What does that mean, exactly?”
“Free will.” Grant tugged me into the yard. “Let’s go.”
I allowed myself to be pulled toward the barn. “You act like you live here.”
“I listen when you talk. And you’ve talked so little about this place, I listened very hard when you did. Plus, I had time to look around. I was curious about where you grew up.”
“I didn’t grow up here.”
He glanced at me. “You tell people you’re from Texas. Must feel a little like home.”
“I was born here. In that house.” I watched Raw and Aaz tumble through the shadows ahead of us. “Zee delivered me.”
Grant stumbled a little. “Wow.”
“I know.”
The barn hadn’t held an animal larger than a cat or mouse in over a hundred years, and my mother had always kept it swept and clean. The old station wagon was parked inside.
I ached when I saw it. Trailed my hands down the dusty brown hood and stared through the windshield at the front seat. I could almost see my mother behind the wheel, and me, beside her, in pigtails and overalls, and my little red cowboy boots. Ghosts, in my mind.
Even the boys were reverent, licking the metal and pressing their cheeks against the doors. Dek and Mal sang the melody to “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and Grant joined in counterpoint, his voice soft, sad.
The doors were locked, but Aaz flitted through the shadows and opened the car from the inside. A musty leather and plastic smell wafted out. I thought about sliding into the driver’s seat, but stopped at the last moment and climbed into the back. I slid over to make room for Grant. Paper crunched underfoot. It was dark inside the car, but my eyesight was good at night, and I glimpsed maps, hotel pamphlets, loose-leaf drawings made with crayon and markers. Old memories. We had stopped driving this car when I was ten and parked it here. My mom and I had never cleaned it out.
I picked up one of the drawings and smoothed out the paper on my leg.
“I’m putting that on the refrigerator,” Grant said.
I smiled, tracing my finger over five sharp splotches with red eyes, set in the middle of oversized purple flowers that were almost as tall as the stick figure with long black hair that had “mommy” written underneath and towered over the second figure, which was just a head and legs and two jutting arms with hearts for hands. I’d written “me” to the side.
Dek and Mal slithered down my arms to examine the drawing. I let them give it a good long look, then leaned forward to place it carefully on the front seat. I glimpsed old cassette tapes, more papers, a knife or two—and then slid back to sit beside Grant.
“This was home,” he said.
“For most of my childhood. We’d sleep in the back sometimes. I was little. Mom made it fun, and the boys always brought me things.” Zee poked his head from the shadows at my feet, and I stroked his spiky hair. “I think that’s when they got into teddy bears.”
“Soft and huggable,” Zee rasped, and fled back into the shadows. Grant laid his arm over my shoulders and pulled me close. It was strange, sitting in this car with him. But it felt right, too. Even though my memories still seemed far away, even though it was impossible to catalog our two years all at once, it was enough that I felt the weight of that history between us. Anchoring me.
“I saw Oturu,” I said, quietly, and told him everything. About my mother, my ancestor. I unburdened myself, and he didn’t say a word until I was done.
“That’s a lot to take in,” Grant said.
“I don’t think I’ve processed it. I’m not certain I believe.”
“You believe. The difference is that you know yourself, the parts that matter. You’re strong. You love the boys. What Jack and those demons told you is superficial compared to that.”
“Superficial,” I echoed, with a bitter smile. “Reaper Kings. End of the world.”
“Superficial,” he said again, with particular gentleness, and poked Zee with his foot. The little demon was eavesdropping on the floor. All the boys were in the car. I smelled popcorn and beer, and listened to Raw and Aaz behind us, chewing loudly.
“What do you think?” Grant asked Zee. “Seeing as how you’re the other half of this.”
“Other half of light,” Zee whispered.
The other side of dreaming,
added that lithe voice in my mind, each word making the darkness stir and uncoil a little more beneath my skin. A chill rolled through me. My sight wavered. All I could see, for a moment, was my dream of being inside the belly of the wyrm, surrounded by swallowed stars.
But there are things we have never known.
“Maxine,” Grant said.
I blinked, and the world returned. I just wasn’t certain
I
was still in the world. One foot out of it, maybe. Everything felt so distant.
“I’m tired,” I told him, which wasn’t exactly a lie. The moment I said the words, I suffered a weariness that was soul-deep, destructive. I wondered what it would feel like finally to give up, to just lie down and die. I wasn’t certain I had the energy for anything else.
Grant’s jaw tightened, and he pulled me into his lap, holding me close. I leaned against him, my cheek pressed to his chest, breathing in the scent of cinnamon, soaking in his heat. Dek and Mal purred.
“Come on,” he said roughly, kissing the top of my bald head. “Don’t hurt.”
I thought of my ancestor, with ropes around her ankles and hands. Thrown into a hole, like garbage, to spend an eternity buried alive. My mother, pregnant and on her own. If she had dealt with this same darkness that was inside me, never speaking a word . . .
I buried my face even tighter against Grant’s chest.
“You’re scared,” he breathed. “Maxine.”
“I’m scared of being alone,” I told him, hardly able to get the words out. Unable to hold them in.
His arms tightened. “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It is. You don’t understand.”
He laughed, but it was a coarse, wet sound, verging on grief. “I was never lonely until I met you, Maxine. I wasn’t lonely until I realized what life would be like without you.”
My fingers dug into his shirt. “Don’t say that.”
He stilled, staring at me. Silent such a long time I felt uneasy.
“Zee,” he said finally, softly. “Get the hell out of here. Take the others with you.”
Zee didn’t argue. He snapped his claws. Dek and Mal chirped, licked my ears, and faded into the shadows. A deep silence replaced Raw and Aaz’s chewing.
“Now, listen,” I said, but Grant shook his head, jaw tight, eyes glittering with that odd golden light.
“
You
listen,” he said, and kissed me hard on the mouth.
Heat burst through my chest, wildness rising inside me, filled with dizzying hunger. I twisted Grant’s shirt in my hands, pressed so tightly against him I could feel every hard line of his body. Felt like years, a lifetime, since I had been so close to him; and there was a small part of me that weighed each second and sensation, holding it up against the rest of my life.
Grant broke off the kiss and grabbed my hand to hold against his chest. I felt his heart pounding beneath my palm, and he smoothed his thumb over my cheek, the corner of my mouth. Both of us, trembling. “Listen to me. Listen to how much I need you. And don’t you dare . . . don’t you dare, Maxine, tell me I shouldn’t say how much I love you.”
He kissed me again, gently. When he pulled away, I followed, sensing words on his tongue. I kissed him hard, afraid of what he would say, and he sighed against my mouth and held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. So tight that if the world fell, he’d still be holding me.
I
wanted to hold him that tightly. I wanted to show him the heartache he eased, how full I felt, simply being in his arms. I wanted him to know he was my home. It seemed more important than ever that he know that—because I hadn’t known it. I had forgotten. And the enormity of that loss stole my breath away.
Grant pushed me down on the car seat, tossing his cane on the floor. I forced my hands to unclench from his shirt, sliding them down his hard stomach to the waist of his jeans. His skin was hot. Muscles tight.
Grant made a small sound, his hands touching me in fleeting motions that felt as breathless as he sounded—and if I died a hundred, thousand years from now, I didn’t think I would ever forget the way he looked at me.
“Your eyes,” I murmured.
“What about them?” Grant slid his hand under my sweater, resting his large palm on my stomach, then higher, on my breast. I arched into his touch, sighing, and swallowed my words. I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him how it made me feel, to be looked at with such naked hunger and grace.
Maybe he knew. He slid off my vest and pulled my sweater over my head. I shivered, fumbling with his jeans, both of us moving faster, urgency making us rough. I needed him. I needed him so badly.
Clothes off, pushed aside, tangled. His skin was hot and hard, and we rolled over so that he lay on his back, his bad leg hanging off the seat. I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak; all I could do was touch him, sliding down until my mouth caressed his inner thighs, and then higher, higher, sucking gently on the tip of his thick hard shaft, my hands wrapping tight around him, stroking.
Grant cried out, hips bucking upward, pushing himself deeper into my mouth. His hands slid across my head and shoulders, and he sat up, breathing raggedly, trying to reach my breasts. I teased him with my tongue, then slid up against his body, closing my eyes as his fingers sank between us, touching me hard, then soft, his mouth never leaving mine.
I reached between us, too, and guided the tip of him against me, holding him there, rubbing. Grant strained, his expression pure agony. I kissed his throat, tasting the salt of his sweat, suffering the most excruciating pleasure as I pushed my hips down hard against him. He filled me to the point of pain, then everything eased, and we began moving against each other hard and fast.
Somehow, we rolled over so that he was on top of me, half-kneeling off the seat. I hooked my leg around him as he pushed deeper, harder, driving into me with a relentlessness that made me cry out with every sharp thrust. He didn’t ease up as I came, only clutched me tight in one arm, still moving inside me as he reached down between us to touch me, just so, just right. I climaxed again, digging my nails into his back, and finally he let go with a wordless shout, his hips jerking so hard, so long against me, I came one last time.
He collapsed on top of me, and I loved it. I loved feeling him exhausted, and I loved being exhausted, like this: pressed to him, feeling his heartbeat shuddering against mine as something passed between us—light or energy—until the glow I imagined inside my chest burned white-hot, bathing the coiled spirit stirring lazily in its dreams.
“You’re my sunrise,” Grant murmured against my throat. “Always. No matter what happens, just remember that.”
I ran my fingers through his thick hair. “Speaking to the girl who had amnesia.”
He groaned. “Don’t. I didn’t think I could take it. It killed me when you looked at me like I was a stranger.”
“I can only imagine that I was trying to protect you.” I held his hand against my chest. “Our bond . . . the energy you take from me . . . you realize, don’t you, what you’re drawing from? The boys said this thing inside me is the worst part of them, and it’s going to get free. It’s going to change me. And if you’re there, too—”
“I love how you always underestimate me.”
“Do not.”
Grant raised himself up on his elbows and gave me a long, steady look. “You can’t make everything right. Sometimes, you just have to let go, and have a little faith that the world will keep spinning, and the sun will rise, and that life will be okay.”
“It won’t,” I said. “It can’t.”
“Which part?” Grant ran his hand through his hair, tugging hard, a little something wild in his eyes. “I know it wasn’t
just
protecting me that made you run. You were afraid of something else. I’ve never seen you so afraid, inside.”
“Because I’ll lose you,” I said, without thinking. “I love you, and I’ll lose you. Nothing keeps. Not in my life. Not
even
my life. And it’ll be my fault.”
And my life is cheaper than my heart.
I tried to sit up. Grant placed his hand on my shoulder, holding me down. “It’s not your fault your mother died.”
“She died because of me.”
“The boys transferred their protection. If you’re going to blame anyone—”
“Don’t,” I said sharply, feeling tight and cold on the inside. “She could have had more time.”
Grant stilled, staring into my eyes with that look he got, sometimes, when he saw too deep.
“More time for you,” he said. “More time for you to figure things out.”
I looked away, stung. “I never appreciated her. I loved her, but I was angry with her so much. I hated our life. I hated it so much that we never had a home. I hated this car we lived in. I hated that I never could be alone. I hated all the violence and knowing . . . knowing I didn’t have a choice because
that’s the way things were
. I hated it all; and then she died.” I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I didn’t have time to tell her I loved her. I couldn’t even tell her thank you for being my mother. I didn’t understand. I thought I did, but I didn’t. I didn’t understand what she’d gone through, everything she protected me from, until it was
me
.”
“She knows you loved her. She
knows
, Maxine.”
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath. “Everything I have here . . . everything about you . . . is all I ever wanted. But that was . . . I had those dreams before she died. After that . . . I stopped wanting. I stopped. I just . . . did what I was supposed to. And I told myself it was what I wanted.”
Grant wrapped his arms around me, pulling me gently against his chest. His warmth soaked through my muscles, like I was drowning in sunlight; and he hummed a brief note that soared and rumbled into my chest, in the pulse that matched my own heart.