Page 113

“Never!”

Go away go away go away.

“Never!” His voice strums the invisible threads above me in urgent chords, and my head rises to his call like a soggy marionette. I can’t fight it.

He kneels at the other end of the bridge, sopping curls and rain-soaked face. “Hold the rails.”

I drop my hands from my ears and wrap my arms around me. The pelting rain hammers to the center of my brain, almost drowning out the roar of the river. “I can’t fix it all. I can’t save them.”

“Hold on to the sides.”

“I can’t beat her.” My temperature rises with every word. Diluted tears stream over my lips. How am I supposed to stop my mother from taking babies? From drugging Calderans? From killing Kelt?

Eli pulls at his wet hair. “You only have to beat the thoughts that hold you back,” he yells over the rain. “Let me help you.”

“Help me? You don’t know—”How broken I am. The death I see.Hotter and hotter.

He looks up at the rain and back at me. “If you would—”

“How? How can you help me?”Please help me.I’m burning now, but it’s not me at all. It’s the rain. It falls in steaming sheets, carrying every earthy scent of the woods with it.

“For starters,” he shouts, whipping the hair from his face, “I could stop you from falling into a freezing river.”

My head drops. Hot raindrops massage my neck and slide down my back. The two planks at my knees are cracked down the middle, dangling down from a split center beam. The river eddies and lashes below, vapors rising as the rain batters the surface. I trace the fracture of the beam all the way to the other side of the bridge, visible in gaps between the planks. The bridge could collapse at any moment. It’s as fragile as my sanity.

The vision comes like a crashing wave.

Falling to the rapids below. The rocks waiting to break bones, tear flesh. The breath-stealing cold. The blood mixing with the froth. The end.

My senses surge with life. I roll my head and grab the rails, pushing the vision away, down into the rapids. One movement forward would have landed me on the jagged rocks jutting through the water.

“Keep holding the rails. They’ll be there even if the bottom drops out.” He stands, arms out, beckoning me.

“That’s really fucking encouraging. Don’t you have a rope or something?”

“You have to cross.”

“What if I slip?”What if I fall like Cam, like I deserve?

“Come to me.”

I’m frozen under the hot shower, unable to pick up the pieces of myself. “I can’t.”

Eli reaches out over the rails, looking at me in the most devastating way. His hands dance and drum against the wood, fingers rapping out a familiar, jumpy beat, backed with the pit-pat of rain, now unbearably hot. His whole body absorbs the rhythm and moves with him.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to summon you.” His eyes narrow and darken like coal, and the side of his mouth quirks up.

“Summon me?” I tighten my grip on the rails. He’s lost it.

“Right into my arms.” The beat quickens.

“You can’t do that.”

“Oh, no? Didn’t I say I control you?”

Then this man, this gorgeous, wet, drumming man sings. His song ricochets off the raindrops, straight into me.