Page 108 of Rule the Night

Why hadn’t I heard about this?

I mean, it’s not like I read the newspaper or anything, and I’d gone to Forest Day instead of the public high school, but Ilivedhere. Shouldn’t this be a bigger deal?

I’d started looking the girls up on my phone — Rain Adakai had gone missing just last year — when I reached the front of the line. I gave my order to the harried looking barista with purple hair and moved to the left to wait for my mocha latte.

And that was when I saw Bram.

He was getting up from the same table he’d been at the last time I’d been in Cassie’s Cuppa and sitting with the same redhead.

He crossed the distance between them to give her a hug before turning to leave.

I watched as he approached my position near the counter, and this time he looked right at me.

I offered him a weak smile, because that was the least you could do when you saw someone you knew out in public.

But he looked right through me, walked right by like he’d never seen me before in his life.

69

BRAM

It tookwork not to look at her. She was right there, shining just like always.

My heart had lifted when I’d laid eyes on her, which was exactly the problem. Caring she was there — being fuckinghappyto see her — told me all I needed to know: I wanted her.

And that was the one thing that would always and forever be off-limits.

So I’d walked right past her, had felt my heart shatter when the shy smile had dropped from her face.

And then I’d walked right out of the coffee shop.

Now I pointed the Hummer for the loft, but when I got there, I kept going.

I crossed the railroad tracks that marked the end of Main, then drove along Preserve Road, the potholed strip of asphalt that ran parallel to the Blackwell Preserve.

A half mile later I pulled into an empty dirt lot at one of the local trailheads. This wasn’t one of the places the tourists went. It was too deep in Southside, poorly maintained, mostly deserted.

I got out of the Hummer and started down the trail. The trail marker had long since disappeared, eaten by the forest’s overgrowth. I couldn’t even remember what the trail was called. Maybe I’d never known, but this was where I’d always gone when I needed to think, not because I was a nature enthusiast, but because it was deserted and I pretty much hated everyone.

Everyone except for her.

I stalked up a rise on the trail, then descended as it sloped to the river. I heard it — a rush, a sigh — before I saw it, and I followed the sound to the water winding through the trees.

This wasn’t the Blackwell River. That was bigger and wider and ran through another part of the preserve. This was one of many unnamed rivers and streams that wound through the woods, too small to draw kayakers and rafters, too overgrown to be a well-known picnic spot.

The trail ended at a small beach, no more than a few yards wide and deep, on the riverbank. An old walking bridge spanned the water to my left, and I hopped onto one of the rectangular concrete supports, crumbling from years of wind and rain, and let my legs dangle off the edge.

The water glinted in the late-afternoon sun, like a net of diamonds on its surface. Leaves fell from the trees, drifting into the water in a flurry of color. I watched them as they fell, floating on the river’s surface as they made their way downstream.

I’d hurt Maeve at the coffee shop. She’d never let me know it, but I’d seen it in her eyes.

It had been bound to happen.

The worst thing about wanting something was that you didn’t know how much it mattered to you until it was gone. I’d taken life before my parents’ accident for granted. They’d always been there, and even though I’d moved out for college, I’d known I could walk into the house at any time and find my dad watching hockey, my mom laughing with Cassie in the kitchen.

Then, in an instant, it had all been gone.

My dad had been an electrician, my mom a TA at the local elementary school. There had been no life insurance, just a mortgage on a small house in Southside that I had no hope of paying as a nineteen-year-old kid with no skills to speak of.