Page 85 of Walking in Darkness

“I think we were trying to givedivea new definition.”

I blinked through the fog of memories of the last few weeks. Days and nights that felt as if they’d been set to fast-forward, blips of cities and towns that we’d sped by imprinted in my mind in a black-and-white haze.

The endless slew of crappy motels that had all felt the same, though each was so distinctly different.

The beauties and horrors that had been found behind their doors.

It felt as if it all had transpired in a flash yet had stretched over years.

“But I didn’t mind. And this? It’s honestly perfect,” I told her. “Your adorable house. Being here,withyou and Timothy. It’s better than anything I could have imagined. It feels like what home should feel like.”

“A place where you’re safe. Understood,” she murmured, as if she felt it, too, her pale, pale eyes soft as she glanced in my direction.

My nod was slow. “Yeah. That’s exactly it.”

“Do you miss yours?” she asked as she straightened, and she leaned her hip against the white desk that sat against the wall opposite the foot of the bed. It was where she spent her days as a graphic designer for a local advertising company.

Three large monitors were arranged side by side, and a digital drawing pad and a keyboard sat on top. Colorful pens, markers, and notepads were organized in containers, and what had to be a thousand sticky notes with ideas scribbled on them were tacked off to the side of the screens.

An ache fluttered through my chest. “I do,” I admitted.

There’d been a constant worry about them.

The worry that they might be targeted again, though everything had seemed to be fine the few times I’d texted to check on them. My mother and siblings were still staying at my grandmother’s house since my mom wasn’t sure how to handle my father.

How to trust again.

I cleared the roughness from my throat. “You know how much I love them. How I’d do anything for them. But this ...”

She padded across the floor, and she reached up and hooked her fingers through mine. “This is your family.”

Emotion gripped me. I nodded through the blear of moisture that rushed to fill my eyes.

“And I will forever be thankful that you brought us together. All of us,” she said. Her long lashes fluttered behind the lenses of her glassesas she blinked through her thoughts. “Today was like being reunited with a part of myself that I only knew was missing but couldn’t pinpoint exactly why it hurt so bad.”

“It feels right, doesn’t it?” I whispered.

“It feels like a dawning after being in the dark for my entire life.”

She glanced behind me toward the low-pitched mutter of voices coming from the other room, where Pax and Timothy talked in hushed tones. “Seeing you and Pax in the light of day is so amazing. An experience I will forever cherish. But God, Aria. Timothy being here?”

The words cracked, hinged with the wash of confounded joy.

“That I get to experience this, even if it’s just for a little while? Even if I only got to see him once? It means everything to me. It is the one wish I had ever made ... the one true prayer I’d issued a million times that I never believed would be granted.”

It was as if our spirits were peering into mirrors, her thoughts perfectly reflecting mine.

A tear slipped free of my eye, and she held my hand against her chest. “It’s a gift, Aria. What we share. All of us. But especially with them. And this can’t be temporary. It can’t. We have to find a way.”

Reaching out her free hand, she brushed away the moisture that lined my cheek, her voice soggy as she continued. “And I have faith that we will. Because even though I can feel what’s festering in the air—the malignant—I can feel there’s a solution. A remedy. Something bigger than what threatens to consume us. I can’t believe we’d be here together if there wasn’t.”

Footsteps scuffed down the hall. We broke apart, and I poked my head out to find Pax and Timothy laughing under their breaths as they approached.

Though the air—it completely shifted when Dani stepped out into the hall.

Timothy slowed, just taking her in.

She couldn’t be more than half his height, this tiny slip of a human who folded herself into him when he made it to where she waited. His mouth went to the crown of her head.