Pain shows in Xavier’s mismatched eyes. He leans to the glass and fogs it with his breath. He pulls back, and with his finger, he writes: COME BACK TO ME. He rests his palm against the window. My heart squeezes tight, leaving no room for my blood to breathe. I feel hopeless as my eyes meet his again. I hate this. My hand twitches with the urge to meet his on the glass.
Reed backs our car next to me. I back away from Xavier’s window and bump up against the door, blindly searching for the handle. When the door slides open, I retract my wings and scramble into my seat, refusing to look at Xavier again. Reed drives in the direction of my house. Xavier’s house, my mind corrects.
Reed gazes in the rearview mirror. “He’s not following us.”
“He can’t. I killed his car and locked him in. The spell should last for a little while, but the farther away I get, the weaker it’ll become. He’ll be out soon. How’s your face?”
He pulls away a torn piece of fabric and I hiss at the violence of the wound. I should’ve killed him, I think.
Reed tries to smile but winces. “It’ll be gone in a few minutes, love.”
Opening the console, I’m not at all surprised to find a small first aid kit there. “I know. I’m so glad you heal faster than me,” I murmur, unwrapping a gauze bandage and dabbing it lightly to his cheek.
“You shouldn’t have stopped us, Evie. Xavier and I will have to face one another.”
“Maybe not, Reed. Time can change anything.” My hand stills. I panic. Time could change us, like it had with Xavier and me. I feel like my heart unravels, but I don’t let him see it. “One day, Reed,” I begin dabbing at his cheek again, “you and I will get in the car and just drive. We’ll wander from silver cities to golden coasts.” I use an alcohol swab to clean the blood from his cheek. “We’ll sleep when we’re tired. When we wake, I’ll find a way to make you laugh and I’ll live in the sound of it.” My throat gets tight because I long for that day to be now. “We’ll find somewhere you’ve never been and we’ll make it ours—fill it with memories of us. That’s what I want.” I finish with the alcohol swab. Leaning close, I gently blow on his healing wound to ease the sting.
Reed takes my hand and brings it to his lips, kissing it tenderly. “And when we get that sleep, there will never be a your side or a my side of the bed—we’ll always meet in the middle. And when I hold you there, in our bed, you’ll let me rest my lips here.” Reed lets go of my hand to move his thumb to caress the sensitive skin of my neck just beneath my ear. I get swept up in him: my body his with one touch. I turn and rub my cheek gently against his palm.
“And we won’t rush...ever,” I murmur, forgetting to be scared. I want that future with him.
“The world can spin around us but we’ll take our time, savor every moment.”
My head rests on his shoulder. “Just you and me.”
He kisses the top of my head. “I doubt Buns or Brownie will allow that.”
He has somehow found a way to make me smile. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Detroit—to your childhood home,” Reed answers. “I’ve been there.”
“That’s right,” I murmur as I remember that he went there to take care of things after Freddie killed my Uncle Jim.
“I’ve been there several times when I was looking for you after you left Crestwood.”
Once we reach the highway, the rest of the trip to Detroit passes quickly as Reed flies by cars like they’re standing still. When we exit, he weaves in and out of traffic on the icy two-lane roads. We enter my neighborhood and Reed is forced to slow the car. Garlands decorate doors shrouded by iron bars. People are getting ready to celebrate the winter holidays and the familiarity of it all seems foreign to me—my life prior to Crestwood is so far removed from the one I have now.
Everything in this city is the same, which shocks me. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed so much since I was here that I expected it to have changed as well. But it hasn’t. It’s the same. The rectangular-shaped storefronts and restaurants hide behind growing piles of plowed and shoveled snow. People with scarf-wrapped necks and gloved hands hold shopping bags as their boots hurry toward parked cars to get out of the cold.
After we pass the fire station, we turn right onto the street where I grew up. It’s all single-family, two-story dwellings with postage-stamp lawns and open front porches. Reed avoids the driveway and pulls up to the curb in front of my childhood house, parking beneath the snow-covered branches of the elm tree. It had belonged to Uncle Jim’s parents, my grandparents. He’d inherited it when they died. I don’t remember them at all—they were gone before I was born.