A black bird flaps its wings overhead,
creating a shadow on the ceiling. Images of a deadly archangel coming to destroy us all enter my mind. The bird grows more agitated and the other birds fly to a beam on the opposite side of the barn. He takes off into the air and smacks the wall, dips down, flies across the barn, and rams into the opposite wall. My heart thunders with every hit. I watch with wide eyes and shaking hands. “We have to help him.”
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I jump up and stumble toward the barn
door. Struggling for balance, I force one of the doors open with a loud creak. I lean against the frame and wait for the bird that’s damaging itself over and over again to escape. “Go! Get out of here!”
“Shut the door,” Ryan says. “Birds are
stupid. If you want it out, you’re going to have to trap it and drag it out.”
I gesture wildly into the open night. “But the door is open!”
“And the bird’s so panicked that it’ll never see the opening. All you’re doing is inviting your uncle to come in here and find us. Unless you’re ready to go home, close the door.”
The bird smacks itself into the wall again and flutters to a nearby beam. He ruffles his feathers over and over again, then finally draws in his wings to rest. My stomach rolls in torture. Why can’t the bird see the way out?
“Who’s Echo?” asks Ryan.
“But the bird…” I say, ignoring his question.
“Doesn’t understand you’re trying to help. If anything, it sees you as a threat. Now, tell me, who’s Echo?”
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want the bird to find freedom, but I’m not ready to go back to Scott’s. Thanks to my impaired state, I half walk, half trip back to my bed of straw. Damn bird. Why can’t something be easy? “Noah’s girlfriend.”
“That’s a screwed-up name,” he says.
I giggle. “She’s a screwed-up girl.” I stop giggling and remember how Noah looked at her: as if she was the only person on the planet, the only person that mattered. “But Noah loves her.”
That must be love: when everything else in the world could implode and you wouldn’t care as long as you had that one person standing beside you. Isaiah has it all wrong. For many reasons. He doesn’t love me. He can’t. For starters, he doesn’t look at me like Noah does Echo. Besides, I’m not worthy of that type of love.
The bird hides its head under its wing. I understand that feeling of wishing the world would go away. If I had wings, I’d hide underneath them too.
“It’s just a bird, Beth. It’ll find its way out eventually.”
Something deep and dark and heavy inside
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me tells me it won’t. The poor bird will die in this damn barn and will never see blue sky again.
Straw rustles and Ryan drops beside me,
stirring dust into the air. He clumsily rolls onto his side to face me. His warm body touches mine and his eyes have a strange intensity.
“Don’t do that.”
My heart trips over itself. Ryan kept his hat off and I like it more than I should. His hair kicks out crazily in the back and it gives a boyish charm to a face that belongs to a man.
“Do what?” I ask, ashamed that my voice
comes out a little breathless.
His eyebrows inch closer together and he
moves his hand near my face. He stops and so does my breathing. Ryan stares at my lips and then caresses my cheek.
“You do that a lot.” His finger slides steadily to the tip of my mouth. My skin tingles under his touch. “Look sad. I hate it. Your mouth turns down. Your cheeks lose all color. You lose everything about you that makes you…you.”
I lick my lips and I swear he watches. His finger pauses before tracing another teasing HC TITLE-AUTHOR
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path across my cheek. My pulse quickens
and heat spreads through my body. His
touch—oh God—feels good. And I want good.
So much.
But I don’t want him. At least, I don’t think so. “Are you stalking me?”
His lips burst into a bright smile and he withdraws his hand. “Welcome back.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Ryan does it again—his smile. The one that makes my stomach flip.
“I like you,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. He must have snorted
some crack earlier, or maybe he’s doing that steroid crap. What do they call it? Juicing.
Yeah. The kid is definitely juicing. And drunk.
“You like me?”
He shakes his head and it’s a strange clumsy mix of yes and no at the same time. Ryan is sloshed. “I don’t know. The way you talk. The way you act. I know what I’m going to get from you, but then I don’t. I mean, you’re unpredictable, yet I know whatever reaction you’re going to give me is real, you know?”
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