She choked on Isabelle’s name. It was still difficult for her to say out loud.
He took a breath and let it slowly whistle out through the mask’s air filter. “I’d never seen the way others treated you prior to that party. Once you left school, it was just me and you. I’d assumed they were afraid of you like they were of me—especially after you crushed Isabelle’s hand.”
He chuckled at the memory, but when Westie didn’t join in, his laughter trailed off into a hum. “I was happy that you had friends, and I enjoyed watching you interact with them and be a normal girl for a change.” He sighed, a long hissing sound. “While I watched, I saw how the boys looked at you. I recognized the stares because I’d caught myself doing the very same thing.”
She looked at him, surprised.
“Just one year earlier you were thirteen, all bones and skinned knees, climbing trees and crying when I wouldn’t play stickball with you because you could hit the ball so much farther than I. You seemed like a child then, while I was a man of sixteen. Then suddenly, at fourteen, you didn’t seem so young anymore.” The redness in his face deepened. “I was terrified by the way I’d started to feel about you. I knew that I’d always loved you, but it had changed into a . . . mature kind of love.”
His words floated in the air above her. Just letters and sounds she couldn’t make sense of. When they finally fit together, all piled up and heavy, they came crashing down on her. For the first time in her life she was speechless.
He hung his head. “After seeing how those boys were with you at your party, I knew it wouldn’t be long before there were more. With all those admirers, why would you choose a mute with scars on his face when you could have the James Lovetts of the world?”
Sadness welled up inside, burning her nose and chest as if she’d breathed ammonia. The pain of it grew and grew until she was drowning in tears. She was overwhelmed with—she wasn’t sure with what, joy, confusion, an anger as strong as dark whiskey.
“You are a coward!” Things would’ve been so different had she known his true feelings. Maybe she would never have left Rogue City to hunt cannibals, or fallen prey to the bottle. She wouldn’t have felt as used up and poisoned as she had.
When she spoke again, it was with a sad lilt. “You broke my heart, Alley.”
His eyes were wide and glittering. “I know. And I’ll spend every day of my life trying to make it up to you.”
Gentle rain tapped against Westie’s parasol. It was just a few drops at first, and then the sky opened and rain spit out like sharpened spears. She could hardly see what was right in front of her face. The lace of her parasol wilted, useless. She folded it up and attached it to her saddle.
The valley was known for its flashes of rain and quick floods. The storm turned the road to glue, and the horses struggled to move in the mush collecting beneath their hooves. Then the hail came.
“We need to get off the road,” Alistair shouted.
The hail chased them into the maple forest, beneath the canopy of leaves where the beating was less abrasive. Westie’s clothes soaked up the wet, chilling her to her core.
Henry stumbled in the muck. She fell but managed to grab hold of the saddle horn with her machine before hitting the ground. Spooked by the sudden shift of weight, Henry took off at a full run, dragging Westie through the brush, knocking her against trees. Branches reached out like clawed hands scratching at her skin until she finally let go and fell into a pile of leaves.
“Westie!” Alistair slid from his saddle and rushed toward her.
He helped her to her feet and led her below a sturdy tree. Nothing hurt more than a bruise. The scratches weren’t deep enough to draw blood. She knew there were no broken bones, but the cold she felt was just as crippling. Alistair grabbed his pack from his horse. He used a large sheet of hide to make a shelter and laid out his bedroll and wool blankets.
Westie had started to peel off her clothes when she noticed Alistair frozen in place. The exposed skin around his mask made him look like a child who had gotten into his mother’s rouge.
“What?” she said. “I’m freezing and I’m not getting under blankets in these wet clothes.”
He looked at the ground. “Of course not. I’ll go find Henry.”
While Alistair was looking for Henry, Westie stripped down to her underclothes, desperate to get warm. She found flint in Alistair’s pack and built a fire beneath a tree just outside the shelter with the driest wood she could find, then wrapped herself up in his blankets, trying to stave off hypothermia.
Alistair returned after a while, but the feeling in Westie’s limbs had not.
“Henry wouldn’t come to me,” Alistair said, warming his hands by the fire.
Westie’s muscles were wound tight, and she shook so violently she could barely get words through her clenched jaw. “Give him time to settle his nerves. He’ll come back.”