“Okay,” I agreed because I hadn’t meant to imply otherwise, but I’d grown clumsy with my words, not used to talking much since the accident. “But then as my family, you need to respect my decision to go. The funeral, it was…nice, but it wasn’t closure. I never got to say goodbye to him, and I need to try to find a way to do it.”
“Yeah,” he’d finally said, searching my eyes, his own gone as soft as grey clouds after unleashing a storm. “Yeah, don’t like it, but I’ll find’a way to be at peace with it if that’s what you need.”
“It is.”
He’d nodded, and the rest of my friends had reluctantly followed his lead even though they each tried to sway me otherwise over the course of the evening.
I had fun that night, though, relishing it in a way I hadn’t seen King’s loss because I knew it was my last night with them before I left. I played with a grumpy Walker, who everyone had officially started calling Monster, and a giggling Angel. I listened to Ares read to me from This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald before he fell asleep in my bed, staying for a sleepover because he didn’t want me to be alone on my birthday.
Sander didn’t say anything about my leaving even though I could feel his despair. We had just reconnected, but it was like two magnets meeting, straight back to the closeness we’d shared growing up but doubled because of the way he’d supported me through my grief. When everyone left with kisses and some tears and a dozen promises for me to call them every day, he lingered awkwardly in the door.
So, I’d gone to him, wrapped my arms around his hard waist, and pressed my cheek to his chest. “Love you, big brother. Thank you for…everything.”
That heart-wrenching moment of hesitation and then his big arms were around me, and he was squeezing me so tightly, I almost couldn’t breathe.
When he spoke, it was in my hair, his lips pressed to the top of my head. “Know you gotta lotta people you can call if you need anythin’, but I hope you know, Queenie, that I’d be honoured to be the first person you reach out to for help if you need it. Nothin’ on this earth I wouldn’t do for you.”
“You’ve never called me Queenie before,” I said, pulling back just enough to look up into his handsome, weathered face. “I thought I was your princess.”
The green in his eyes glowed as he smiled a little, secret smile and bumped my chin lightly with his fist. “Doesn’t seem so fittin’ anymore. Woman I got in my arms is every inch a Queen.”
I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth to shore up the tears in my throat.
“No one stronger than you,” he assured me. “Why do you think your man called you his Iron Queen? Gotta spine of steel, Cress; it’s held you strong through everythin’ so far, and I doubt it’ll let you down for the rest. You do what you gotta do to heal, and then you come home to us soon, yeah? You’ve got a whole fuckin’ town rootin’ for you here.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it was true. I had the Garros, and The Fallen, but I also had the citizens of Entrance, most of them at least, especially now that so many of the corrupt police were in the process of being put behind bars.
Danner’s sentencing trial was set to begin in a week, and I wanted to be gone before then. I wasn’t a witness, so I didn’t have to testify, and I didn’t think I could survive the news crews and worried townsfolk showing up at my house again.
So, the next morning, after making one last apple pie for breakfast, then eating it straight out of the oven with Ares, both of us blowing hard on our forks to cool the molten fruit, I dropped him off at school and made one more pitstop before I hit the road properly.
I hadn’t been back to the cliff top since the incident. It was the sight of my nightmare come to life, and it felt cursed like the sight of some ancient burial ground.
But I needed to see it.
So, I swung my leg off King’s bike and staggered as I tried to maneuver the heavy weight, still not completely used to the thing even though King had taught me to drive it countless times. The trail was dry, the flowers long dead from the sun roasting them through the summer, and there was already a nip in the air that said our Indian summer was over and fall was around the corner. I hugged my backpack to my chest to ward off the chill and held my breath as I finally entered the clearing over the bluff.