Maybe God listened, or maybe they didn’t, but as he sat there breathing some of the panic resided—enough at least, to register Lydia’s last reply. She was going to Rahil. She’d be safe there. He seemed to know what to do with her in a way that Mercer wasn’t managing.
Goddamn. How had he fucked everything up again, this soon?
What had he done? What had hesaid?
He was supposed to be better than this—he wastryingto be better than this—and yet every time,thisstill happened. Maybe there was no God real enough or powerful enough to fix whatever the hell was wrong in his head that he kept letting his panic transform into something that scared off the people he wanted to keep closest.
Kat pressed her head into his lap, whimpering softly, and Mercer flinched from the sudden touch. She scooted back, looking concerned.
“Oh, hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he whispered, and it came out more of a blubber. Carefully, he pulled the stubby dog into his lap and rubbed her head.
His phone chimed.
Despite everything he’d done and said, he half-hoped for a message from Lydia or Rahil, but what he got instead made everything else feel small in comparison.
Bloncourt,
I know what you’re doing.
Meet me in the park in five minutes, or we can settle this the hard way.
William
35
LYDIA
Lydia was nearly to the trees, beanie pulled low and palms wiping her cheeks, when she heard noise from within the shed.
Ray had been in there earlier, hadn’t he? If her dad was still in the house, then it had to be him.
She didn’t want to admit how relieved it made her to think she wouldn’t have to walk all the way to his home. Her limbs hurt with the small, muscle-numbing pain that meant something worse was coming, and she hadn’t taken her med pack with her, and she was so stupid tired in the way that her body got after big emotions, and she didn’t want to be near her dad but she also didn’t want to be away from him either.
What she wanted, most of all, was for Ray to tell her it was okay that it sucked, and then to curl up on her floor with a pillow and watch videos until she forgot to be worried about Dad panicking himself into a migraine. Maybe Ray would stay with her dad for a bit. Maybe he could help.
Lydia gave her face one last rub with her beanie, sliding it back on and taking a good, deep breath to get the sobs out of her lungs, before stepping into the shed. “Hey, Ray—”
She froze four steps in.
The man hovering over her dad’s work bench, sliding his phone into his pocket as his eyes locked on her, wasn’t Ray at all. He smiled. “You must be Lydia. I’ve been waiting for you.”
36
RAHIL
He could not have stayed.
Rahil kept telling himself that as he paced through the trees neighboring the Bloncourt’s lot, little sun-shakes wracking through his limbs. The prickling pain of each step felt good. Like he was still alive. Like he could still do something.
He couldn’t though. Mercer had told him to leave, and after he’d invaded the man’s space so many times in the past, Rahil couldn’t do it this time.
It still felt like the wrong choice, but so did every other choice.
So did every choice he’d ever made.
Rahil ran his hands through the pieces of hair that had fallen from his braid. It had been so tight when he’d put it in, what was it now, twenty-four, thirty-six hours ago? He’d lost track of the time. No, that was a lie—he’d found out that he wasn’t the only whale left in the sea, and time had stopped having meaning. And now he was alone again.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, hoping for guidance, even if it was in the form of condemnation. The text bubble icon made his heart leap and flutter, but he opened it to find a string of messages from his nieces as they planned the next family get-together: a collection of food and games, which they’d decided had to include one of the two Bollywood films they’d clearly been arguing over in a different thread, though how that fit into the ‘games’ category, Rahil wasn’t entirely sure. It wasn’t what he wanted, and he almost—almost—clicked it aside.
