Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,198

all the choices that could have been made which would have changed everything.”

“Yeah,” I agreed in a choked voice.

“Sometimes it’s like that’s all that’s left of her,” he said in a low voice. “Like those final days have wiped away everything good before it. But I feel guilty as hell thinking that because there was so much good.”

“Tell me something good,” I urged and he fell silent for a moment, the wind howling somewhere off in the mountains.

He ran his thumb over the bracelet on my wrist that had belonged to his mom and I could almost feel a connection to her through it for a second. Like I knew her. Just a little bit.

“We used to make pancakes together every Sunday,” he said at last. “Dad would get out of bed late and the two of us would make a complete mess of the kitchen before he came downstairs. We’d make everyone’s favourite pancakes, always the same ones. Mine were chocolate and banana and hers were…cherries and maple syrup.”

I turned my head to look at him as he said that, but he kept his eyes on the sky, his dark green gaze reflecting the sparkling stars. “But you always have cherries and syrup.”

His throat bobbed. “After she died, I started eating it every day to remind me of her. To have something physical right in front of me first thing in the morning that would make sure I never forgot her. People always say they won’t forget the dead, but they do. They move on. They get past it. They don’t want to face the pain because otherwise it’ll never leave. But if the pain leaves, doesn’t that mean they leave too?”

I blinked back tears, looking up at the sky. “I don’t know,” I whispered because I struggled with that too. I didn’t want to let go because what if I was the only thing still keeping them alive? Dad, Jess. If I forgot them, who else would remember them? But holding onto the pain didn’t bring them back. It only made me suffer.

I reached up to brush my fingers over the necklace around my throat, trying to reach for some feeling of Jess lingering on it.

“Do you think they’re somewhere out there?” he asked. “Do you think they miss us too?”

A tear slid down my cheek as I nodded. “I think we have to believe that, we have to hope they do. Because the alternative is too awful. But either way…they’d want us to stop hurting for them. I know I’d want that if things were the other way around. But that doesn’t mean we have to forget them.”

“You’re right,” Blake said heavily.

“It would hurt your mom to see you in pain. Just like it hurts me when I see you hurt yourself.” I drew his bruised knuckles to my mouth and kissed them gently, working my lips across each one.

He rolled toward me, pushing a lock of hair behind my ear as he gazed down at me. “I never wanna hurt you again, Cinders.”

“So don’t,” I breathed and he leaned down to kiss me, his mouth moving firmly against mine and I felt the depth of his words within it. Blake Bowman had once been my broken, vengeful monster. He’d hunted me, caged me, wounded me. But every blow he’d struck had really been against himself. Now, I treasured the scars he’d left on me, because through making each other bleed, we’d found a way to heal, to cope. He wasn’t my monster anymore. He was my golden boy, my beam of sunshine in the dark. He shone so brightly, sometimes it was hard to believe he held anything but light in his heart. But I knew better. I knew that even the sun had scars beneath its blinding exterior. And that didn’t make it weak, in fact, it burned all the brighter for them.

***

Saint’s man showed up before dawn with almost everything we needed. He’d managed to get hold of the camping and trekking gear as well as the clothes and boots we’d need and he’d brought the guns and weapons Saint had requested too. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to get hold of the Kevlar vests though and of course, Saint had lost his shit over it. It had taken me twenty minutes to talk him out of destroying the guy’s entire life for failing him and in the end he’d finally given in so that we could head off. I didn’t have high hopes