I'd kill for you

I'd kill for you

I stumbled back and my heel caught a root, the world tilting hard enough that I nearly went down into the mud before I found my footing again, arms out for balance that wasn't there.

Naomi didn't rush. That was the worst part, the unhurried way she closed the distance, knife loose and easy in her grip like she'd done this before and knew exactly how much time the night owed her.

"Preston figured it out," she said, conversational, almost bored, like we were still standing in a hallway between classes instead of ankle deep in mud in the dark. "Started asking who moved the fuel cans. I couldn't have that following me around for the rest of the trip."

"Why." The word barely made it out of me, thin and useless against the rain.

"Does it matter?" She shrugged, easy, like the question bored her more than the knife interested her. "Some people just enjoy watching the world catch fire. He was going to tell Ms. Ward. You were going to warn me, which was almost sweet of you, honestly, and now you're both loose ends tied off in the same night. Efficient, if you think about it."

She lunged.

I threw myself sideways, mud swallowing my palms as I hit the ground hard, the blade passing close enough that I felt the air split beside my ear, cold and precise.

Then Marcus was simply there, the way he'd been at the shed, the way he'd been on the road with a lighter that had put him on my suspect list in the first place and never fully left it.

He didn't shout a warning. He didn't hesitate at all.

He caught Naomi's wrist mid swing and twisted, one clean motion, and the sound her arm made was wrong in a way I felt in my own bones from ten feet away, a sound I'd hear again behind my eyes for a long time.

She screamed. He didn't let go.

What happened after that I only caught in pieces, flashlight beam swinging wild against tree trunks, the wet sound of the knife changing hands, Naomi's voice climbing into something that stopped being words at all partway through and never came back down.

It was over faster than it had any right to be.

The rain kept falling like nothing had happened at all, washing pink rivulets away from where Naomi lay, indifferent to the shape of what it was rinsing off the ground.

Marcus stood over her in the mud, breathing hard, blood on his hands that wasn't his own, and Naomi didn't move again after that, not once, not even a twitch.

I couldn't make myself look away and I couldn't make myself look closer either, caught in some frozen middle place where my body had simply stopped taking instructions from me entirely.

Marcus turned, and whatever had been in his face when he looked down at Naomi was gone by the time his eyes found mine again. Something softer replaced it. Something that terrified me more than the knife had, more than any of it had.

He crossed the space between us slowly, like I was something that might bolt if he moved too fast, and knelt in the mud in front of me, careful even now, even with blood still warm and dark across his knuckles.

"I told you," he said quietly. "It isn't safe out here."

I couldn't speak yet. My whole body had started shaking, a fine, constant tremor I couldn't stop no matter how hard I clenched my jaw against it.

"The journal," I managed finally. "You've done this before. Lived this before. All of it."

He didn't flinch at that. If anything, something in him loosened, like he'd been waiting years, maybe longer than years, for someone to finally ask him outright.

"I've lived this week more times than I can count," he said. "I don't know how. I don't know why it's me. I just know I keep waking up on that bus, and every single time, something takes you from me before the fourth day ends. A different way, every time. I've buried you a dozen different ways in a dozen different loops, and I remember every single one."

"That's not possible."

"Neither is surviving a locked shed full of gasoline." His eyes didn't leave mine, steady, unblinking, holding me there. "I've watched you die more times than I can count, Claire. I'm done watching it happen. I'd rather be the thing you're afraid of than lose you to someone who never loved you at all."

"How many times." My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"Enough that I stopped counting on purpose." Something flickered across his face, quick and old, like a wound that had scarred over wrong. "Enough that I learned which ones to trust before they open their mouths."

I thought of Naomi's easy laugh in the fog, the way she'd worn friendliness like a coat she could take off whenever she wanted. He'd known. Somehow, in some version of this week, he'd already learned exactly what she was.

I thought of the silver lighter sitting in Preston's blood. I thought of the bolt on the shed door, snapped clean out of its frame by hands that weren't shaking now, weren't shaking ever, not even a little, not even here.

I thought about Naomi's body cooling in the mud four feet away, and I understood, with a clarity that felt like falling from a great height, that I was alone on a mountain with no signal and no help, kneeling in front of the only person capable of keeping either of us alive until morning came.

Running meant the fog, the trees, whoever else might still be out here waiting their turn in the dark. Running meant dying somewhere he couldn't reach me in time, or worse, somewhere he could, and simply deciding I wasn't worth the trouble of chasing anymore.

I made myself soften instead. I made my shoulders drop, made the tremor in my hands look like grief instead of terror, buried the second reaction so deep under the first that even I almost believed the performance myself, standing there in the rain with someone else's blood cooling four feet away.

"I'd kill for you, Claire," Marcus whispered, cupping my face with a hand that reeked of iron. "I'd burn the whole world down just to keep you safe."

My heart hammered against my ribs, every instinct screaming at me to run. But looking at the body at my feet, I understood that running meant dying. Pushing down my horror, I leaned into his bloodstained touch, forcing my eyes to soften with fake, desperate gratitude.

"Then don't stop," I breathed, locking him into a trap of my own making. "Because if you stop, Marcus... they'll take me away from you."

Something in his expression finally broke open, raw and grateful and utterly devoted, and I let him pull me against his chest, blood and rain soaking through my jacket, my face hidden against his shoulder where he couldn't see what my eyes were really doing over the curve of his arm.

Calculating.

Somewhere behind us, dawn was starting to gray the fog at the tree line, and in a few hours the rest of Windmere would wake up to two more names missing from the count. There would be questions. There would be Ms. Ward's shaking hands and a hike out for a signal and men in uniforms asking me to describe exactly what I'd seen.

I already knew what story I'd tell them, and it wouldn't be this one.

Because a boy who had killed twice in one night to keep me breathing wasn't someone I could run from anymore. Not on this mountain. Maybe not anywhere.

He was someone I would have to learn how to control.