Stray 1 by Rachel Vincent

Author:Rachel Vincent
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780778329077
Publisher: Mira
Published: 2010-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Holding my breath, I tried for the third time to roll out of Marc’s grasp without waking him. No luck. Every time I moved, his breathing quickened and his eyelids fluttered, as if he’d wake up any moment. Even asleep, he’d tried to make sure I couldn’t get away; he had one leg draped over mine and one arm around my waist.

I groaned, and clamped one hand over my mouth as Marc shifted in his sleep. His leg slipped off me, but the weight of his arm across my middle was still very real. Biting my lip in concentration, I took Marc’s wrist gently between my thumb and forefinger. I lifted his arm off my stomach, barely stifling a sigh of relief as the pressure on my bladder eased. When his next breath came, deep and relaxed, I lowered his arm to the bed between us as he exhaled. Finally free, I made myself wait through two more torturously slow breaths before easing silently off the mattress and onto the floor.

The moment my feet hit the ground, my eyes flew to the clock. Green segmented numbers stared at me in the dark: 4:34 a.m. That was weird. The color, not the time. My alarm clock numbers were red, which always made me feel anxious and hurried, like I was late for something every time I woke up. The green numbers were calm and soothing, assuring me that I still had a couple of hours left until dawn, yet I tottered on the thin, sharp edge of panic.

According to the clock, I’d gotten maybe three and a half hours of sleep after Marc and I collapsed onto his pillows, mercifully too exhausted to think. But now, standing naked in the middle of his bedroom, I could do nothing else.

Now look what you’ve done, Faythe, I thought, staring down at Marc’s sleep-relaxed face. You’re not going to be happy until you’ve screwed up not only your life but everyone else’s too.

But that wasn’t quite true. I wouldn’t be happy then, either.

I needed to think. And I needed to pee. My bladder was quite insistent on that last part and had, in fact, woken me up to take care of business. But since I wouldn’t be coming back after my trip to the bathroom—to gain any kind of perspective, I needed to distance myself from the problem—I’d have to get dressed. Unfortunately, my clothes were nowhere in sight.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I made myself concentrate on the order of last night’s events. Each flash of memory felt like someone ramming a fist through my chest to squeeze my still-beating heart. And if it hurt me, I could only imagine what it would do to Jace. Or to Andrew. Shit, what about Andrew?

What the hell was I thinking?

I hadn’t been thinking anything; that was abundantly clear. It had also been the whole point. I’d given my brain the night off, abandoning my body to the mercy of hormones and alcohol. And grief. The truth was that I’d needed comfort, and so had Marc, and we’d found it in each other.

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