Tea Leaves & Pine Trees

Chapter Twenty-Five

ONE LIFELESS

❀

Pain and I were old acquaintances. We'd met a few times, enough that I could recognise it now, splitting a crack through my heart, but not enough that I knew how to handle it.

I couldn't handle it.

I couldn't handle any of it. Not the smell of blood as it burnt my nose. Not the taste of metal in my mouth from where I'd bitten my tongue. Not the sound of panicked, heavy breathing. My breathing.

The sight of River covered from head to toe in red, red blood haunted me. It was caked beneath his fingernails, smeared across his arms, along his ribs, drenched into the hem of his shirt. It pulsed and splattered and stained. It was supposed to be in his body, pumping to the beat of his heart, but I couldn't even hear his heart.

... It wasn't supposed to be like this.

It was never supposed to be like this.

"Aubrey. Sunshine. Hey—" Someone snapped their fingers in my face, but I barely processed it. River was choking on a secret that bled a million deaths, and he wasn't breathing— "Aubrey!"

Calloused fingers touched my cheeks, and forest green eyes narrowed as they searched my face. "Look at me," a voice murmured, and the concern on those lips was as familiar as it was freeing.

I lifted my gaze to Free's, catching his wrists with the tips of my fingers. His heartbeat was calmer than mine. He didn't smile, but his eyes gentled. "It's okay."

Except it wasn't. Nothing was okay. River was dying, and I was in love. I was in love. And River was dying.

Where the fuck were my priorities?

Clenching my jaw, my eyes wandered back to River. All I saw was blood. Red, red, red. Where Everest had laid him on the couch, the light grey cushions were now stained.

"Aubrey," Free said my name until I looked back at him. Suddenly everything was distant. "It's okay. He'll be okay. Tess is here."

Tess? What did that have to do with anything?

"She'll heal him."

This time when my eyes landed on River, he was surrounded. Tess knelt by his side, rolling his blood-stained shirt up. The fabric clung to his skin with sweat and other bodily fluids, and bile rose in my throat when I saw the gnarly claw marks (bite marks?) shredded deep into his skin. I spun on my heel and sprinted out of the house, catching myself on the porch rail before I heaved over it to empty the contents of my stomach into the garden below.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I coughed and tried desperately to not think of the blood and the stench inside the house, and certainly not the reason behind it either. Because if I thought too hard, I would realise it was my fault. It had to be my fault.

The thought struck me, and my chest tightened, my throat constricting. I couldn't breathe. It was my fault. If I hadn't meddled; if I hadn't kept my mouth shut. I sank to the ground, inhaling shakily, and exhaling hazardously. If I knew more but asked less. The world shrank around me.

A shadow fell over me. I didn't look up as Laurel knelt in front of me. He touched my knee, and when I didn't pull away, he sat next to me and wrapped me up in his arms. I buried against his chest, struggling to breathe, but as his fingers slid through my hair, I took my first proper breath, and whispered, "It's all my fault," before dissolving into more tears.

Laurel held me through it.

❀

The breeze rustled my hair as I sat on the porch steps, my hand wrapped around a cup of tea that had slowly cooled in the half hour I'd been out here. The sun had dropped beyond the horizon, leaving in its wake a slither of moonlight, and the beginning of a million thousand stars.