Page 24 of Never Bound

“Louisa? What is it? What about the boy?” My father’s voice crackled through the line again.

I lowered the phone slowly, my mind making a million calculations a second.

“Loulou? Are you there?” His alarmed voice was barely audible now.

I raised the phone again. “Daddy, I … I made a mistake,” I said rapidly. “Everything’s fine. The boy is fine. I’m sorry for bothering you. I gotta go. Love you.” I ended the call before my father could mount any response, shoved the phone shakily into my pocket, and turned.

Even though I knew he was already gone. Again.

8

HIM

WhenIspottedher,crouched in the dust, hands streaked with blood and dirt and pulverized leaves, limp, sweaty curls curtaining her face, staring down at my broken phone and her intact one, exhausted and defeated, I forgot everything. That she was a spoiled brat. That she hadn’t seen my side. That she’d threatened me. That she was one ofthem.

I just saw her—Louisa,myLouisa—lost and scared and heartbroken. And for a second, I was glad I hadn’t left, even if it meant joining Erica’s cause. Maeve’s cause. Louisa’s cause.Anyone’scause. Maybe as glad as I was to have once almost lost an arm.

Of course that was before I overheard who she was talking to. And about.

When I did, my entire face went up in flames, adrenaline coursing through my veins, still bleeding from the barbs. I yanked off the hat and threw it to the ground. So what if I got a sunburn? It was better than taking even a single thing from the girl I’d been stupid and weak enough to think was different. To think cared. To think considered me a fucking person.

Blinking, I raced across the lawn, vaulting over the low fence and into the neighbor’s property. The horses whinnied and stamped nervously as I ran past them until something as tight as a shackle on my ankle pulled me back. I gasped and turned to see my leg had snagged on a coil of barbed wire coming loose from the fencepost. I tugged frantically, my fingers slick with sweat and panic, but the wire only dug deeper into my flesh, blood soaking through my jeans as I fumbled with the glinty barbs. And now Louisa’s footsteps were pounding across the grass behind me.

“Wait!” Louisa’s desperate voice floated across the yard. “Please, just listen to me!”

“Fuck.” I yanked my leg again, gritting my teeth against the searing pain as the barbs ripped free, taking bits of flesh and denim with them. “Off.”

“Stop! Don’t move!”

She flew into the pasture, her long curls flying behind her like a white flag of parley. But when she got up close, I couldn’t decide if the tears in her gray eyes were sadness or anger. They were still goddamn beautiful, though. Fuck her.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, stopstruggling, you idiot. It’s just going to make it worse.”

I said nothing, heaving like a trapped, angry animal afraid to die. Louisa took a tentative step toward me, her hands raised as if to signal that she wasn’t a threat. When I didn’t move, she reached me and began methodically untangling the barbed wire from my clothes and skin, wincing as it tore at her own hands. “What were you thinking, trying to go through here?” she growled.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” I panted, my voice dripping with the combination of pain, anger, and sarcasm I prided myself on having perfected. “Maybe that I’d rather take my chances with a bit of barbed wire than stick around here, waiting for the cops to show up and cattle prod me before shoving me in the back of a van?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said through gritted teeth.

“You really expect me to believe that youdidn’tjust call your dad and tell him I ran away?” I decided not to mention the other thing she’d threatened to report.

“Yes, I do,” Louisa said with another twist of the wire, finally allowing me to free my leg with a vicious yank that tore my already raked skin, blood seeping through fresh tears in my clothes.

I stumbled to the earth, picked myself up, and brushed myself off with basically zero dignity. As if I’d ever had any. “What do you mean you do? I fuckingheardyou! And you callmea liar?”

“Okay,” she said. “I called Daddy. But—”

“No shit you did. You always run to Daddy every chance you get, like the spoiled, selfish—”

“Shut up and let mefinish,” she growled, and if my goal was to turn her clumsy compassion back into anger, I’d succeeded. But it wasn’t my goal, so I’d failed. “I was trying to save … to save Maeve,” she finished with a tight swallow. Ignoring the fresh rivulets of blood dripping down her fingers—whether mine or hers, who could tell now?—she straightened up and met my gaze.

“What?”

“Follow me,” she snapped in a way that couldn’t be less inviting. She swiped frantically at her eyes and left a streak of blood on her cheek, and I had the strangest urge to gently wipe it away, but instead I just petulantly shoved my bloody hands in my pockets as we made our way back through the pasture through a gamut of curious snorts and flicking tails.

WhywasI following her, anyway? I was free. Well, free from the wire at least, and if I stayed here any longer, I’d lose the almost-zero-but-maybe-not-entirely-zero chance I had to get free for real. Not to mention that the cynical part of myself that I hated told me this could be a trap.

Spotting the hat I had thrown in the dust, she grabbed it and heaved it toward my chest. I caught it, but instead of putting it back on, I just spun it around on my finger childishly, deciding that if there was any chance Louisa knew a way to save Maeve that wasn’t a suicide mission, I could afford to take a second to find out what it was. I watched her as she started around the side of the house, heading for the four-car garage with its floor-to-ceiling glass display window. She glanced back to see if I was following her, gritted her teeth, unlocked the door, and jabbed her finger toward the passenger side. “Get in the Cadillac. There’s a first aid kit under your seat.”

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