Page 13 of The Same Backward as Forward
I’d been trying not to think about the world outside of these walls, but there was no skirting that reminder of how perilous our current situation was. If my family discovered what Jackson and I were hiding out here—whowe were hiding—it wouldn’t go well.
For any of us.
“Someplace else,” I agreed quietly. I picked up two sugar packets and set them on their ends, leaning the tips against each other in an inverted V, a balancing act that I just barely managed to pull off. “I’ll go,” I said.
I turned my head toward the mattress. Harry looked deceptively angelic when he slept, the perfection of his face a sharp contrast to the blistered, weeping burns and blackened skin thatI knew lay underneath his gauze. His chest rose and fell as I watched, and I picked up two more sugar packets, continuing to build a makeshift, not-card castle that I knew could fall at any moment.
“I’ll go,” I said again. “For supplies. Tomorrow.”
Chapter 10
I need something stronger.” Harry was fury and condescension and pain, and there was a real chance that he was plotting my demise.
I fixed him with a stare. “You need to let me work.” I’d given him the maximum dose of the over-the-counter pain meds, but we were almost out.Something strongerwasn’t an option.
I continued to tend his burns.Strips of cloth, soaked in cool water, laid over his collarbone and arms.The silver cream and gauze were going to be next, and we were running low on those, too.
“It feels like I’m being flayed alive.” He gritted his teeth.
I knew from having been down this road with him before: The pain was going to get worse before it got better. I worked in silence for a minute or two, and then—
“Everything hurts.” His voice was more animal than human. I worried that I might need Jackson to hold him still, to keep him from doing himself and his injuries irreparable harm—but then my patient’s eyes made their way to mine, and his body settled.
Instead of noticing the color of his irises this time, I noticed the clarity in his gaze, the way it searched mine, likeIwas the patient, and he was something else altogether.
“Doesn’t it?” he murmured.Everything hurts. Doesn’t it?
My chest seized, the question trapping stale air in my lungs, because he was right. Everythinghurt. That was why I was here. It was what I was hiding from.
Kaylie.
“You don’t get to ask me questions,” I said, and I was surprised at how animalmyvoice sounded. I was a person who’d learned from childhood to hide my emotions, to make myself small—but I couldn’t hide this.
I hated him, and I wassavinghim, and the only way I could even remotely justify that was by hating him some more.
Keep going. Do the work. Gentle now.For a while, there was blessed silence.
His eyes closed. “You build little castles out of sugar packets.”
I pretended I couldn’t hear him—but I did. Idefinitelydid.
“It’s endearing, really. The sugar castles.” A twist of his lips made it impossible for me to tell if that was sarcasm or if he meant it. “Do you believe in fairy tales, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward?”
There it was again—that name. Was he really so obsessed with palindromes?
I opened the jar of silver cream. “I believe in villains,” I said flatly.
“Villains.” He made a huffing sound, pain etched so clearly into the lines of his face—cheekbones, brow, jaw—that I couldn’t look away. “It’s funny,” he continued. “I don’t remember a damn thing about myself, but I would drink to that.”
I bet you would.There was a good chance that when he’d said that he needed something stronger, he might not have just been talking about the pain.Pills and booze.He’d shown no signs ofchills or seizures, so I didn’t think he was in full-on withdrawal, not physically at least.
“The only thing you’re drinking,” I told him, steel in my voice, “is water.”
If that made mehisvillain…good.
Chapter 11
When I went to leave for the supply run, Jackson followed me out. He obviously had something to say, so I waited for him to say it.
