Chapter 41

The glass is barely out of the window and the sinking elevator feeling has scarcely faded from of my belly when I’m jumping into Grant’s arms and ordering him to fly down to the service entrance in the alley.

Not that I need to.

We discussed the plan to save the girl to exhaustion yesterday/today. Truthfully, it’s not even much of a plan. It’s just fly down, open the door and hopefully save her right away. All the discussion part came from the possibility that she ventured further into the building. I made him memorize the schematic layout of the first floor of the tower. Probably overkill. I don’t care. We’re saving her today and every day afterwards.

Grant throws open the door with such force that the nearby exterminating equipment falls—blocking the path in. It’s not at all a problem for Grant, he simply wills it away. For a young woman, scared and not at her most healthy, there’s no way she’d be able to move it by herself.

When the building starts to shake, it must fall over and block her in. She probably ended every day trying, and failing, to claw her way out.

“The door was unlocked. I swear!” the girl yells, shielding her face as the doorway clears.

“We’re here to save you!” Grant says in his Garnet Defender voice.

What a showman.

“Save me? From what?” the girl asks, effectively healing my heart.

While, absolutely, it’s terrible that she’s died again and again because of me, that wasn’t my deepest fear. My deepest fear was that she was also part of the time loop and relived it over and over again. I worried that, for some reason, she was unable to get out even before the tower began to collapse and she had to live in that fear of knowing she was about to die continually—that her loop consisted of dying and waiting to die.

“You—you just have to trust us,” I say desperately. “Something bad is about to happen.”

The girl eyes us over. My heart is pulled tight in my chest. If we have to, we will of course pull her out against her will. It just seems like a poor way to start my ‘doing everything right day’.

“You look different,” the girl says, eyeing me over.

“I am.”

The girl considers my answer for a second, and then nods. She walks with us into the rain, distrustful and hesitant, but she walks with us. We’re barely out into the alley when the building gives its first groan of discontent.

“What the—” She loses her words as the tower’s groans build higher and higher. Its roar pierced by the sounds of breaking glass and objects falling out of windows.

It’s funny how much the collapse has lost its awe-factor for me. Seeing it through the girl’s eyes is captivating, in a macabre sort of way. I send out a silent prayer of gratitude to whatever being is responsible for this that she’s seeing it for the first time.

Sometimes the greatest gift you can receive is that of forgetting.

Suddenly, the girl flinches.

“What is it?”

She looks to me with such horror in her eyes, that I can’t help but think the worst: she remembers.

“I left your umbrella in there,” she says finally.

Maybe Grant’s inappropriate laughter is rubbing off on me, but I laugh. I also forget everything I’ve learned from Dr. Debbie and pull her into a hug.

“You’re okay. That’s all that matters,” I say. And I mean it.

While in this time loop, I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve had my world crumble, I’ve had mind-blowing orgasms, I found friendship and love, I’ve learned to have fun, and I learned to face my fears. Nothing, though, compares to saving her.

“We need to keep moving—” I start, pulling out of the hug and beginning to turn towards the street.

I stop when I see the girl’s face. Tears brim in her downturned eyes.

“What is it?” I ask.

The girl shrugs, wiping her nose against her sleeve that’s soaked through from the rain. The rain continues to pound down, the only bits of noise as the tower slumbers.

“We need to get going,” Grant reminds us gently.

I nod. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

The girl rips her arm out of mine from where I’m touching her elbow. “I’m not going to the shelter tonight.”

Her words echo in my mind. Isn’t that what she told me earlier (technically) tonight? And what did I do? I gave her my umbrella. In the middle of a storm in the middle of the night, I gave her my umbrella and patted myself on the back for my good deed.

“We can take her to my mom’s house,” Grant says in a more pressing voice. “We just need to—”

The tower cries out into the night and we all take off running before Grant’s power scoops us up into the sky and away from danger.

The girl pushes some sopping wet hair out of her eyes and looks over at the two of us in the sky. To her credit, she handles being airborne much better than I did. I mentally pencil in a breakdown for her later, once she’s dry and processes this all.

“This is shaping up to be a really weird day,” she mutters.

I smile. “You have no idea.”

* * *

We’re debating logistics when Grant’s mom pads down from the top floor to the main kitchen. She’s wearing a pink, puffy bathrobe and slippers. Even though her eyebrows aren’t drawn on super high since she was dead asleep in the middle of the night, she still looks super surprised.

Rightly so.

Her son, who’s wearing a red spandex suit with a cape, is standing in the kitchen with two women she’s never seen before. We’re all drenched from the rain.

Her eyes narrow as I, for some unknown reason, decide to wave.

Oh, please don’t let this be the first impression that sticks.

“Grant, what’s going—” She pauses. “Do I know you?”

My heart stutters. Has she remembered me from before the reset? Except, she’s not looking at me. She’s looking at the girl.

The girl looks even more at the floor, like she’s hoping it will suck her in. “Yeah,” she says eventually. “You helped me figure some forms out at the library.”

Shelly takes a couple steps down the stairs towards us, towards the girl. Her mouth is pressed into an impossibly thin line. I would think it’s angry, but her eyes are so full of compassion. She walks towards the girl slowly, like she’s approaching a skittish cat.

“I’m sorry that I’m forgetting your name, right now. I’m not at my best,” she says softly, adding an embarrassed smile.

Suddenly, all my carefully honed tactics to get people on my side seem amateurish compared to Shelly. Even though the girl has clearly gone through the wringer, she’s shifting the attention to herself. With a hint of a smile to come, the girl lifts her head for the first time. She has green eyes that look like one hard stare could shatter them to pieces.

“Rhiannon.”

Shelly nods and finishes her way down the stairs. “It would seem that I helped you with the wrong forms. Tomorrow, we’ll find the right ones,” she says matter-of-factly. “In the meantime, I think showers, dry clothes, and a spot of food are in order. Rhiannon, you can use the one in my room. First door on the left. Towels are under the sink. I also have some pajamas in the top drawer of my dresser that you can wear. They are very fashionable—providing you like cats in sunglasses.”

Rhiannon still doesn’t smile, but her shoulders seem to release some tension. She heads up the stairs at the same time Grant heads down the other stairs. I go to follow him, but Shelly grabs my arm.

“I’m guessing you’re responsible for all this.”

I wince, vowing to do better tomorrow.

“I’m sorry—”

“Thank you,” she interrupts. “You can tell a lot about a person by the people they deign to help.” She pauses, looking up the stairs. “And that girl needed help.”

“I’m trying.”

She pats me on the shoulder and offers me a smile. “I’d say you’re doing more than trying. Who knows what could have happened to the poor thing tonight if you hadn’t thought of her.”

That one hurts as much as it inspires.

“I couldn’t have done it without your son.”

Shelly, bless her, beams like the proud mama she is. “He’s pretty special, isn’t he?”

I nod. “I like him a lot.”

“If he’s bringing you home to meet me, I’d say he likes you, too.” She frowns. “Just do me a favour?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t tell me why he’s dressed up like that. There are certain things a mother shouldn’t know about her children’s nighttime activities.”

By the time I’ve worked out what she’s meant by that, she’s already turned and gone into the kitchen. She’s humming away as she grabs a worn apron that reads ‘World’s Best Mom’ and puts it over her bathrobe.

“Can I help with anything?”

Shelly just shoos me away, looking at me like I’ve just made a ridiculous suggestion.

“No, no. You go shower. Get warm. Just be sure to come upstairs with an appetite after your shower. I’ve been told I tend to make a bit too much food.” She smiles as she pulls out pretty much every single item out of the fridge. “It’ll be nice to cook for a full table. I think Rhiannon just really needs someone to cook for her.”

I’d say Rhiannon needs someone to cook for her just about as badly as Shelly needs to cook. If I were a more whimsical person, I’d wonder if there wasn’t a touch of fate in this after all.

Despite the fact that I know I’m going to have to consume three meals worth of food at two in the morning, I smile.

So far, this is the best day I’ve had in a while.