Chapter 15

Kate

North Girl’s wound is easy enough to take care of with the healing salve. Seems like it works on everyone, not just our own coven. Within minutes of applying it, the bleeding has stopped, and all three of my friends are standing behind me and gaping at their shiny new North.

“Do you want to take a quick shower?” I ask the poor girl. Just like I thought before, she can’t be older than seventeen, if that. “To wash off the blood?”

“Will it delay the coven thing at all? Just make me a coven if it’ll keep me away from that thing. Did you look into its fucking eyes? It’s a fate worse than death.” North Girl is sniffling and running the sleeve of her bloodied henley under her nose. She’s also not wrong.

“No, it won’t delay it.” Brooks stands at the open back door, looking out at the yard. Doesn’t matter if the door is closed or not; the protection spell is the part that’ll keep the Hag out, not the glass. “We need to find a sacrifice, and you have a list of ingredients you’ll need to collect. Not a lot, but a few. If you see the Hag Wytch, lift the hag stone to your eye and stare at her until she disappears. That’ll ground you in this world a bit, buy you some time. But keep your eyes out.”

He hands over the final hag stone to North Girl. The men had originally crafted four while in the Witchwoods, one for each member of our coven. We’re giving over an important tool to my friends, but it’s an easy choice. They can’t keep themselves safe without them, and we can.

We’ll handle it.

Next time I see the Hag, I’m going to grab her with a vine or something. I grew an entire yard of pumpkins, didn’t I? I can do this. I will do this.

“A sacrifice?” North Girl is staring at the smooth stone in her hand, the one with a hole right through the middle. “A person or an animal?”

“Person.” Brooks doesn’t sugarcoat it, glancing over at Tanner and Marlowe. They sign back and forth for a minute, long enough that all four women in the room with me turn to look. It’s a sight, isn’t it? Three dudes wearing witch hats, two of them covered in blood, one of them with a cat on his shoulders.

Ebon lands on the top of the fridge, startling North Girl. She almost drops her hag stone, but Georgia catches it and offers it back to her.

“Here. Take it. I’ll get you set up with a towel and clean clothes. We’re … going to need to get to know each other pretty fast here. I’m Georgia, by the way.”

“Talia.” North Girl slides off the table and follows Georgia out of the room, Fernanda and Tacy trailing behind. Flick chases after them, but only because there’s a new person he wants to visit before he returns faithfully back to Tanner’s side.

Sigh.

Weren’t we just having crepes? Now we have to find somebody to kill? Goddamn it.

“You said you had an idea, some way we could find a creep?” Tanner looks over at me, and I nod, pulling my phone from my pocket.

“There are ways of finding sex predators in the area, for safety reasons.” I shrug one shoulder. “We can pick somebody from that list.”

“Found one already.” Marlowe turns his phone around, a picture of some guy on it. I lean in and squint to read the charges against him. I close my eyes. Force myself to take a breath. “I’m good with just grabbing him, but if you want to use a truth spell to see if he’s guilty, I’m fine with that, too. Removes any moral objections against taking out the trash.”

I open my eyes and nod.

“Yeah, let’s do that. Then I can sleep easy at night.” I bend to pat Flick on the head when he trots back into the kitchen, and then stand up, allowing Ebon to settle on my right shoulder. Still shocks me how light this monster crow is. “What’s the plan? Is there a spell?” I smile coyly. “Should we have sex in the backyard before we go, to bless some knockout charm or something?”

“No,” Marlowe says, drawing a knife from his belt (same one he used to threaten Nathan). He slides his thumb across the blade, drawing a thin stripe of red. He dips it into the extra salve that I dripped onto the table, and it heals instantly. “We’ll use a knife.”

“Oh, how very barbaric. I like it.” Tanner flashes a white-toothed grin, one wolf ear cocked while the other lies flat.

“You’re such a showboater, Lo,” Brooks says with a teasing laugh, and then he steps back and holds out a hand in the direction of the door. “After you, wife. Ladies first.”

It’s not as easy as simply picking a creep and catching him at home. The first one on our list lives with several other people who congregate on both the front and back porch. The second one doesn’t answer the door.

The third one—with the worst crimes to his name thus far—shows up with a scowl and a knife even bigger than Marlowe’s in his hand.

“You creepin’ around my fuckin’ neighborhood?” he demands, but Marlowe just shoves his shoulder into the man and buries his own knife in the guy’s stomach. Our target drops his blade as Marlowe walks him backward and slams him into a wall, red blooming on the guy’s white t-shirt. “What the hell, man? What do you want from me?”

The sacrifice isn’t scared—yet. He’s bleeding, but I don’t think he’s critically injured. Maybe he’s even been stabbed before? I don’t know.

Marlowe lifts up the sugar-frosted blackberry that is the truth charm.

“Take this and eat it. If you don’t …” A slight twist of the knife. The man takes the berry and then tries to crush it with his hand. Marlowe turns the knife further, and the man screams, dropping the charm to the ground. It’s unharmed. Tanner picks it up, snatches the man by his lower jaw and forces it open. He uses air magic to keep the guy’s teeth apart, and then flicks the berry inside before releasing him.

“If I were you, I’d chew that,” he advises him, and Marlowe adjusts the knife just enough to provide incentive.

The man chews and swallows the berry, lighting his lips up with a pale glow.

Brooks starts off by asking him to confirm his name and address, if he’s been convicted of certain crimes. Then he instructs the man to tell him whether he’s guilty or not. He is. His answers make that so abundantly clear that I have to cover my ears and block out the sound for a minute.

I open my eyes in time to see Brooks take a flower off his hat, hold it in his palm, blow pollen into the man’s face.

He collapses to the ground, sliding off of Marlowe’s knife. Lo scowls and cleans the blood off before tucking the weapon back into the leather sheath he has hidden under the waistband of his jeans.

“No mercy for baby killers.” Tanner kicks the criminal over with his boot, shaking his head. He spits on the comatose body. So does Marlowe. Brooks. Me.

We use the same spell that we transported Tanner’s dad’s body with.

This time, we’re careful to make sure there’s nobody around to film us.

The girls meet us in the parking lot at McKay Community Forest.

Because of our new foreboding spell, there’s nobody around for blocks. It’s like the fog is spreading out from our house, slowly pushing back the city.

It’s twilight now, darkness edging in around the trees with their evergreen points and their shaggy red-brown bark. They’re like giants, looming hundreds of feet above us on three sides. Something about the demure gravel trail, and the sweet little illustrated community map on the signboard make it that much eerier.

Somebody is about to die in these woods.

I pull out my handy new camera detector, purchased for about fifty bucks at a department store. Before anything happens, I check the parking lot, the trees, the start of the trail. Ebon flies overhead looking for drones.

“This is ridiculous,” Georgia murmurs, leaning over me as I point the device into a hollow log. No red lights. No beeping. We’re good. When I see that trail cam, I’m going to kick it off the tree and encourage Brooks to set it on fire. “How did you end up becoming an internet celebrity, Kate Poppy?”

“Because I’m a weirdo who would rather go into the woods alone on her birthday to stick her hand into a dead tree than go out with her friends.” I turn around as I say that, just in time to see Georgia break out in honest laughter.

“Goddamn it, Kate,” she says, but she says it fondly.

“We’re all good on the cameras,” I tell the men, and then Tanner is pulling the tarp away and our shadows are descending, wrapping silhouetted black claws around the criminal’s shoulders and arms. We drag him out of the bed of the truck, his bare toes catching on the ground, the tops of his feet scraping over gravel as he floats to the trailhead.

“That’s … wow.” That’s all that Talia says. I think she might be similar to Fernanda, who’s clearly having a good time here tonight. They find this witch stuff as fascinating as I do.

“I have the deer hearts,” Fernanda says enthusiastically, unwrapping a white shawl that’s filled with bloody, softball-sized hearts. She tries to show them to Brooks, but he waves her off.

“You’ll need them when we get there.” He takes off, assuming the lead, and I narrow my eyes on his broad back.

We can all navigate to the Witch’s Tree as well as he can, but fuck it. Let him be the leader here, too, if it makes him happy.

I hang back with the girls while we walk, trying to ignore the groans of the passed-out guy floating through the air in front of us. As we move, I keep the detector going, passing it back and forth through the trees. It’s supposed to have a decent range, thirty feet according to the box.

“You’re part of a coven, and one of your biggest worries is the internet?” Georgia sighs and sweeps her hands over her dark hair, smoothing it back and then fixing her bouncy ponytail. She’s in her UCSC sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. Interesting choice of outfit for the coven ritual.

The men and I wore leather pants made out of monster hide, combat boots, and bone necklaces.

There are no witch hats here other than ours. I reach up and run a finger along one of my brim’s fangs. Brooks did say that it’d be better if the women had hats, to catch the energy of their first spell. But he doesn’t know if any leather found here would work, or how long it would take. Just wasn’t time.

“We can handle the internet using magic—just not while dealing with the Hag Wytch.” My voice seems to shrink as we walk into the woods. Not because of anything I’ve done, but because of the darkness. The shadows. The austere, almost prison-like bars of the tree trunks. They repeat, endlessly it seems, into nothingness.

I shiver.

The fear spell hits all four of the women at once, and they cry out. Tacy collapses and Talia falls into a tree. Fernanda is wide-eyed and shivering while Georgia steps forward, as if to block her friends from danger.

“Use the hag stones,” Brooks commands, miming the act of putting the holey stone up to his eye. The women quickly fumble their stones into their hands, plucked from between their boobs (ah Fernanda, storing things in her bra) or pulled out of handy pouches worn just for this very purpose (yep, Tacy). Georgia already had hers in hand, lifting it up to peer out at the woods.

Talia digs hers from her shoe, and I decide that I like her already.

It’s dead quiet, fog drifting through the trees, the sound of a distant owl hooting. Real owl this time, not an unruly forest god. As always, it smells like both the ocean and the forest. As always, it’s creepy as fuck.

“Stupid goddamn motherfucking woods.” Marlowe, ever the eloquent one, hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatpants, hat brim dropped low. I can’t see his eyes, but when I step forward and push his hat out of the way, he not only allows it, he smiles at me. “Luckily, we’re not staying very long tonight.”

He’s right.

We’re only here to set the girls up, taking advantage of both the foreboding and the fear spell to keep away any unnecessary prying eyes. People have been trying to get a hold of my friends for interviews, too. Georgia found a man with a selfie-stick trying to film through her living room window. Pretty sure she beat him up.

“I don’t want to come back here tomorrow,” I admit, and Marlowe’s smile falters. Flattens. Goes cold. He pulls me into his arms which I didn’t expect, wrapping me up in warm hoodie sleeves and pressing me against his chest. He does happen to have a heart; I can hear it beating.

“Oh, wow.” Georgia drops the hag stone by her side and shakes her head. “That was … unsettling. You guys did that? It was like the fear of being alone, and the fear of death swept right over me. Disgusting. You didn’t tell me I’d have an existential crisis just walking out here.”

“You’ll survive.” Brooks offers a smile that isn’t a smile, turning and walking into the trees in exactly the right direction. Still an asshole. With a sigh, I push back from Marlowe, but he doesn’t let me go very far. He keeps me tucked up close beside him, Tanner falling back to walk with us.

He has his bow on his back, just like Lo does.

“I’d love to learn to shoot, when we have the time,” I tell them both, and Tanner grins.

“Lo is a better shot, but I’m a better teacher. I’ll turn you into an archery goddess, kitten.”

There are giant banana slugs everywhere. Lots of cute, little owls with eyes like precious stones. Cats with two tails. More floating jack-o’-lantern wisps. Spiderwebs with glowing eight-legged things in them that I refuse to look too closely at.

That single glowing vulture still stands vigil over the tree.

Before we use our shadow hands to move the sacrifice into the clearing, I use the detector to find the trail cam. There it is, right there at the base of a tree. Tanner clacks two stones together, tossing them onto the ground like small lanterns. They throw golden color onto everything, including the camera. It’s about the size of a paperback book, strapped to the bottom of a trunk near the dirt.

I kick it off, enjoying the sound of plastic being crushed under my boots. Yeah, I’m wearing them, the ones with the bone charms. It’s like our uniform, the hats and the boots. My breasts are covered today, so that’s nice.

Without even being asked, Brooks sets the device on fire and lets it burn.

We drag the man into the clearing, maneuvering his back to the Witch’s Tree.

Using the same rope from the back of the truck, Tanner and Marlowe quickly tie him up and leave him sitting on the ground with his legs splayed out, feet bloodied on the tops from being dragged.

Brooks steps up to Georgia, opens his bag, and hands out a knife.

It’s another dick-knife, but made of a pale pink stone with beige marbling instead of the white alabaster of our own. Two penis athames. That’s how many Brooks thought to bring back with him from the woods.

Interesting.

“We’ll bury the hearts in the four corners. If the Hag shows up, she’ll have to find and eat all four hearts before she can touch you inside the circle. If you see her, use the hag stones to get her to leave and then call us.” Brooks raises his brows at Georgia who narrows her eyes back at him. “Just don’t call us unless it’s a true emergency. If we’re unnecessarily interrupted tonight, I’ll be in the mood for blood.”

“Fuck you, domineering prick.” Georgia turns to me, ignoring Brooks. He scoffs and shakes his head, like he’s observing an unruly child. Brooks takes the hearts from Fernanda as I face my friend down in the uneasy dark. “I love you, you know that, right?”

“I love you, too,” I tell her, my voice hoarse for some reason. Not sure why. It’s not like I won’t see her again tomorrow.

What I want to do is stay here and watch, but when I mentioned that earlier, Brooks asked if I’d have wanted someone to watch our ritual. Even though I know the one these women are about to participate in is different from what I did with the men, it holds just as much weight. It’s just as sacred.

“Are you scared?” I ask, stepping a little closer to Georgia and taking her hands. She’s got the knife held loosely in one, but I grab onto her anyway. “You’re going to be the leader, Georgia. You’ll be pulling that knife across that man’s throat.”

She nods. She knows.

“I’m not afraid. For what he’s done, he should be dead already.”

I give her hands a squeeze, looking past her at Fernanda and Tacy. I don’t know anything about Talia, but she was scalped just hours earlier by a giant monster owl and she’s barely fazed. She even managed to convince her coworkers, parents, and a large majority of the internet that it was all staged by making a single TikTok.

Badass.

Tacy, she’s also been the overly practical one. The realist. I can’t imagine that any of this is easy for her. Fernanda, on the other hand, this is a dream come true. I think she might slightly prefer if she had a horny harem of hulking witch men, but magic is magic.

Sisterhood.

It hits me that I might’ve been a part of this sisterhood.

I could’ve been my friends’ North.

We were halfway to being a coven all along.

It’s bittersweet, that understanding. A sense of loss. A pang of what if. But even if I had the chance to change it, I know that I wouldn’t.

If I hadn’t fallen into the Witchwoods, I’d have drifted further away from my friends instead of closer to them. Think about that night: I chose to venture into the forest alone rather than go out with my friends, just like I said to Georgia. I wouldn’t be here fretting about a loss of sisterhood if I’d never gone into the Witchwoods in the first place.

“Shit, I might cry.” I reach up and rub my fingers against the corners of my eyes. The massive tongue that lives inside my hat decides to help, licking the salty streaks off my cheeks for me. “You guys are strong. You’ve got this.”

I turn away and grab one of the hearts from the white cloth in Tanner’s hands. Fernanda did ask if she could put the hearts in a plastic bag or something, but Brooks insisted that they be transported in a garment of ‘significant emotional value’, whatever that means.

The coven ritual spell that the women will be performing tonight can only be partially credited to Brooks. It was mostly written by Georgia. She used the instructions he penned to craft her own spell, things like: collect an item from a place of togetherness, find something discarded, bring something found, craft a garment that best represents your struggles.

Stuff like that.

I have no idea what clothes the women are going to wear, or if the sweatshirts and sweatpants they’ve all got on are the clothes for their ritual.

“No magic tonight, kitten. Save it all for the gate.” I take the shovel that Tanner offers me—we all have to dig our own holes—and I go at it until I’m drenched in sweat, and the hole is as deep as time permits. The sooner these women form a coven, the sooner Brooks can teach them to protect themselves.

Just in case we don’t come back from the woods.

Just in case we can’t close the gate.

Just in case we’re eaten by the Hag.

I drop the heart in and bury it, turning around with my shovel in hand, metal end stabbed into the dirt. My friends all look back at me, and … I can tell.

It’s time to go.

My eyes fill with tears that I don’t shed. This isn’t a sad moment. It’s a happy one. Honestly, being part of a coven is the best thing that ever happened to me. Even with the Hag. Even with going viral.

“Take care of yourselves,” I choke out, and then I start speed-walking with the shovel as a walking stick. The men, with their long legs, catch up easily enough.

“You crying, honey?” Tanner asks gently, reaching out to catch a tear. Doesn’t end up that way. My hat’s tongue slips out and collects it first. Tastes like sadness and salt. Tanner presses his palm against my cheek instead.

“I’m … I feel like my relationship with my friends is never going to be the same.”

“Definitely not.” Brooks is so matter-of-fact that even he seems to realize he’s being insensitive. Must be bad for him to pick up on it all by himself. The girls aren’t going back to college, are they? I almost run back and shout that out, just in case it hasn’t occurred to them. But Georgia is smarter than all that. She knows. I have to trust that she’s really thought this over. “But I’m sure your friendship will grow. You’re part of the most exclusive club in the world. Once we close this gate, there won’t be any more covens—ever.”

I rub the sleeve of my hoodie over my face, catching Marlowe’s look from the corner of my eye.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, but I already know that he is. I believe him.

If time rewound and Marlowe spotted me in the woods, he’d … walk away.

Fuck, that’s heavy.

“Now what?” I say, trying to perk up, to be cheerful. I’m good at that. I can smile even when I’m broken on the inside. Soon enough, it’ll stick. I’ll cheer up.

“What do you mean, now what ?” Tanner snorts and reaches out to ruffle up my hair. I bare my teeth at him again, but he likes it, so it’s not a deterrent. “We’re going on a date tonight.”

A date.

We’re going on a date ?

A scream echoes through the woods, and the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stands on end. I turn and run without thinking twice about it. My only thoughts are for my friends.

Color my surprise when I spot them through the trees, completely naked and covered in blood.

Not their blood though. The baby killer is slumped against the tree, throat slit. Dead. The blood—and the scream—belong to him.

Georgia is using salt to draw a pentagram on the forest floor. Ah. It’s her own design, so it can be whatever she wants it to be. Very classic witch of her. Her skin glows in the light of a small fire, flesh like moonlight and viscous ruby red dripping from her breasts.

She finishes the circle and holds out her hands to the other women. They join together and then, at Georgia’s whispered command, they start to sing. They begin to dance.

I’m mesmerized.

“Kate.” Brooks’ hand falls on my shoulder. He gives my arm a bit of a tug, turning me around and guiding me away from the clearing.

I swallow past the bite of magic in the air. It’s everywhere. It’s on the wind. It’s in the trees. It’s suffused into the moonlight. My friends are conjuring in a circle of womanhood, and I’m jealous. I can feel the power they’re summoning from all the way over here.

The four of us are silent as we exit the woods, and I try my very best to push my worries aside.

What if another stubborn influencer gets in there again? What if the girls put the corpse’s hand into the tree, and he doesn’t cross over? Will they be able to handle the body by themselves?

We pause in the quiet street, and I breathe out a sigh of relief at the lack of people. No crowd here, thanks to our insane foreboding spell. I reach up and adjust the brim of my hat, careful not to knick my fingers again.

“Why would we go on a date when the Hag Wytch is hunting us? I thought we needed to work on the spell prep.” I give Brooks a look, and he offers a weird smile in response.

He thinks one of us could die, that’s what that smile is. Shit.

“This is spell prep, sweetheart. Just … trust me on this.” The eyes on his hat slither to the right side of the cone so they can all peer down at me.

I sigh, propping a hand on my hip.

“Fine. Don’t twist my arm.” I roll my eyes. “What restaurant did you guys have in mind?”

“The Alchemy Lounge and Bar,” Marlowe states easily, redwood saplings growing from his hat.

Ah. That’s a super fancy place, definitely off the beaten path. It’s sort of in the middle of nowhere. Interesting choice. It’s been around for like forty-plus years.

“You guys don’t have anything nice to wear to the restaurant.” I’ve just realized that I also do not have anything nice to wear. Just that one LBD. Hmm. I should’ve asked Fernanda for a dress before she stripped naked and painted her breasts with the blood of a dead rapist.

“That’s what magic is for,” Brooks tells me, putting his hands in his pockets as he starts off down the street. A dog barks in a nearby yard, and Tanner makes this sharp, little sound under his breath, quieting the dog instantly. Magic? I don’t think so. Authority. He’s a beast and a beast tamer. As if to prove my point, Ebon lands on his shoulder and settles there.

“I thought we had to conserve our energy for the gate?” I quip, and Brooks smiles.

“Ah, so you do listen to us when we talk. It’s alright. A simple glamour spell is nothing. Won’t cost much.”

“You guys aren’t going to embarrass me at dinner, are you?” They never really embarrass me, but I enjoy poking at them until they poke back.

“Embarass you?” Tanner laughs at that, shaking his head. “Kate, we’re going to romance you. Make love to you. If that’s embarrassing, then I suppose it’s a fuck yeah, we are. ”

Is that embarrassing? Maybe.

“I haven’t been to Alchemy since my parents took me there to celebrate my high school graduation.” Marlowe barks a harsh laugh, reaching up a hand to his hat and knocking off a pesky mushroom that’s just sprouted from the brim.

“Yeah, um, it hasn’t changed. Like, at all. Exact same decor. Exact same food. Still good though.” I jump when Ebon hops from Tanner’s shoulder to mine without bothering to open her wings. Tanner is grinning, trying not to laugh at me for being visibly startled by my own bird. “I think I can handle the Witchwoods a little better if I have chicken wrapped in phyllo dough for dinner tonight.”

“I know I can handle it better if I fuck you good tonight.” Marlowe points at me, almost an accusation. “That way, if we do die in there, at least I’ll have had something worth living for.”

He plays it off as a joke, or a tease. His expression is a little grumpy, lip gently curled. But he can’t hide the true meaning of his words. Lo is nervous, too. He’s serious right now.

“What the fuck is phyllo?” Tanner asks, and I nearly trip on a bit of cracked sidewalk. Redwood tree roots are huge. The cement is always bumpy and uneven, and I prefer it that way. Even with humanity layered over the top, I can feel the earth underneath me.

Along with my next exhale, there’s a little laugh. It could also be a gentle, whimpering cry.

We’re going to lose something in all of this.

I know it.

I know it as surely as I know that if we don’t manage to close the gate, we’ll be hunted by the Hag Wytch. She took Brooks’ leg off once already, and we were very, very lucky to escape her. If she isn’t catching us right now, it could be that she’s waiting for something.

For the first time in my life, I’m not wondering what if? I’m happy right where I am, in this exact moment with these men.

“Phyllo … Brooks, you want to tackle this one for me?” I ask, glancing over at him.

He looks back at me, and in every single place that I am weak, he’s strong. We’re a good mix, me and Brooks.

“We’ll be okay, Kate. You’ll see.” His red and black hair is wicked under the dim, golden streetlights. “And phyllo is paper thin sheets of dough layered over one another.”

“Huh. Never heard of it.” Tanner muses, weaving his hands together behind his neck.

“Do we have a reservation?” I ask. “That place gets busy, even on weekdays.” Fog swirls around my ankles as we walk the deserted streets back to our house.

“Reservation?” Marlowe gives me an odd look. “You’re fucking with us, aren’t you? Do you really think we can walk into a restaurant and have a peaceful meal after the scalping incident today? After a severed head exploded on the street next to us? In terms of public opinion, we’re screwed. Tanner’s front yard fuck-up is like a drop of water in the bucket of today’s shit.”

Tanner snorts, but Brooks nods approvingly, like Marlowe is speaking the gospel truth.

“Then how are we going out? Disinterest powder? Invisibility spell crafted from dragon’s blood?” I’m only half-joking. Maybe not even half.

“I already told you, witch.” Brooks takes the brim of his hat and spins it around on his head. The eyes stay facing forward, even as the hat does a half-dozen full turns. He leans down to whisper to me, and I swear, his next word sticks to the air and hangs there like an unholy promise. “ Glamour. ”

“Doesn’t sound like conserving our magic to me. Admit it: you three just wanted to see me sweat and struggle with a shovel tonight.” I sound indignant, but I blush a little, too.

“We’re hypocrites and bastards, Kate.” Brooks puts his hand on my lower back, fingers splayed. “I’m surprised that falling in love with us made you forget that.”

I almost trip again, but he holds me up and our eyes meet.

“In case I wasn’t clear enough: I don’t just like you, Katelynn. I would die for you.” Brooks drags me closer, his lips brushing my temple when he next speaks. “I love you, Kate.”

Holy. Shit.

I wriggle away from him and jog through the front yard, kicking the dense, white fog aside as I pound up the porch steps and unlock the front door.

I am loved. I am in love.

Life is good.

No matter what happens.

Life is great.