Chapter 3: Elodie

The knife was winning. Fear pulsed through me in waves, radiating from the epicenter where the blade pressed against my skin. I shook back my hair, trying to dislodge the sticky strands from my neck. And I thought of my mother.

Had she wrestled with the decision like I was? Or had she done it quickly? A vertical slash deep between the tissue, straight to the artery. No going back. How long had it taken her to bleed out? If they'd found her sooner, would she have stood a chance?

My stomach roiled. My shoulders bucked.

If it came down to me facing off with death, I wouldn't be doing it like this. But by God I was going to face down this knife and sit here until I got myself under control. I heaved a breath and repositioned the knife, steadying my hold.

Something hit my hand, a hard and fast strike that left my fingers stinging. I released the knife, my eyes springing open.

What the hell -

" - are you doing?"

I didn't register anything but the tone - furious and threatening. Still drenched in fear from my bout with the knife, I couldn't think, couldn't process. Some primitive part of my brain urged me into motion, and I scrambled backward and away, automatically looking around for a weapon before I even identified the threat.

My eyes lit on my knife, embedded halfway to the hilt in a flowering dogwood across the clearing. For a few precious seconds, I just stared.

How...?

Then someone moved to my right, and I bolted back in panic. My heart kicked hard in my chest. He was huge. A great beast of a boy with linebacker shoulders and an expression of growling menace on his angular face. His hands were held up in a placating gesture, but everything in his posture screamed agitation and aggression. For every step I took in one direction, he countered.

Trapped.

My brain screamed at me to move, escape. But he was a good foot taller, with legs that would easily eat up any lead I would gain by surprise if I ran. I found myself lifting my head slightly and widening my nostrils to smell.

The stink of my own fear clouded everything else. I inhaled again sifting through the scents with some deeper part of my brain. Damp earth. Fresh cut green wood. And something else I couldn't identify.

The initial panic begin to ebb enough that I started understanding what he was saying.

"I'm not going to hurt you." That he snarled it in frustration didn't lend a lot of credence to the statement.

My breath was still coming fast and shallow. "You'll have to forgive me if I'm not inclined to believe you."

"I didn't mean to scare you, but I had to stop you."

"Stop me?" I asked blankly.

"I don't care how bad things are, that's not the answer."

"What... " Then I stopped, my brain catching up with what he was saying. "I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"You'll forgive me if I'm not inclined to believe you."

Having my words thrown back at me, I felt the urge to curl my lip in a snarl. I glared instead.

"What's your name?" he asked.

Did I look stupid? "You first."

"I'm - you're bleeding."

While my brain struggled to make sense of that, he sprang toward me, almost too fast to track. I tried to stumble back, but he had my hand in his, tugging me toward him.

"Hey!"

Then he pressed the tail of his t-shirt against the cut on my arm that I hadn't even noticed yet. His touch was firm but careful. The anger seemed to leech out of him, redirected into action.

I said the first thing that popped into my head. "You cut me!"

His face darkened again. "I cut you? I just stopped you from slitting your wrists. I saved your life."

My own temper started to emerge now that I was relatively sure he wasn't planning to kill me. "I wasn't slitting my wrists. You yanking it away from me nicked my vein."

"Not slitting your wrists. Oh, because there are so many other completely logical reasons for you to be out in the middle of nowhere with a knife, crying your heart out."

Had I been crying? I lifted my free hand to my face and found it wet. God, how mortifying. Then I stopped myself. This lunatic thought I was out here committing suicide and I was worried that he'd seen me crying? Get your priorities straight, girl.

"It's none of your damned business what I was doing, but I wasn't trying to kill myself."

"Right."

I glared at him but made no additional reply. He would either believe me or not. Repeating myself probably wouldn't help my case.

His long fingers were still curled around my wrist, keeping me immobilized, but oddly gentle in contrast to the storms in his eyes. It felt almost comforting. Which was just stupid given that he was some pissed off, misguided, wannabe hero. Still, my pulse slowed, my breathing evened out, and the fear of the knife finally ebbed. For better or worse, the trial was over.

He seemed to calm too as we stood there in awkward silence, him holding my wrist and staunching the bleeding. Whatever demons haunted him retreated so that, when he looked up at me, his face was no longer menacing. It was just heartbreakingly sad, marked by the kind of loss that scars a person. I knew it because I saw the same expression in the mirror every day.

My fingers itched to touch his cheek and smooth those worry lines away.

What the hell is wrong with me? I curled them into a fist instead and frowned.

He lifted the edge of the t-shirt, now stained with a darker spot on the black. "I think it's starting to clot." Working quickly, he ripped two clean strips off the bottom of the t-shirt. He folded one and pressed it to the cut and wrapped the other around my wrist to secure it. "Doesn't look like you'll need stitches."

My wrist felt suddenly cold without the pressure of his hand around it.

I am losing my mind.

I folded my injured arm across my chest and looked up at him. "Thank you," I said, though I didn't really know for what.

His eyes followed me as I moved back to the boulder, snagging the notebook and stuffing it in my bag. I picked up the leather sheath and looked at the knife buried in the tree. "How did you do that?"

His shoulders jerked in a motion that was half discomfort, half shrug. "Lucky shot. I can try to get it out if you want."

I lifted a brow at that. "Aren't you worried I'll use it?"

"Will you?"

"Not like that."

I guess he believed me because he crossed the clearing and reached up, wiggling the blade free of the tree. Then he walked back and presented it to me hilt first. "Be careful."

"Always." I slid the knife back into its sheath and slipped it into my bag. "Look, I need to go - " I trailed off, turning a fast circle.

The boy wasn't there.

I stood and listened for sounds of his passage. I heard nothing. Lifting my head and inhaling, I tried to find his scent. But other than a lingering trace of boy and sweat and that thing I couldn't place, there was nothing but the tangle of green and dirt that was summer in the mountains.

Gooseflesh broke out along my arms, despite the rising summer heat.

He was simply gone. Vanished into the woods he'd come from. Like a ghost.