Page 257 of A Taste of Vanilla

“Please, Halston. Do not decide this is the moment to become a tragic highway cryptid, okay?”

“I do really love Mothman.”

It’s out before I can stop it.

And despite everything, she lets out a small laugh.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I tell her.

“I know.”

“I keep doing that.”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice small and flat. “You do.”

The honesty hurts, but I need it.

“I’m trying not to.”

“I know.”

For a minute, neither of us speaks. Rain fills the silence.

Then Marley says, “I love you.”

My eyes burn. “Don’t be nice to me now.”

“I’m mad at you. I love you anyway. You’re human, unfortunately.”

I press my shaking hand to my mouth. “I love you too.”

“I know. That’s why I’m not killing you until after you’re safe.”

“Comforting.”

Thunder cracks overhead. Marley says something, but the line breaks.

“Marley?”

Static, and then nothing. My phone goes dark.

“No, no, no,” I say, desperately trying to turn it back on.

It won’t.

The power button does nothing.

It’s only when the screen flashes on for a split second before turning black that I start sobbing. An ugly, exhausted cry with both hands over my face and my shoulders shaking so intensely they hurt.

I’m tired of needing to be rescued, furious at the idea of not being able to take care of things on my own, and terrified that those two things will always make me impossible to love.

Rain keeps falling. Cars pass on the road. For a long time, the world is only the rain and my breathing.

I don’t know how much time passes. Enough for the windows to fog, obviously. Enough for my hands to stop shaking and my body to start feeling numb.

I start to think about Marley storming out of Bitter Bloom, keys in her hand, when suddenly a vehicle turns in slowly, its lights too bright through the rain for me to see past.

Relief hits first, so hard and fast that it hurts.