Page 45 of Enter if you Dare: Part Two

Rowan follows, slamming his palm against the passenger window, and my whole body jolts. For one terrible second, my finger hovers near the button, and I’m tempted to unlock the door. Then he hits the glass again, his face twisting with the same rage I have seen too many times before.

I start the car, and Rowan steps back, shouting something as I pull away from the curb. The sobs that rip through me are so hard they physically hurt. When I’m far enough away, I pull over to the side of the road and cry. For the boy who held my hand at our parents’ funeral, for the brother who promised to look after me, for every version of Rowan I kept alive in my head. Accepting he’s gone feels worse than letting the man he became go. My shoulders shake until they hurt, and the windscreen blurs. Eventually, I wipe my face and drive home.

I pull into the driveway, and the first feeling that hits me is that this is no longer my home. This is a place now filled with so many bad memories that the good ones don’t feel like they matter.

I make my way inside my old bedroom and sit on the edge of the mattress. Cave made a choice that wasn’t his to make. He decided protecting me mattered more than trusting me with the truth. I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. A crack runs from one corner toward the light fitting. I used to follow it with my eyes when I couldn’t sleep and imagine it spreading until the whole ceiling collapsed.

My heart aches thinking about Cave. To him, leaving is permanent. People have abandoned him, thrown him away when they decide he is too damaged, and I walked away without telling him I would be back. That hurts me more than leaving Rowan. Guilt twists in my stomach, and I reach for my phone, but I see there are no missed calls.

I stare at the blank screen. It should make me feel better that they are giving me space. Instead, dread crawls up my spine. Noa couldn’t go two days without rationing his messages when I first left, and Cipher checks the cameras when I roam the island.

I call Noa and it rings until it reaches his voicemail, so I try Cipher next and also nothing.

My heartbeat picks up, so I stand and pace the room as I call Cave, even though he rarely carries his phone and has never answered it.

It rings.

And rings.

It’s probably still a bit too early for them to be up, but I don’t want to stay away from them any longer. I grab my keys, though I don’t know what I will say when I see them. I’m unsure whether I will scream, cry, or make Cave sit in front of me while I explain every reason he can never do this again.

I am not going back to forgive him.

I’m going back because I love him. I love all three of them.

Cipher

I wake up because the bed feels wrong. Noa is sprawling across me, and he never sleeps on me.

I sit up and slide out of bed, and as I stroll into the main room, I notice Valli’s jacket is gone and so are her boots. Maybe she and Cave went to get breakfast early. I pull up the tracking app on my phone and see Cave is in the cornfield, but she is not on the island. Rather, she is moving away from it.

Suddenly I smell a hint of smoke and race to the door to see black smoke filling the sky.

I dart back to the bedroom. “Noa, wake up!”

He goes from lying dead asleep to sitting, his hair sticking up in all directions and confusion in his sleep-filled eyes. “What? Holy shit, what’s on fire?”

He jumps from the bed and slips his feet into his boots. We both run outside after dressing quickly and get on my bike, then I push it as fast as it can go.

The cornfield is on fire, and I stop the bike at the edge as we both jump off.

“CAVE!” Noa screams, already running toward the field. I catch him by the back of the shirt, dragging him to me. “CAVE IS IN THERE! LET GO OF ME!”

“You can’t run into a fire. Cave isn’t an idiot. Let’s do a lap and see if he is watching.”

He goes to run around and check while I grab the pump; the island has water lines that we laid ourselves after a fire a few years ago. Khodi comes to help me, then Ares is next. I use the hose to do what I can, but it’s almost pointless—the corn is burning to the ground.

The alarms finally go off, and everyone on the island rushes out to help.

When the flames are almost under control, that’s when I spot him. Cave stands in the center of the field, watching it all burn down around him.

Noa and I observe him through the dwindling smoke, and my heart breaks seeing him standing there as his safe place goes up in flames. What the hell happened to cause this destruction?

We keep fighting it until it’s all gone; luckily it spread nowhere else. The pure relief that he is alive hits me. If the wind had been present, things could have been a lot different. Nobody moves toward him; the whole island population stands at the edge of the field with hoses and buckets. Despite many personality clashes, when times are hard, we band together, as we all understand what it’s like to be different.

“I’m going in,” Noa says.

“I’m coming with you.”