Page 75 of Winter’s Teeth

A hand slid over mine, and I turned my palm up to thread our fingers together, Fox squeezed just enough to bring me back to the present.

“Okay. We’ll stop there first,” Corbin promised. “Then we gotta get out of here before Seth wakes up and tells the others.”

“No—” I started.

Corbin raised a brow. “Do you not want us to save you?”

“No, I...” I gripped Fox’s hand tighter to stop myself from fidgeting. “I want that, it’s just that I came here to save my sister, and I almost got to her. I almost had her. I can’t leave now without her. I didn’t go through all of this for nothing.”

Corbin sighed. “You do realize you stand to walk away with even less than you came here with, right?”

I wasn’t a gambler, but I knew what he meant. If I kept pushing my luck, I stood to lose more than just Everly. I stood to lose my friends. I stood to lose Fox, who I just found and wanted to keep. I stood to lose myself, too.

“I know.”

“You’re okay with those risks?” Corbin hedged.

White hot, fiery confidence emboldened me as I said, “I would burn the whole world down for my sister, and she would do the same for me.”

Silence befell the car, wrapping us all up for three seconds. Then five.

Shira shattered the moment by saying, “Man, I wish my sister cared about me like that. If I’m not taking her out for sushi, she could care less about me.” She didn’t try to talk me out of it though. Shira put the car in drive and pulled off the side of the road, heading back toward Winter’s Teeth. “We better get going. It’s almost morning. We’ll find your friends and make a gameplan. Okay?”

“Shira, you don’t have to stay for this,” Corbin begged. “Just drop us off and—”

Fox bit into Corbin before Shira could. “Both of you are leaving after you drop us off. You’ll take Rae’s friends with you if they’re willing. Rae and I will finish this. If you want to help, you can be our getaway drivers once we find Everly.”

Corbin appraised his cousin with wide, fearful eyes. “But... Fox...”

“I’m not dead yet. They haven’t broken me.”

“I know, but—”

“You’re already doing more than you should. Both of you. Rae is willing to risk it all, and so am I, but I won’t risk other people in the process. You and Shira need to get out of here.”

“I could help. If you ran into trouble again, I could—”

“No offense, Cor, but the last time you talked back to Gavin, you couldn’t get out of bed for a week after the fact.”

I didn’t want to know what that meant. I didn’t want to know what Gavin did, but I added it to my mental tally of reasons why I was going to make Gavin suffer the longest when I got my hands on him.

“He’s right,” Shira said, far softer than anything she’d said before. All the bite and confidence were gone when she glanced sideways at Corbin. “I love you, but you’re not a fighter like Fox.”

Corbin pointed out his window into the dark. “Did you guys not see what I did to Seth?”

“Seth will be fine,” Fox intoned. “You know that. You only temporarily disabled him, and I’m grateful, trust me, but you aren’t the one to make a finishing blow when the time comes.”

Corbin sagged in his seat, shoulders lowering dejectedly. “So what?” he asked defeatedly. “Just because I’m not ready to kill someone doesn’t mean I can’t help you.”

I finally added my two cents, even if I wasn’t part of this family or hadn’t been around long enough to have the right. “If you get my friends out of here and help us when we’re ready to run, that is more than I could ever ask for, Corbin. I’m tempted to make Fox go with you, but I kind of need him to guide me back to my sister. Plus, he’s the scarier one when he shifts.”

“Alright, fine,” Corbin huffed. “When we get to the cabin, assuming it’s not overrun yet, I’ll get the walkies while you two convince the others to leave. In and out, okay? No more than ten minutes.”

“And if it’s overrun?” Shira asked. She cast a worried glance in the rearview mirror.

“Then we turn tail and run back the way we came,” Fox said stoically. No room for argument. No sugar coating that it was a very real possibility my friends could already be dead or captured.

I wanted to argue. I wanted to declare that I would stay and fight my way through.