by Parker Grey
I think I knew it all along. I didn’t just hand her my heart. She’s had it all this time.
I just hadn’t realized it yet.
The night passes, Bianca snuggled in between us. In the morning I wake up hard, my cock already between her legs, and she reaches back and slides me inside her before I’m even properly awake. Beckett’s eyes open, and then his hand is on her clit, rubbing and massaging.
Bianca comes first. Then she pulls me out, moves her hips, positions me at her back entrance.
“Please,” she says, her beautiful eyes wide, and I do. I go slow and I’m gentle but she’s so fucking tight that I nearly come right there. Just knowing that I’m here, with her, that this girl is letting me fuck her like this.
I come so hard my ears pop.
Hours later, there’s a knock on the door. Beckett and I both leap to our feet, instantly going for the guns we have stashed in a few drawers around the place. Neither of us like them, but we’ve been here nearly two weeks and this is the first time someone’s knocked.
“Go around that corner,” I tell Bianca. “Stay close, but out of sight of the door. Beckett, keep an eye on her, just in case this is a trap again.”
They both obey. Good. We can’t have a repeat of the Günther situation.
Slowly, my gun hand behind my back, I open the door. Somewhere in my brain I know that a person who wants the three of us dead is unlikely to knock, but you can never be too cautious.
But when I see the person who knocked, I have to rethink that. Just a little.
It’s a kid with bad skin and a worse haircut. He’s skinny and lanky and can’t be more than seventeen, looks totally and completely freaked out at my eye, staring at him from the doorway.
He swallows, and his too-large Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.
“Delivery?” he squeaks out, holding up two shopping bags.
And I’m suspicious again. We haven’t ordered anything. That’s not something we’d do, give that we’re hiding out. People in lockdown don’t order groceries.
“They’re not ours,” I growl.
He checks a piece of paper.
“Um, is this the ancestral hunting cabin of the family Munchveld?” he asks.
I don’t answer.
“Because that’s where I’m supposed to deliver it, but if this is the wrong ancestral cabin let me know, my GPS doesn’t really work up here and it likes addresses rather than vague descriptions anyway?”
“What is it?”
“What’s what?”
I roll my eyes.
“In the bags.”
“Um. I don’t know, this one’s got, like, some bread, and some cheese, and there’s a thing of jam and butter, and then on the bottom it looks like, ooh, strawberries, don’t know who put things on top of those, not protocol at all, and then there’s a whole bunch of apples and like some sort of, I don’t know, turnip?”
I frown, watching him root around in the bag. It’s pretty clearly not a bomb from the way he’s shoving items left and right, probably squashing the hell out of everything.
“Where’s it from?”
“Andersen’s, down in Inversberg? My boss said that you meant to order this stuff a couple days ago, but then you left without paying and something got confused in the system but then yesterday it spat out an error saying that your order was still missing, and so we found your account and just charged it to that, it shouldn’t be too much, and we figured that it was better to err on the side of...”
“I’ll take them, it’s fine,” I say, opening the door and grabbing the bags. “Thanks. Sorry for the mix-up.”
“Oh! No problem, I’ve always wanted to see the Munchveld ancestral cabin in person, my grandma was always going on about it...”
I give the poor kid a hard look. He jams his hands into his pockets.
“Right! Have a nice day, sir,” he says, and turns around, walking back to the SUV he came in and I close the door, locking all three locks.
“We got groceries?” Beckett says.
“Yup,” I say.
I’m still slightly nervous that this was some sort of recon for the hacker group, that something just happened that I don’t understand, but there are no alarms going off. Nothing about this scenario really made me suspicious, once it got explained — my family has had this cabin for a long time.
We do order groceries from Andersen.
That really was a pimple-faced delivery boy.
I explain the whole situation with the mix-up to Beckett and Bianca, and we stash the groceries in the fridge. It’ll be nice to have fresh stuff tonight, after all, and then we forget the whole thing. Write it off as a weird quirk that happens in small towns, where everyone knows everything.
A few hours later I’m doing a crossword in the living room when Bianca walks past me, tossing an apple up and down in one hand.
“I’m gonna go have a snack and read in the study,” she says. “My night to make dinner?”
“Sounds good,” I say, and she walks off.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Beckett
The sun’s going down as I wander into the kitchen, looking for a snack. I open the fridge, rooting around in there for a bit: some salami, a few tubs of yogurt, about twenty apples.
I guess Bianca wasn’t kidding when she said she really liked apples.
“Have you seen Bianca?” Kieran asks, wandering in as well. He looks over my shoulder into the fridge while the two of us both try to find a snack.
“Not a for a while,” I say. “I think she was gonna go read.”
“Hmm,” Kieran says, but something in his voice worries me, and suddenly I’m trying to remember the last time I did see Bianca.
Is she in trouble? Something dangerous?
Normally I wouldn’t be concerned about an adult woman being alone for a few hours, but these aren’t exactly normal circumstances.
I shut the fridge, and I’m met with Kieran’s frown.
“I’ll go see what she’s up to,” I say, forcing my voice to stay calm. “She said she’d make dinner tonight, right?”
“Right,” Kieran echoes, the scowl even in his voice.
It’s fine, I tell myself as I walk out of the kitchen and into the hallway, past the living room.
She just got lost in a book. It happens.
She’s not in her bedroom or either of ours. The bathrooms are all empty, and when I peek outside, she’s not there either.
The door to the study is nearly shut, the lights inside on. My heart is thudding at my ribcage as I push it open, praying that she’s inside because if she’s not here, she’s gone.
But there she is, curled up sideways in her favorite reading chair. The book has crumpled a little in her lap, closing on itself. She’s probably lost her place.
“Hey, Bianca,” I say gently.
She doesn’t wake up. I guess she’s tired, so I shrug, starting to close the door.
“Wait,” Kieran says, his voice low and dark.
Adrenaline sizzles through my veins again, and I glance at him, then at her.
And I start to realize: something’s wrong. I don’t know what, but the longer I look at Bianca, the more the feeling grows that she’s not just asleep, she’s out.
“Bianca,” Kieran growls, his voice low and gravelly.
He strides across the room, his foot accidentally kicking a half-eaten apple.
“Bianca. Wake up,” he gruffs, grabbing her by the shoulder and shaking her.
The books falls from her lap and her head lolls at a strange angle. In half a second I’m there, fingers pressed to her neck as I feel for a pulse, Kieran’s face next to her mouth.
I’m terrified. I feel like I’m falling down a bottomless pit, my body wheeling freely, more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life as I wait the milliseconds for a heartbeat, praying to any god who’ll listen that she has one.
It feels like I wait a hundred long years, the world fizzling in front of my eyes, spinning out of c
ontrol.
No. No, not her. Take me instead, take both of us.
Just not Bianca.
And then, at last, there it is: one thump of her jugular vein, slow and sluggish but there.
She’s alive.
“Breathing,” Kieran growls.
“We’ve gotta get her to town,” I say, standing. I’m still nauseous, still feel like I’m falling down that endless pit, but she’s alive. That’s step one, at least, the first of a hundred steps to get her help, get her out of here because we’ve failed her, somehow, Kieran and I tried, and we fucked this up—
“Come on,” Kieran barks, and I slide my arms underneath Bianca’s limp form, lifting her body in my hands.
“Grab that apple,” I say as I carry her out, the words an afterthought. But somewhere deep down, I know that that’s the only thing in here that doesn’t fit, the only odd piece to this puzzle.
We head to the Jeep without talking. We’re not even wearing shoes or coats, just t-shirts and sweatpants, but neither of us gives a shit. I get into the back seat with Bianca, resting her head on my lap, stroking her hair. Kieran gets into the driver’s seat and half a second later we’re tearing down the bumpy dirt road in the dark.
I hold her close, absolutely fucking terrified. I don’t know what happened and I don’t know how to fix it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry we fucked up, I’m sorry we didn’t protect you, I’m sorry...”
I squeeze her closer, even as we fly over a huge rut, Kieran’s hands white-knuckled on the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry for everything,” I whisper. “I love you, Bianca.”
Kieran’s eyes flash in the rearview mirror, full of pain and regret and torment.
“We love you,” I correct myself.
There’s no hospital in Inversberg. It’s far too small, so we just drive onto the cobblestone street in front of the first open store we find, and Kieran sprints inside without bothering to turn off the car while I just sit in the back seat, holding Bianca.
I feel powerless, more powerless than I ever have before. I don’t even know what’s wrong with her, what’s happened, or how to fix it.
I just keep telling her unconscious form, over and over again, that we love her.
Moments later, Kieran sprints back out.
“The shop owner’s called the town doctor,” he says, his voice tight and panicked as he smooths one hand over Bianca’s hair.
I notice he’s shaking. I notice I’m shaking, and for a split second we lock eyes, both acknowledging the shared emotion between us.
“He’s also calling the hospital so they can send an ambulance, but... it could be a while,” he says, his voice nearly breaking.
“It’s already been a while,” I whisper.
Kieran doesn’t answer. We both just sit there, both silently praying on our own.
Soon, the doctor comes, and then everything is pandemonium. He has us bring her out of the car, lay her down on the cobblestones, head back. He quizzes us endlessly about what she’s done that day, what she ate, what she did, what book she was reading, but he doesn’t have answers either.
A small crowd gathers. Bianca’s still breathing, her heart still beating, but nothing has changed. She’s not waking up. She only seems half-alive, her heart beating glacially slow, like she’s been put in suspended animation.
Suddenly, there’s a whirring noise above us, a breeze stirring our hair, and I look up to see a helicopter. I don’t even process it at first, not until it disappears behind a building and the town doctor stands, snapping his bag shut.
“Come on!” he shouts.
I pick her up again. Follow him, feeling empty and hollow, to a clearing a few blocks away where there’s a stretcher waiting outside a medical helicopter.
Reality suddenly snaps back as the paramedics run toward us, full tilt, and suddenly I’m alive again. I put her on the stretcher, help buckle her in, stroke her hair, help push her back because this I’ve done before. Never with the girl I love, but I’ve been in this scenario.
Behind me, Kieran is giving someone the rundown of everything that happened today in short, clipped sentences as the woman nods, taking notes on a pad.
Finally, she’s strapped into the helicopter, and the blades start turning again. The paramedics duck their heads and run back, but at the last second, Kieran runs after them.
“WAIT!” he screams, waving his arms.
From the helicopter, one turns.
“SHE ATE THIS!” he shouts at the top of his lungs, handing over Bianca’s half-eaten apple. It’s a wreck by now, but the paramedic nods, taking it in one gloved hand.
Kieran steps back. The helicopter doors shut.
It lifts away, Bianca inside. I know she’s in better hands than ours now. I know that if she’s going to have a chance, it’s with them, at a hospital, not with us.
But I can’t help but feel as though something’s breaking inside me, splintering apart as I watch her leave without knowing if we’ll ever see her again.
The helicopter disappears over the trees. Kieran turns to me, face ashen and grim.
“Come on,” he says. “We’re going to the hospital.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Bianca
I’m in a maze. It’s a hedge maze, the walls towering above me, and I’m walking slowly. The sun is shining above but the hedges are too tall, the sun at too much of an angle for the light to hit me, so I’m covered in deep shadows, feet moving even though I can barely feel them.
This seems familiar, I think. I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before.
I round a corner, round another corner. I find a dead end, and there’s a stone bench with a garden gnome sitting under it.
So familiar.
I turn, leave the dead end, and then it hits me: this is the hedge maze at Castle Verginogne, where my parents took me when I was six. We were standing at the entrance, reciting formalities with a diplomat, when for some reason, I broke free from my parents’ hands and ran full-tilt into the maze.
They followed, but I was already gone around three turns.
I was lost for hours.
I keep wandering. My feet don’t hurt, I’m not hungry, I don’t have to pee, I just... wander. Every so often I’d swear I can hear someone calling my name and I stand still, listening with my whole body, but I’m pretty sure it’s just my imagination.
There’s no one calling my name. There’s no one here at all except me, and I just keep walking, running into dead ends, turning around, taking another path.
Sometimes the dirt under my feet feels strange, like it’s sticking to me. Sometimes the leaves on the hedges feel wrong, a little too thin, like if I concentrated hard enough they might not really be real, but then everything corrects and I lose that feeling.
And I walk on, and on.
I walk for a long, long time. It might be days. It might be weeks, I just know that I don’t really mind. Nothing ever hurts, I never get tired.
The longer I walk, the more this doesn’t feel like reality. Sometimes I’ll see something — a bench, a gnome, a work shovel left out — look away, turn back, and it’ll be different. Sometimes it’ll feel like my feet are being sucked half an inch into the dirt or like my hand is going through the hedge.
Sometimes the maze switches on me. I’ll walk past a turn, look back, and it’ll be gone.
It happens more and more, but I keep walking. Just walk. Just walk.
I round a corner, and strangely, there’s a refrigerator. I frown. There’s never been a fridge here before, and I go to it, open it.
Inside there’s a single apple. I’m not hungry, but I take it even though it feels strange in my hand. Oddly heavy, too cold, like its surface is covered in velvet but it’s not. It’s just an apple.
I turn away from the fridge and as I do, I forget all about the apple.
The hedge maze is gone. Well, sort of. Almost. Where there used to be a maze now there’s a wide-ope
n space, still hemmed in by the hedges around the border, taller than ever, nothing but dirt and grass and hedge for as far as I can see.
There’s no exit. There’s no entrance. It’s like I’ve always been in this maze, and even though I know that’s not true, I can’t think of a time before. I can’t imagine a time after.
I just squint against the sudden sun, holding one hand up over my eyes. I swear it’s getting slowly brighter, bearing down, so bright I can barely open my eyes.
And I’ve got that sensation again that someone is calling my name, even though I can’t hear it, I just know it.
Bianca. Bianca. Bianca...
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kieran
Beckett and are sitting in the hospital waiting room. It’s been two days since the helicopter brought Bianca here, two days of Europe’s best doctors running every test they could find, the top scientists scratching their heads over the half-eaten apple.
We’ve heard a thousand things, and so have her parents, here from Voravia. They think it was something in the apple. It wasn’t the apple. She breathed in a poison, she had a minor heart attack, she had a stroke, there’s a brain tumor so small they can’t see it, she has some kind of glandular imbalance.
In short, no one has any fucking clue what’s happened to Bianca or why she’s been unconscious for nearly three days. All they have is theories and hypotheses, and most of the time, they won’t let us in to see her.
It’s around two in the afternoon when the main nurse sticks her head in. Her parents look up at the same time we do, and the nurse comes, sits primly on a chair in front of us.
“They think they’ve found the poison,” she says with no introduction.
Beckett and I both sit up straighter. Her mother clutches her father’s arm, both of them still silent.