“What exactly it is you’re not feeling?”
I think about it. “The attraction?”
“The chemistry,” Gigi says sagely.
“Yeah. That.”
“Pff.”
“What?”
“Chemistry is a myth. Sparks don’t fly. You have to work for it.”
I lift my arm and stare at her. “How old are you again? And I thought you believed in love. What about Quinn?”
“What about him?” Said airily, but underneath there’s tension.
Oh dear.
I think my little sis might be in love, and chemistry or not, she doesn’t exactly look radiant with joy.
“Is he working for it?” I whisper, shifting my gaze to the window and the moving shadows of the tree branches outside.
But she pretends to be asleep already, and I pretend to believe it.
Chapter Eleven
Matt
The ground is crumbling under my feet as I’m running. Always running, toward the house framed against the dark clouds and the lightning flashes. The house is dark, but I know they are inside. I need to reach them before it’s swallowed into the earth and is gone.
Before they are gone, too.
My boots sink into the mud. I stumble, and fall, and scramble on my hands and knees.
The earth shakes, and I roll. A chasm is opening, deep, with a stench of something dead. I dig my fingers into the ground, trying to hold on.
I can’t. I’m falling.
And the house is sinking. Screams echo in my ears.
They’re dying. They’re dead. I’ve let them die.
My fault. It’s all my damn fault, and I’m following them, drowning, suffocating as the earth fills my mouth and nose, my eyes, my ears.
Buried alive in a shifting grave.
I fight it. I always fight it, even as the sorrow seeps into my bones, weighing me down like a suit of lead. I struggle for breath, for a handhold, for a way out.
No air. My lungs ache, compressed, laboring on nothing.
My eyes fly open.
I’m lying on my bed.
Quiet.
The room is steeped in darkness. Something heavy lies on my chest, and I shove at it, struggling to breathe. I put my hand on it and it’s a head.