This is why I don’t have friends, why I don’t let myself need people. This is why it’s best to keep them out, like my parents taught me. When they get too close, they see all the ugly things, all the real things, and that’s too dangerous.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” says a deep, accented voice, the last voice in the world I want to hear right now. I close my eyes and will him away.
Maddox grabs me under the arms and hauls me up, dragging me backwards out of the shed. I don’t care enough to scramble up when he drops me, and I land on my ass in the mud.
“Vení, it’s okay,” Lennox says, kneeling in front of me in the mud. He takes my face in both hands and pulls it up, letting the rain fall down my cheeks with the tears.
“It’s not okay,” Maddox snaps. “It’s a dead crow. You know what that means.”
“Shut up about the omen already,” Lennox snaps back. “Can’t you see there’s more than that going on here?”
I don’t want him to see. I don’t want to watch as his eyes take in what Lennox must have already deduced from the contents of my little nest in the shed. I don’t want to see the way his gaze shifts from the muddy sleeping bag to the bottle with an inch of flat soda in the bottom to the pile of damp clothes and finally, to me.
“It’s a bad fucking omen, alright,” Maddox says quietly, his mouth tight. “Someone’s going to die.”
“She already died,” I say, holding out her remains in both hands, begging them to understand.
Lexi wrinkles her nose and takes my wrist in her hand, pushing it down. “Okay, maybe let’s stop waving the roadkill around.”
“How long have you been living out here?” Lennox asks, pulling my face toward his again. His glasses are streaked with rain, but I can see the kindness and pain in his eyes—pain that’s for me, on my behalf. Suddenly all I want is to curl up in his arms and cry, forget all the things he’s said and other people have told me to warn me about him that don’t fit with this caring, kind, nurturing side of him.
I shake my head, fighting to get myself back under control, to make the tears stop falling and my lips stop trembling.
“You could have come to us,” he says quietly. “I told you that. To come to us if you needed anything.”
“I couldn’t,” I say, shaking my head.
“Bullshit,” Maddox growls, slamming the shed door closed. It doesn’t latch, and with the wood swollen from all the rain, it doesn’t even close all the way unless you really push it. But there’s no reason to make sure it’s tightly closed now. There’s nothing precious left inside.
Fresh, hot tears stream down my cheeks. “I couldn’t,” I say again. “Every time I came to you, something bad happened.You’rethe bad omen, not Poe.”
The muscle in Maddox’s jaw flexes as he clenches his teeth, but Billy clamps a hand on his shoulder and pulls him back before he can speak. “Let Lennox take this one,” he says. “He and Lexi are better at this shit. Come on.”
Maddox glares at me one long moment and then turns and stalks away with Billy. My shoulders shake, and Lennox sinks to sit in the mud with me, scooting in so his legs bracket mine as he faces me, taking my head between his hands again. “Listen, Rae,” he says. “I’m sorry about how the last time went down, that you felt like you couldn’t come to us with this. But you can. You can now. Whatever happened, it doesn’t matter. You’re with us now.”
His words only make me cry harder. “I’m not,” I manage. “You’re with the Crows, and you said I couldn’t join. That I would never be one of you.”
“That doesn’t mean we won’t look out for you.”
I shake my head, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand. “But you already have someone. You have each other.”
“That doesn’t mean you don’t have us, too,” he says, lifting my chin. “You have me.”
He leans in and kisses me softly, right there with the dull grey sky above and the cold grey rain falling and the cold grey world around us. Right there in the mud, with a mangled crow carcass in my hands, he kisses me, like he doesn’t care about any of it. He just wants me, and he wants me to be safe, and to take care of me. No one has ever wanted to do that before.
He pulls back slowly, stroking my wet, bedraggled hair behind my ear and giving me a little smile that only hints at the dip of his dimple. “Okay?” he says, searching my eyes. “You always have me.”
I nod, feeling so stupid and gross right now that I don’t want to look at his gorgeous, movie star face another second.
“Good,” he says. “Now, here’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to have a funeral for your friend here, and then you’re going to go inside and take a shower, and this time, you’re going to stay afterwards. Not just for a night. Forever.”
I nod, another tear tracking down my cheek.
Lennox pulls me close and kisses my cheek, then the other, then my lips again, his mouth salty with my tears. “Okay,” he says, standing and holding out a hand. “Venga.”
I don’t want to put my gory hand in his, so I sit there, holding what’s left of Poe cupped between my palms. After a second, he sees what’s wrong and takes my elbow, pulling me up. Lexi steps in to help on my other side. “Always the man with a plan,” she says. “Though can we do the shower first? Or at least wash her hands off? I mean, I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty, but cuddling corpses is going a little far.”
I manage a smile through my embarrassment as we step through the gap in the fence and into the Norths’ yard. “I’ll wash my hands.”