Page 117 of Cruel Abandon (Fallen Royals 5)

He frowns, then waves.

“Come on, Sky. This is what we came home for.”

I peel my attention away and focus on the path beneath my feet. There are a lot of hiking trails in the woods behind our houses. The whole neighborhood used to use them for walking their dogs. Sometimes the teens from Stone Ridge High would get onto the trails and smoke pot, but that generally happened closer to the school.

We duck under low-hanging branches, forcing our way through. It’s been a while since anyone has been back here.

For the briefest moment, I’m transported back to the reservoir. They cordoned off the area with police tape, and—

I gasp.

Liam wheels around, grasping my forearms. “What happened?”

I had picked up the piece of yellow tape one morning, wandering in the woods. Fourteen years old, the memories already washed away. I had been trying to piece it together, to understand why I was drawn out here.

And my faithful shadow found me.

I can’t breathe.

“Come with me.” His voice is strained, and that coldness of his has cracked, leaking pain all over the ground. “Just a little farther.”

He pulls me along, and when I can’t keep myself upright—I can barely breathe from the effort of not letting the panic carry me away—he lifts me onto his back and carries me.

I press my face into his neck and inhale. The scent is as comforting as it is familiar. The hoodie, his apartment, his skin. His gait rocks me side to side, and I close my eyes. I count to match his steps, to calm my breathing.

“Here,” he eventually says, setting me down.

It’s been ten minutes, maybe less.

I open my eyes now, still holding his biceps. He’s right in front of me, blocking the view, but trepidation seeps into my bones. It’s cold, and I have the impression I’ll never get warm again.

“Do places hold memory?” I ask his back. “Are you…?”

He grunts. “Am I okay? I guess we’ll find out.”

Do places hold memory? Do I want them to? It happens often enough in books: a room will transport the characters back to a time when things were different. But standing on the threshold of a brightly lit room is one thing. Peering off the edge of a cliff is quite another.

“Your mom preferred us apart,” he says quietly. He moves away from me, allowing my view to open up. “She said it was better that way.”

“I…”

“The first week you were back, you had awful nightmares. Like, you’d be screaming bloody murder, eyes wide open, but you were still asleep. The doctors didn’t know what to do. Your parents didn’t.” He turns back and finally meets my gaze.

More pain pours out of him—I wonder if it relieves the pressure building inside him or if he’s losing pieces of himself.

Maybe both.

“Where are we?” I rotate, but the clearing is different from my teenage memory. Strange enough that we could be in a new state entirely. “What does this have to do with you?”

His gaze falls to the trail we stand on, and slowly, carefully, he removes something from his pocket.

Yellow plastic, extremely faded. Thin.

I take it and flatten it.

DO NOT printed in block lettering.

“Crime scene tape,” I say. “I… I knew that. I found this. You kept it?”