Prophecy Girl (Lacuna Valley #1)

Chapter Seventeen

 The sun was just starting to peek its head up over the hills. Sam lived on the other side of them. Even though the hills looked pretty much the same from this side, they felt different, further away. Her hot cocoa warmed her hands, and that was pretty much all it was good for. As much as she'd relaxed the past few hours, she felt too sick to drink or eat anything. The doors behind her clacked open and she heard Nick sigh in relief as he came out.

"You don't want to go in there. Susan's still handling the hospital folks. Lying her ass off is more like it. For a hippie, she's crazy fierce, you know that?"

Sam just smiled. Calling Susan in the middle of the night to drive all the way out to the hospital and handle people who wanted answers about what had happened, and who Violet's parents were, was just one more thing Sam felt guilty about.

"How are the others?" She didn't really want to know, but it seemed polite to ask. Violet was going to be fine and that was all that mattered.

"The pack are safe and fine. They're with my dad."

Sam couldn't help but groan. "They happy?"

"Ha! No. My dad is particularly furious."

"Angrier than Adam? Oh, no." She groaned again. "Why didn't you call your dad into this, by the way?"

Nick sighed. He stared out at the hills. She wasn't sure if he was going to answer, and she wasn't going to push it. He'd helped save Violet, she didn't care all that much how or why he did it.

"Because I didn't know what he'd do. When she had Zach..." Nick shook his head. "My dad's whole life has been protecting the orb, protecting everybody. He has given up everything for it. I wasn't sure... I wasn't sure if he'd give up Zach, too, if it came down to it."

"I understand that."

Nick laughed. "Yeah. I don't think it was exactly the responsible decision."

"Choosing your brother over the rest of the world? Probably not. But really... if that's what being a responsible adult is, do you want to be one?"

Nick's head dropped down between his knees, and he laughed. He laughed so hard that he started to wheeze and couldn't seem to catch his breath. "No, no I don't. And can you believe I never even thought there was a choice before? Man, what am I going to do now? I'm fighting fate."

She shrugged. "Maybe you are. Maybe you're just... stylizing it."

They sat in silence and watched the sunrise go from white streaks, to pink, to a red-orange sliver that was hard to look at directly. She'd have been content to never move or speak again.

"What do Helen and Joe do now?" Nick whispered.

"Once they successfully combated the enemy Helen and Joe..." Sam trailed off and shrugged.

"Ride off into the sunrise? Failing the availability of a sunset, of course." He smiled at her, the worry and stress and fight of the night gone from him.

"It's the 1940s, not a fairy tale, Prince Charming," she retorted with a roll of her eyes.

"Then don't the curtains close on a kiss?" He winked.

She turned her face away, trying not to smile. Her thoughts led her somewhere serious. "The curtains haven't closed, not really. She's still out there. And we've still got other problems. A pack full. And let's not talk about the seasonals, not until I've slept. For like a year."

"I'll settle for holding your hand, then." He put his hand out on the bench between them. She stared at it for a minute, waiting for thoughts and arguments that never came. Meeting his eyes, she cracked a smile, and wrapped her fingers tightly between his.

                                                                THE END.

Thank you for reading Prophecy Girl, I hope you enjoyed your time in Lacuna Valley!  You can find this book, and more in the series, on Amazon. If you'd like to keep up with my stories, please visit FaithMcKay.net and sign up for my newsletter to be notified when new stories are out. I promise I'm always working on something more.