Page 49 of Escape from the Green

And I was taking Amy with me.

And if I was going to protect her, it was going to have to be forever.

I was going to have Amy with me forever.

I hardly let myself notice the way the pressure on my chest lessened before I threw myself through the veil.

I had to go get my girl.

Even if she wasn't my girl.

Yet.

SEVEN

Amy

It is strange how things change. Suddenly. Then slowly. Until everything is different. Until nothing is as it used to be.

I couldn't claim to have felt the same confidence about my choice as I had felt when Drake was still with me. As soon as the bus pulled away, the swirling discomfort filled my belly. It grew and spread with each stop, each new place, every new bus, then train.

And it became the biggest part of me the moment I emerged from the labyrinth of Pennsylvania Station and onto the streets of the city I had decided long ago would be my home.

If I was being honest, it was a decision based mostly on some reruns of TV shows I had watched based in the city.

Even if it was also a smart decision safety-wise.

I had spent my entire life dreaming of starting over, of becoming someone new, not just Declan and Opal Winters' daughter. Not just the replacement of two children run off in their youth. Not just a playing card in a game I wasn't allowed to hold a hand in.

I could be anyone.

That was an idea that had kept me awake late into the night in my childhood bed, dreaming of what I could do, say, wear, who I could talk to, what I could experience that I had - thus far - been protected from.

As though there were anything in the universe more dangerous for me than being under my mother's watchful eye.

But as I stood there, shoulder ramming into mine, making me stumble forward, reminding me to move out of the way, that not everyone who stepped off the train was in the middle of some existential crisis about the utter vastness of this new place, the shock of the crush of people everywhere, the sounds that were both natural and not, and all building together in a symphony of discomfort, making my shoulders curl upward toward my ears as though I could block some of it from assaulting me at once.

I had moved a few feet to the side, leaning back against a wall, keeping my head ducked so the man with the eyes pried so wide that you could see all the whites who was yelling something about some apocalypse didn't decide that I would be as good an audience as any, and tried to pull it together, tried to remind myself why I was there, that this was my only choice, that sometimes dreams were scary when they were finally coming true.

And I also tried to pretend that there wasn't a deep well of insecurity, loneliness, this irrational urge to run back, to find Drake, to beg him to come with me, protect me from all the people with the crazy eyes, all the shoulders that would knock me onto my face on the filthy sidewalks.

But I couldn't do that.

Go back.

And I couldn't have his protection.

He was too busy making his own dream come true.

I had no right to even ask him to give that up. As though he would even consider doing it.

For me.

The daughter of the man and woman who had kept him captive for so much of his life, who had rejoiced in his pain, in his helplessness, who benefitted from the work that left his body drained and sore every night.

I was alone.

Utterly, completely alone.