His Collection

TWENTY

Three days of slowly bringing my grin to the surface, and turning my little chuckles to full length laughs had me exhausted. In my closet I found school books, and a handful of pencils that I used to mark down the days. As I tried to scrambled my memories, it was difficult to recall just how far back it had been since my first day.

"That, then maybe two days of being in the truck knocked out," I muttered to myself as I sat on my bed deciding which memory to mark down or not. "Was it a week in the shed, probably, I can't remember...then maybe now another couple days." Finishing, I count them. They add to two weeks.

Two weeks, and how many more to go?

My candle flickered as I raised my head to see who had opened my door. Lance stood there with his own light glowing, shedding light to his shirtless body. His chest was falling and rising at a fast pace that it started up my own lungs.

"What's wrong?" I asked while he walked up to the bed. He wasn't going to do anything to me, he couldn't, I hadn't done anything bad. I told myself to calm down, and to recall that he had given me space ever since I asked for it.

His jaw became tight, and his honey eyes became amber, "Alice hasn't came back from washing off."

It didn't take me long to drop what I was doing. Rushing out the room, I quickly snatched the extra oil lamp in the kitchen. She was not my problem, she wasn't supposed to concern me at all...but she did. I could not see her as anything but a child. Frustrating, definitely, a little annoying, yes, but innocent. Stupidly innocent.

The nightgown she had given me flowed across my hips while I ran outside trying to spot her little oil lamp from afar. Nothing. The night had devoured her...or worse.

To response, a howl pierced the air.

Lance had rushed out with his rifle, and told me to stay.

"No!" Without stopping I marched down the steps. I don't know what had gotten into me, but when it came to saving someone, no one could order me to not do anything. "I am coming with you, and that's it."

He tried to knock me down with a glare, and I gave one right back. As a defeat, he shook his head, and smiled, "Well, you definitely are your old self again."

Getting there.

"Let me help, she needs me."

Needs an ass whooping, too. Argh, I thank my parents for leaving me a single child.

"Wolves roam around around this time," he leaned in. "I don't want to see one touch you, not ever."

My mother did say my pride would kill me one day. I held up the lamp and passed him. There was no way he'd give me the gun, so I decided to light our way.

As we were deep in the fields, I was about to call out for her, but Lance beat me to it.

"Alice!"

Mentally thanking him, I smacked myself for almost saying her real name. Narrowing my eyes, I see the boulders where the river was. One had moved, I swear it did, so I called out for Alice, too.

Patches of trees blocked most of my view, but I kept rushing through them.

"Alice?! Alice, is that you?!" I yelled while swearing at how she couldn't had just tooken me with her. Her period had started, and though I insisted to go with her to wash up, she went alone. "Alice, are you-"

Lance quickly took my waist and snapped my back to his chest.

Cocking my head up to see his, I try to control my own breath. "W-what?"