Wanderlust (Kellic)

Chapter 7

"Upset and not thinking clearly," I tell him, taking hold of one of his hands.

He pulls it away from me. “I’m thinking perfectly clearly,” he says. “I need. To be. Alone.”

Then he rushes down the hall without a backward glance. I chase after him, but he must be secretly an Olympic runner, because within seconds he’s gotten impossibly far ahead of me. The twists and turns of this hotel are confusing as fuck, and even when I take the stairs two at a time, I still end up losing him, so I make my way to the lobby and hope for the best. This proves to be harder than I thought, considering that I haven’t really been paying attention to which way I’ve been going and have no idea what direction the lobby is in. That doesn’t stop me from trying to figure it out, though.

I can’t stop thinking about what Tony said last night, about Vic being wild, about him being a hurricane. I can see it now more than ever, and that terrifies me. My heart beats so fast that it hurts, seeming to pump out panic instead of blood. Something bad could happen, it shouts at me. He could die tonight. He could drink himself to death.

I shake my head to clear it. I have to find him. I have to.

I make it to the lobby about ten seconds later. The lady at the desk is looking at me strangely, and I turn to her. “Did you see him?” I ask, hoping that if a hysterical Vic stopped by here, she’d remember him.

"The guy who was running?" she says, perking up in recognition. "Young? Tan? Crying, I think? I tried to calm him down, but he wasn’t having it."

"That’s him," I say breathlessly. "Where’d he go?"

She points to the front door. “Out there, to the right.”

"Thank you," I say. I push through the front door and turn to the right, continuing a search that is desperate and growing more hopeless by the minute.

—

I don’t know how long it’s been. All I know is that I’m roaming around the city, it’s now past midnight, rain is starting to fall, and I still haven’t found Vic.

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out, hoping that it’s him. But it’s not. It’s my sister.

"Lily?" I say when I answer it. "What happened?" I know she wouldn’t call this late just to make small talk.

"I—it’s stupid, never mind," she says, but I can hear her voice cracking. It reminds me of what Vic said earlier.

"No," I say, continuing to scan the streets as I talk to her. "It’s not. What is it?"

She sighs. “I just…had a nightmare. I wanted to talk to someone who, y’know, understood.”

I slow down a little. “Was it about…?” I don’t dare say his name.

"Yeah," Lily replies. "It was about Ethan."

I almost punch something right then and there. Ethan is the reason her life nearly went to hell. He’s also another reason why that warning voice in my head, the one that tells me not to get close to Vic, exists.

"It’s not real," I say softly. "Just remember that. He’s never coming back."

"I know," she says. "But I’m terrified, Kell. I don’t remember what it’s like to not be paranoid that something like that won’t happen again."

I can’t help but feel sad for her then, because I do have the luxury of knowing what that’s like, to some degree. It’s what allowed me to start falling for Vic.

"It won’t happen again," I insist, but we both know that there’s always a possibility.

"I’m just glad that I have you," she says. "You’re the only decent person I know anymore." Then, without a warning, she hangs up.