A dozen paper cranes lay in a pile at his feet. I found Nick hunched over the coffee table, a fire burning in the hearth beside him, silhouetting him in orange-and-red light. And then point it at me.Īs quietly and lightly as I could, I slipped from the bed and made my way down the stairs of our rented cabin. We'd all been on edge lately, and I worried that if I startled him, he'd go for the gun tucked beneath the mattress. I reached out to touch him, to check that he was solid and warm and real, but thought better of it. And in some ways, so was Nick, even if we didn't necessarily like each other.Īnd Sam… well, I loved him more than anything. Now I took every opportunity to savor what I had, just in case. In the months since Sam, Nick, and Cas had escaped the Branch's lab, and I'd gone with them, I'd learned that nothing was permanent, not even my memories. Imagined what pencil I would use to sketch him on paper. With my eyes, I traced the dimples made by bones and muscle in his shoulders. In the murky darkness, I could just make out the black lines of his birch tree tattoo spreading across his back, the branches twining down his arms. He lay on his stomach, hands tucked beneath the pillow.

In order to see Sam, all I had to do was roll over. There was a moment, before I was fully alert, when I wondered if it was safe to sneak down to the lab.Īnd then I remembered: We weren't at the farmhouse anymore. LIKE CLOCKWORK, I WOKE AFTER MIDNIGHT and immediately had the urge to see Sam.

Erased jennifer rush