chapter 16: danger

Two hands grabbed her throat from behind, lifting her off the ground and utterly suffocating her as her back was pressed against someone's front.

August could've sworn that the hands crushed her windpipe with all the sharp pains stabbing her throat from inside out. She had been so suddenly lifted from the ground by her throat that she didn't know what to think. Her feet thrashed wildly as the person was dragging her backwards, the girl gasping for breath as her hands frantically tugged at the wrists of the hands choking her.

Her eyes squeezed shut as her back suddenly slammed against the metal door of the roof, the hands now on the front of her throat, digging their fingers into her esophagus. She didn't have to open her eyes to know who it was breathing their red-hot anger right against her face and gripping her throat with a dangerous pressure.

"What the fuck did you think you were doing?" the woman's husky voice growled between her teeth, her heavy breathing matching the terrified girl's as all the woman could feel was red, hot anger.

August couldn't speak through the hands around her throat; she only looked up at those pools of green eyes that seemed as if they were lit ablaze, the face of the woman contorting to an expression that made the girl fear for her very life.

"Answer me!" Willow throatily screamed in the girl's face. She had returned to her room to find that the girl had suddenly vanished, leaving behind unlocked handcuffs and a bent bobby pin laying on the floor.

"Let...me go!" August spoke in a strangled voice as she tried to pry the woman's iron grasp off her throat. She felt tears rise to her eyes, threatening to spill over. She thrashed her feet and her entire body along with them, trying to free herself from the woman's hold.

Willow only pressed her entire front against the girl, flattening her small body against the door and freezing her movements. Her face only centimeters from hers, she spoke in a taut voice, "What exactly made you think that you could just walk out of the room? Huh? Are you really that brave or really that stupid?!" Her hands tightened around the girl's throat, causing her to let out a whine that began to break through Willow's anger. She noticed tears spilling from August's eyes and just how tight her hand was around her throat.

August couldn't move, as the woman's stomach was pressed against her own and her legs pressed against her thighs, completely gluing her against the door. Black spots began to fuse her vision as she couldn't get any air—the woman was strangling her.

With the blink of an eye, Willow snapped out of it, realizing how the girl's face which had been red before was starting to turn blue, those cupid lips along with it. Her hands released August's soft throat, her body crumpling to the ground as she choked on air while gasping for breath. Listening to the girl's violent coughs, Willow stumbled back, the feeling of the girl's vulnerable throat still buzzing on her hands. She balled her hands into fists as a lump formed in her throat. She desperately wanted the feeling to go away because it was causing a maelstrom of feelings inside of her. Guilt's ebony tentacles began crawling up her throat, suffocating her the same way she had been suffocating the girl.

Willow looked in sheer horror as August gently held her throat that was hot to the touch, sobbing as she lay folded on the ground similar to the way she did the other night.

"I-I'm sorry..." Willow mumbled, shocked that she was apologizing for the first time in forever. She had every right to be angry with August. She escaped the room. That was putting her own life and Willow's life and Willow's gang in danger. If she had escaped and ran away, there was no telling who she might blabber to.

But why hadn't she run away?

Willow turned around to where she had found the girl sitting and saw the familiar leather journal laying open on the ground, her own pen lying next to it. It was the journal she found the girl writing in while on the rooftop of Cornell, the one she decided to pack in the girl's suitcase for reasons unbeknownst even to herself. She was tempted to read it while the girl had been passed out on the dorm bed, but she had just thrown it in the girl's suitcase and decided she didn't have time to read it at that moment.

That was all the girl was doing, Willow realized. She had simply come up to the rooftop to write, which was apparently a beloved activity to her. She had every single reason to escape—it was her perfect opportunity. But instead, she came to the roof to write. She was probably even about to head back to the room, on her own will.

"August," her voice was almost a whine as she fought back tears. She didn't know why she was crying—it was very unlike her to cry, ever. Plus, she wasn't the one who had been thrown against a wall and nearly strangled to death. "August," she whispered, crouching down in front of the gasping girl and placing a hand on her shoulder. She didn't know what to do or what to say besides a weak and trembling, "I'm sorry."

August looked up at the woman through her tears, at her long black hair that was tickling the side of her face, at her full, trembling lips, and most importantly, at her green eyes that stared at her in concern and some sort of fear. It scared her how the woman's eyes changed so fast, and how they looked at her in so many different ways.

Slowly sitting up, Willow keeping her gentle hand on her shoulder, August wiped her tears away. "It's okay, I kind of deserved that," she admitted. Looking back, it was a stupid idea to ever leave the room.

"No, no. No, you did not deserve that." Willow gently took her shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes. "You just—" she sighed, her lips pursing before opening again. "You just can't leave the room like that, even if you're just coming out here. It's not safe." Willow knew that she couldn't even trust her own men around a young girl as beautiful as August.

The wheels in Willow's brain suddenly jerked to a stop as she realized what she had just thought to herself. Beautiful? She looked at the girl. Her fair skin was so soft and dotted with freckles dancing across her nose. Her eyes had a depth that she had never seen before in a person, those deep blue orbs having the ability to reach into her soul and read everything in it. Her lips looked so soft, so pink, so...

"I'm sorry," the lips formed the two words, causing Willow's trance to cease.

Her green eyes shot up. "No, it's okay." She opened and closed her mouth, trying to find the right words to say to the girl who looked at her with tear-stained cheeks. Her eyes traveled down to the girl's throat that was fire red. A pang of guilt hit her stomach; she was leaving way too many marks on the girl.

"Are you okay?" Her voice was soft as she lifted a slow and gentle hand to August's throat, not wanting to make the girl flinch in fear. She softly rested her hand upon August's soft yet inflamed skin, letting her fingers run over every indention and a couple of stray freckles. She wondered if God's hand slipped when he had been sprinkling freckles on the girl's nose, and a few had ended up on the front of her neck. Her mind wondered if a few had strayed anywhere farther down the girl's skin.

"Yea," August barely spoke, her words making Willow's eyes snap up to hers. Besides the pain in her throat and just being generally shook up, August was okay. She feared the way Willow had snapped so fast, but she did realize that she had messed up and crossed a wide line. And the softness in Willow's voice and her intimate closeness to the girl as her cool eyes scanned every part of her face and neck as if she were admiring some delicate, ancient artifact helped with putting her at ease.

Willow bit her lower lip, looking the girl over one more time before speaking, "C'mon. Let's get up." She kept one hand on August's shoulder and held her other hand out for the girl to use as support.

August placed her hand in the woman's larger, slender one. It was the first time their hands had ever touched, and she felt how soft yet firm it was. It held her hand with an unmatched gentleness yet a strength that easily lifted her to her feet, still holding on for a few moments as if making sure she was stable before slowly letting go.

Willow walked over and picked up the journal and pen off the ground, handing them both to August. "You better be glad you didn't lose that pen," she began, a lightness finding its way in her voice. "That's my favorite pen."

August took her journal and pen, holding them against her chest. "In that case, I'm quite tempted to throw it off the roof right now." She managed to smile up at the woman who gave her an exaggerated open-mouthed look.

"Your apathy towards my fondness of my special pen causes me great affliction." Willow opened the metal door for the girl.

"You're weird," August mocked, giving the woman an impish smile as she walked through the door.

The woman felt the heavy guilt in her heart lift, seeing as she had at least made the girl smile. Something in her was trying to warn her, to prevent her from being so affected by the girl's emotions. She knew it wasn't safe for her to feel guilt for hurting her nor happiness for making her smile. She was supposed to keep her cool no matter what. But as she followed the girl down the stairs, watching her light brown curls bounce with every step, there was no way on heaven or earth she could be unaffected by the wonder walking in front of her.

♠

Willow had Jerry bring their lunches up to her room after August told her she wasn't really up for being in the overly social scene of the dining room downstairs. Usually she would've told her to suck it up and deal with it, but she felt concern for the girl. In her eyes, the girl was a delicate glass vase, and Willow was the small child running past the table the vase sat on, threatening to knock it over and shatter. She didn't want the vase to shatter, and she most definitely didn't want to be the cause of it. So she complied to August, telling Jerry over the phone what her and the girl wanted, and then waiting for him to bring it up.

She sat at the table, her long legs propped up on it, as she stared down at her book. She tried to read it, but the sound of the TV was too distracting. She glanced upwards, peering at the young girl who sat in front of the TV, silenced by her glued attention to the show that was playing.

Her eyes didn't want to go back to trying to read. They didn't even want to look at the TV. They stared staring at the girl who sat on the black couch, sitting with her legs folded and her elbow propped up on the arm of the couch.

August felt the woman's eyes burning into the back of her head. "Why are you staring?" she mumbled while her jaw rested in the palm of her hand.

Willow was startled, feeling like a deer caught in headlights. She bit her lip, trying to think of a clever response. "I was thinking about what you were writing in your journal today. Must have been dirty porn since you won't let me read it."

August twisted her waist around to look at the woman who avoided her stare, just gazing down at her book and pretending to read. "You never asked. You were too busy trying to dig through my fucking throat for hidden treasure." She scoffed, turning back around.

Willow's eyes flickered back to the girl as soon as she was turned around. Small hints of guilt picked at her chest, but she sighed them away. "Well, can I please read your dirty porn?"

"It's not—" August stopped, sighing deeply and knowing that she shouldn't get into an argument with the woman, as she would only be met with sarcastic comments and cut-downs. She was unsure about letting the woman read what she had written. She never let anybody read her journal, but the specific passage she wrote that day was not for Willow's eyes to read.

"C'mon, please. I won't make fun of you too much," Willow whined, noticing the hesitance in August's long pause.

With a sigh, August gave in. Maybe a part of her wanted the woman to read the passage—the reasons she kept locked away inside her, not wanting to face what they could possibly be.

Getting up, August went to the bedroom and picked her journal up out of her suitcase. She walked over to the table, journal in hand, and knocked Willow's feet off so she could sit in the chair in front of the woman. Willow playfully threaded her eyebrows at August's actions.

"You can only read the one I am showing you right now. If you turn any pages, I will lunge across this table and pluck you of your eyeballs," August warned. The tables had turned, because August was now the one giving commands and threats to the older woman who just sat looking at her with amused eyes as she slightly nodded.

With a sigh, August flipped through the pages until she found the one she had written earlier that day. "It's just a paragraph because some mentally ill looney interrupted me in quite a violent way," she spoke, handing Willow the journal. Discomfort rose within her as she let her entire mind in physical form be held in someone else's hands.

Willow chuckled, raising the book towards her face so she could read the tiny letters. "Why do you write so small?" she inquired, raising an eyebrow at August.

"At least my handwriting is readable," August countered, referring to the note Willow had left her on her nightstand.

Rolling her eyes, Willow didn't bother to return a remark as her eyes were hungry and curious for the words in front of her. For some reason, she was so anxious to get a peek inside August's mind.

Winter snow, hell's ice, they both melt together into one. The strike of Greek gods fades into lightning dancing with thunder, danger clouding the sky and power emanating from the Earth's shaking core. Pools of green constrict, shooting their daggers at me. They soften, like butter left out on a warm spring day. They turn to fire, burning from the inside out when their owner's defenses raise to an outside enemy. The enemy must hate the color green, because they always back down immediately. Pools of green rip my self-protection away and replace it with their own, even when the two hands strike me like the Greek gods in the dark sky. Even as my body falters, the green pools do not. They always look, always change, and always affect my faltered body as I lay on the floor, in the bed, forever haunted in my head by the cat's eyes since the very second they first perceived the rat, cornered and ensnared by both the four walls of the metal cage and the pools of green boring into its soul.

She was at a loss for words. The prose was beautiful, one of the most beautiful things she had ever read. But what stripped her of speaking was a thought that creeped into her head. She wanted to shove the thought away, tell herself she was being naive and stupid, but it made sense in her mind. The pools of green were her eyes. She was the cat, and August was the rat, their hotel room her cage.

Her eyes flickered up to August, who stared at her with an expectant look. The girl knew that the woman knew. There was no way she couldn't. It wasn't like she wanted the woman to put the pieces together and know for sure that the poem was about her and all the ways her eyes looked at her; she just wanted to put it in her mind.

For some reason, writing it out didn't completely quell the way it ate away at her—the way Willow ate away at her. She felt like showing the muse the art made about it could possibly relieve the feelings inside of her. She didn't know what the feelings were, she just knew that every time Willow's eyes landed on her, whether while she threw her to the floor or strangled her, or when they looked at her with concern or with a softness like they did at the spring and on the roof after Willow's anger had faded, no matter how Willow looked at her, August always felt a knot form in her stomach.

"It's beautiful," was all Willow could breathe out as she handed the book back to the girl who quietly thanked her.

She did think it was beautiful. She loved it. She wanted to read it over and over, but it scared her. It mortified her to her very core because as she looked at August who stared at her with her dark blue irises, she felt a knot form in her own stomach.

That knot was tangled and jumbled far beyond Willow's own comprehension. But nonetheless, she recognized the danger in how every time she looked at August her chest strained and her breathing hitched.

The cat was not supposed tofall for the rat.