It feels like Alex is not putting any distance between them. It feels like Strand’s yard is as big as Seattle is somehow. She’s breathing hard, and Alex’s heart is racing in a pattern that she can hear in her ears as almost an undercurrent, a soundtrack to the fight that Richard and the Demon are having.

Richard and Azazel are having. Coralee was able to bring Richard back, Charlie had said to her. She was able to get him to stop and to be himself. Maybe that’s what was happening right now.

Maybe he was...

But the words are twisting at her heart. They’re like a bear trap that captures her, and Alex can’t run anymore, she can’t move forward despite the fact that her fight or flight responses are triggered so severely.

Richard is sobbing. He’s sobbing and each sound is tearing at her heart even more than the trees as torn at her skin and her clothing. Something inside of her head that is entirely Nic Silver is trying to get her to keep running. ‘It’s probably a trick.’ Alex knows that it’s probably a trick. She’s not an idiot.

She’s not.

But.

“Shit.” Alex just breathes the word slowly and she approaches the clearing where Richard is curled up. He looks like a child, and Alex can’t help but to think of what the Demon and Wayne Coates had said about him. What Cheryl had said about him and how he had protected her when she was young.

And Alex can’t help but to think of the Strand that she flirted with and that flirted with her, the huffy laugh that almost seemed to belong to her exclusively and how she had flirted back.

How she loved him.

Letting out a shaky breath, Alex just reaches out and rests her hand against his cheek.