Chapter 101 Hang On
“Shut up, shut up.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Don’t say anything, Zion, shut up for God’s sake!”
Molly had pressed herself against the far pillar with the towel gripped in both fists at her chest, she was trying so hard not to look at Zion. She wouldn’t look at him and she was not going to think about the last ten minutes of her life.
Who was she kidding, she was thinking about all of it.
Her face was still hot. It had been hot since she'd landed on his lap and she had determined through the following minutes that the heat was not going away on its own, she was simply going to have to wait it out, however long that took, preferably in a different country.
She glanced at him and saw a half grin on his face, he was also trying not to look at her.
She had seen the way he'd looked at her earlier. She had been half asleep, and she saw the expression on his face when she stood up from the mat. She replayed it against her will and her face got hotter.
She was gripping the towel tight enough that her knuckles ached.
Across the gymnasium Zion had gotten up on his feet, his wrists free from the bindings he had completely loosened, he was rolling one shoulder and looking at the high windows. Molly was very deliberately not watching him do this.
She heard him go still.
His left ear moved. She noticed it in her peripheral vision and then looked because it was involuntary and strange, it was a very small movement, she internally smacked herself for being able to see it meaning she had been watching him when she clearly willed herself not to.
Zion tilted his head slightly to the left as he crossed his arm, “What day of the week is it?" he said. He was already looking toward the gymnasium doors.
Molly frowned. "Why?"
His eyes immediately snapped to hers and she had to swallow, because he was suddenly looking serious. “What day, Molly?"
"Friday. I think. Why are you—"
"Friday." He gave a short laugh of disbelief then put his hands on his waist, he glanced at her, cursed under his breath, and then turned to her fully. "Friday is a school day." He deadpanned.
Molly stared at him.
He looked at her.
She looked at the gymnasium doors.
"People are coming," she said.
"Yes."
"I'm in a towel."
He glanced at it, his grin slowly returning, “I know."
"I'm in a towel and you're—" she looked at him, "you're fine, you look completely normal, and I'm in a towel in the school gymnasium and there are two—" she looked at Enzo against the pillar, still unconscious, wrapped in jump ropes with a length of one around his face. "There's a tied-up person—"
"We're leaving," Zion said. He crossed the gymnasium in the direction of the vent where her clothes were. Her clothes which were damp from the river and unwearable and she had known this since two in the morning but had not had a solution to it.
He crouched and checked her jeans and her top and confirmed what she already knew without saying it, he couldn’t let her wear this, she would catch a cold. He straightened and turned to look at her about to speak, but he stopped short.
Because, in front of him was a very still Molly, “…in the school gym, half— naked… with two men…”
“Hey,” he took a step towards her.
Molly didn’t hear him, she still stood at a spot staring in the distance, “…my reputation, it isn’t stellar but my reputation still… oh my God. I can already hear the names. I don’t even look good, there would be pictures, this would feed the school’s gossip for years…”
Zion shrugged off his jacket and walked to her, grabbed her shoulder, and slowly shaking her. “Hey, earth to Molly.”
He kept shaking her till she finally looked at him, “What? What?”
Zion looked down at her and at the jacket in his hand making an assessment. It was a good jacket, the kind that reached mid-thigh on him, which meant it would reach further on her, he held it up and then, with the matter-of-factness of someone who had decided that embarrassment was a luxury they didn't have time for, draped it over her head. Not her shoulders. Over her head, so the fabric hung down around her face like a tent.
"Get your underwear on," he said from somewhere outside the jacket.
"My underwear is damp," she said from inside it.
"Damp is better than nothing."
“It would feel cold, not to mention uncomfortable.”
“It’s still better than nothing. Hurry, Molly.”
She could not argue with this. She found the underwear by feel, still damp from the river, and got into it with the specific difficulty of putting on wet clothing in a hurry with a jacket over her head while trying to maintain the towel and not fall over. It took longer than it should have.
"Done," she said.
He settled the jacket properly onto her shoulders and she pulled her arms through and it came to mid-thigh on her and covered everything that needed covering. She flipped her hair out from the collar and looked up.
From outside the gymnasium doors, the sound of keys.
Someone was working the lock.
The sound hit her like cold water and she whimpered in panic, and Zion wouldn’t admit it, but that sound did something unholy to him. He turned and looked at the doors and then at the high windows along the upper wall of the gymnasium, and he made a decision in approximately one second.
He came back to her and picked her up.
She gasped, a sharp involuntary sound, both at the suddenness and at the sound of the key finding the lock, and her arms went around his neck before she'd decided to put them there. He had one arm under her knees and one at her back and he was already moving toward the wall below the windows, she pressed her face into his shoulder because the jacket was not fully covering everything and she was not going to think about the fact that she was being carried by Zion with her face buried in his neck.
“And Enzo?” Came her muffled voice.
“We’re leaving him.”