I was not the girl I’d been when Noah had met me. I was not even the girl I’d been before Horizons. I’ve been remade by what happened to me, by the things I’ve done. I’ve become someone new; I feel something, I do it. I want something, I take it. Maybe I haven’t changed to Noah but I have changed. He’d seen pictures, heard words, detailing my crimes, but he didn’t watch me commit them. Part of me was glad. There are some things the people you love should never see you do.
And I did love him. Whatever parts of me had been burned away by what I’d been through, what I’d done, that wasn’t one of them.
But Noah was like the Velveteen Rabbit. I would love his whiskers off, love him until he turned gray, until he lost shape. I would love him to death. And he would let me. Gladly.
I found him hiding out in a different guest bedroom. He had his duffel bag with him, the one Stella had rescued from Horizons after we left the morgue. He’d finished reading the letter from his mother, but he hadn’t come to find me. I wondered what she’d said to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
I stood in the doorway, unacknowledged. “Can I come in?” He was reading something, and he nodded over the edge of his book.
“What are you reading?” I asked, then sat on the bed. Whatever it was, he was almost done with it.
“The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.”
My book. He must have taken it with him to Horizons. I hadn’t even noticed it in his bag.
“Did you like it?”
“No.”
“No?”
“The editor never tells you whether the protagonist is mad or was pursued by the devil. He didn’t resolve anything.” Noah set the book down on the nightstand. I moved closer, until I could feel his heat.
We’d been exhausted the night before and had passed out without talking, and when I’d woken up this afternoon, Daniel and Jamie had been there with the Lukumi letters. We needed to talk about what had happened yesterday, last night, and what would happen tomorrow, but the words I needed to say to him wouldn’t come. All I wanted to think about was today. Tonight.
I was not sure I ever really believed that Noah was dead, but I wasn’t sure I really believed he was alive either. I still couldn’t quite adjust to the reality of him. There were shadows beneath his eyes, and his cheeks were rough with stubble. The fading afternoon light from the window behind the bed shone through his hair, turning the strands gold. I never wanted to stop looking at him. I wished I wouldn’t have to.
Maybe I don’t have to yet, I thought. There was so much to say, but maybe I didn’t have to say it now. Noah was alive. Here. Neither of us was in mortal danger. We were sitting next to each other in a bed. I wanted to reach out to him, but my hands stayed knotted in the sheets.
“I let you die,” Noah said casually. “In case you were wondering.”
I wasn’t wondering. “Because I begged you to.”
Noah hesitated before he asked, “Do you want to die?”
“No.” It was the truth. I would have, for my brothers, but I didn’t want that for myself. “Do you want to die?”
I knew the answer, but I asked the question anyway, because he’d asked me. Maybe he wanted to talk about it. Maybe we needed to.
“Yes,” he said.
“Tell me why.”
“I don’t have the words.” His voice was smooth, his expression unreadable, but I knew it masked how worthless he felt, how screwed up and damaged and wrong he thought he was. How he felt responsible for everyone, for me, and how it broke him that he hadn’t saved me.
I didn’t know what to say to him, so I asked, “Are you thinking about your father?”
His jaw tightened; it was the only sign that he’d heard me. After what seemed like forever, he said, “I’m never going back there.”
“To Miami?”
“Wherever he is, I won’t be. He’s dead to me.”
I wondered if that were really true. I hoped, selfishly, that it was.
I remembered the way his father had spoken to him. David Shaw was guilty of many crimes, and the way he’d treated Noah was one of them. I would make sure he suffered for all of them someday. He would be punished, somehow, the way he deserved, before he could hurt anyone else.
But one look at Noah told me this was not the time to mention it. “What about your sister?” I asked. “And Ruth?”
He stared blankly at the opposite wall. “I’ll figure something out, I suppose.”
“What will you do? If you don’t go home?”
He didn’t say anything, just shrugged. I had a bad feeling about where this conversation was going, and changed the subject in fear.
“What do you think about the letter?” I asked him, but he didn’t respond except to say, “I’m tired.”
He had shut down. I couldn’t blame him—he’d had less time to process things than the rest of us, and in a way he had even more to process.
We used to process things together. Before yesterday. Before Horizons.
It was like the life we’d lived before was in some alternate time line. There was something missing in both of us, and when we first met there, we found it in each other. But now, after, everything was different. We’d slipped out of that time line, and that life was lost to us. We were strangers to each other now. We weren’t even a foot apart, but it felt like a thousand miles.
Noah stood up, pulled back the covers and held them until I crawled under. I expected to feel him slide back into the bed behind me, to feel his arms wrap around my chest, my waist, to feel his legs tangle with mine. But he didn’t. He just gently tucked me in.
“Stay,” I said. He hesitated for a moment, but then stretched out next to me.
“I dreamed about you, while you were gone,” I said.
That smile appeared again on his lips, just for a moment.
“Was it good?”
“Yes,” I lied. “Yes, it was good.”
He closed his eyes, but I didn’t close mine.
“Noah?”
“Mara?” he asked, without opening them.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Anything?”
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t tell you. No secrets,” he said. His eyes opened, and he looked at me, finally. “I hope you know that.”
I hadn’t known that. I had never before asked what I was about to, because I’d never felt like I needed to hear his answer. But I needed to hear it now. “Do you love me?”
There was a pause before Noah spoke. He shifted in the bed and rested his hand on my cheek.
“Madly,” he said, and I felt the truth of it in the pressure of his hand.
But when he took it away, the feeling went with it.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
Hopelessly, I thought. “Madly,” I said.
He leaned over me, his long lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, and kissed my forehead. The words “I need you” left my mouth as soon as his lips touched my skin.
I had never said those words to anyone before, and I’d never imagined I would say them now, even—or especially—to him. But it was the truth, and I wanted him to know it, no matter what happened next. No one else would or could do what Noah had done for me. What he did for me even now.
“You have me,” he said back.
But then why did he feel so far away?
71
NOAH
THERE IS SOMETHING DIVINE ABOUT seeing my mother’s faded words incarnated in the girl beside me. Even while sleeping, she looks like a deadly goddess, an iron queen. Mara is anything but peaceful—even in repose she is a silky gray cloud, bright with the promise of lightning. I will not find peace with her. But there will be no greater passion.
She sleeps with her cheek on my chest as my fingers trace the blades of her shoulders below the sheets. I imagine wings cutting through her skin and unfolding around us, blanketing me in velvet darkness before I close my eyes.
But I startle in my sleep, as if I’d dreamed I was falling over and over and over again. I wake up remembering fragments of dreams; Mara bending to smell a flower, watching it die under her breath. Her stepping barefoot into the snow and watching it bleed red beneath her feet.
Her sleep seems untroubled, her breathing deep and even. Peaceful. How could everyone be so wrong about us? It is impossible that she could make me weak. Next to her, I feel invincible.
I don’t know what day it is, or what time; I left the hospital feeling like I could sleep forever, but now I’m restless, so I leave Mara in bed. I descend the stairs. Jamie and Daniel are nowhere to be found. The view beyond the windows is dark, though the sky is edged with gray. They must still be asleep.
I wander the house and end up in what appears to be an apartment converted to a music room. There’s a drum set, a keyboard, and a few guitars lying about, as well as a piano at the opposite end of the room, by the garden doors. I head for the piano and sit at the bench. I want to play, but I can’t think of any music.
“Is there anything you don’t play?”
Mara’s standing at the foot of the stairs. Blocking my exit, I notice.
“The triangle,” I respond.
She manages a smile. “We have to talk.”
“Do we,” I say. I’m caught, I think.
She holds something in her hand. I think it’s my letter, the one from my mother, and I tense, until I realize its hers.
“I don’t care about that,” I say, and mean it.
She shoves it into my face anyway. “Read it,” she says. “Please.”
I know the second I begin what it will say, and what will happen when I finish, and with every word my body slackens and I dissociate. We’re going to have the same fight again, but this time, for the first time, I feel like I deserve to lose.
I look up when I finish. “What do you want me to say?”
“You heard what your father said about us.”
“I’m not deaf.”
“And you read what the professor said.”
I narrow my eyes. “The professor?”
She blinks and gives an almost dreamy shake of that dark, curly head. “Lukumi, I mean.”
I hand the letter back to her. “I’m not illiterate.” I want to provoke her, to taunt her, to distract her so she doesn’t say what I know she’ll say next.
She says my name. It sounds like good-bye.
I want to tear up her letter, pull the words my father spoke, the words Lukumi wrote, out of her brain. Instead I get up from the bench and open the garden doors. It’s drizzling outside. I don’t care.
She would be right to leave me, after everything. But I’m a coward and can’t bear to hear it. She follows me out anyway, of course.
“I’ll love you to ruins,” she says, and my eyes close. “I get what it means now.”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say stupidly, because I can’t think of anything else.
“My ability negates yours. With me you’re—”
“Powerless, weak, et cetera. I know.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “It’s real, Noah. That you’ll die if we stay together.”
I don’t respond.
“You died already, once.”
So did you. “And yet, here I am.”
“I need you safe.”
“From what?” I ask.
She takes the bait. “Me.”
I face her then, armed with my argument. I have no defense for what I allowed to happen to her, what I did to her, so like the asshole I am, I go on offense instead. “You mean you want to protect me from yourself.”
“Yes.”
“The way my father was trying to protect me?”
A shadow passes over her face. “Fuck you.”
A thrill travels down my spine. She’s never said that to me before. “Good,” I say, and take a step toward her. “Get angry. It’s better than listening to you talk in that voice from hell about doing what’s best for me as if I’m a child. As if I don’t have a choice.” I should be screaming. I want to. But the voice that comes out of my mouth is dead and flat. “How could you treat me that way?” I ask, sensing an advantage. “Like him?”
Her nostrils flare. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“Tell me.”
But she doesn’t, so I speak instead. “I have a choice. I can walk away from you anytime I want,” I lie.
“Can you?” she asks. “Can you really?”
That’s when I know I’ve lost.
“Your father said—”
“Don’t ever begin a sentence with ‘Your father said.’ He’s nothing.”
Mara ignores me. “He said you can’t help but want me. That it’s like a side effect. I’m not a choice for you. I’m a—a compulsion.”
I shrug, as if the thought doesn’t wound me the way it wounds her. I don’t want to believe it. I can’t believe it. “I don’t believe anyone can help who they love.”
“What if you could?”
“I wouldn’t want to.”
She pauses, unsure. “Would you risk it, if you were me?”
I already did. “I trust you enough to let you make your decisions for yourself. I wouldn’t make them for you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says plainly.
“You keep hearing and believing that I’m going to die if we stay together. But when? Has your fortune-teller told you that?”
She is silent.
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t, but if I do, it isn’t because of destiny or fate—it’s because everyone dies someday. We get one life, Mara. You might live forever and I might die tomorrow, but right now we’re both here. And I want to spend the time I have with you.”
She looks up at me, and I can tell she’s going to say something mean. “You didn’t want to last night.”
“Wrong. I did want to. But considering I gave you a lethal injection not twenty-four hours ago, I thought you might not be in the mood.”
A smile flickers on her lips. I move closer. “I don’t know how to make you understand what you do to me. Just thinking about kissing you is enough. Feeling your tongue against mine. The way you taste. The sounds you make. Everything. I’ve wanted you so much, for so long, but in the way you want things you’ll never, ever have. Like no matter what I do, you’ll always be just out of reach. But when you kiss me? It’s like I’m on fire.”
Her breath catches, but I’m not quite sure why. Her face is unreadable.
“I want to touch every part of you,” I go on, because if I flinch now, it’s over. “I want to touch you now,” I say, and close the distance between us. I wrap a curl of her hair around my finger and give it a little tug. She shivers. “Maybe I didn’t have a choice in the beginning because I didn’t understand what I was choosing. But I do now. I know now. You are what happiness means to me. And I would rather have today with you than forever with anyone else.”
I can tell she wants to believe it, and I pray that she does, because I don’t think I can stand to lose her. I can’t let her go. Not yet. I take her face in my hands. “We will do this while we can, and when we can’t anymore, I will remember the feel of your mouth on me and the taste of your tongue and the weight of your hands on mine, and I will be happy.” I whisper against her skin, “If you choose me.”
72
THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WILL change you.
The words appeared in my mind, unbidden. I’d chosen Noah before, and I wanted to again, now that we both knew who and what we were. I didn’t care if it changed me. I did care about how it might change him.
“You make me happier than I deserve,” I said thickly. His touch, his scent, his everything was distracting me.
Noah smiled. “Then why do you look so sad?”
My hope for him, his mother’s hope for him, was that he would help create a better world. Without you, he can.
“I have no right to want you,” I said, unable to hide my bitterness.
“You have every right. It’s your choice. It’s ours. We don’t have to be what they want.”
But we were.
“We can live the lives we want.”
Could we?
Noah took off his necklace and held it out in his palm. He’d chosen. I closed my eyes and tried to remember his mother’s face, my grandmother’s words, but it was useless. All I could see was him.
I shook my head. “I tried so hard not to love you.”
“Well, you’re a failure, I’m sorry to say.” He kissed me on one cheek.
“No, you’re not.”
“No. I’m not.” He kissed the other.
“You know, when I met you, I thought you had everything. A perfect life.”
“Mmm.” My neck.
“I thought you were pretty perfect too.”
He stopped, went still. “And now what do you think?”
I didn’t answer at first. “You didn’t have what I thought you had. I think part of you must have always known how fragile your life really was, if you were willing to risk it for me.”
He shook his head. “You don’t get what you give me.”
I wanted him to say it. Needed him to say it. “Tell me.”
“It’s like you’re a mirror, and you show me who I want to be, instead of who I am.”
I closed my eyes.
“When I look at myself, I see nothing,” he said. “When you look at me? You see everything.” I felt his fingers in my hair, on my neck. “I need to be the person I am with you.”
“You’re that person all the time.”
Noah’s expression was uncharacteristically open. Earnest. He meant what he was saying. Believed it. “Maybe sometimes we can only see the truth about ourselves if someone shows us where to look.”
I didn’t need Noah to see the truth about myself—I found it on my own. But he needed me to see the truth about him.
“Maybe we are codependent,” he went on. “Maybe we are fucked up. Maybe I’m stupid and you’re trouble and both of us would be better off alone.”
“Maybe?”
He ignored me. “I don’t care. Do you?”
The list of what he would lose with me was longer than what I could give him. But no. I didn’t care.
The Retribution of Mara Dyer Page 28