by Jus Accardo
“I know he will. Dylan is smart, but he’s also obsessed with getting Ava back. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do now that it looks like he’s got her almost in reach.”
“What about G? Won’t he be arrested—or worse—as soon as we get there? If Dylan is as big a criminal there as you say, won’t they shoot first and ask questions later?”
“I’m going home ahead of you. I’ll give the general—Kori’s dad—a rundown of our plan and get Noah.” His gaze rested pointedly on me. I didn’t argue. We were out of time. “We will find Cora, and we will get her to my world. Dylan will follow.”
I nodded. “All right.”
Cade woke his chip, then hesitated, lifting his head so we were eye to eye. Another moment, and he held out his hand.
I took it and squeezed just once. “Be safe.”
A flicker of something flashed in his eyes, and his lip twitched, so slightly that it was barely noticeable. “You, too.”
With a few flicks of his finger, he was gone, and Sera and I were alone once more.
Chapter Seventeen
Sera
G wasn’t saying much, but I could tell the adrenaline they’d given him back at the hospital was wearing off. Every once in a while, when he thought I wasn’t looking, he’d cringe. His skin was pale, and his movements were stiff.
We’d traveled to Karl’s current PATH line, but after two hours of searching, the line went red, meaning he’d skipped to another version of Wells, and we moved on, hoping to have better luck in the next place. “How do you feel?”
“I’m fine, Sera.”
“We could do a dose of adrenaline if you want. It’s been—”
“I’m good.”
We’d walked the street for a little over an hour. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack. I didn’t know enough about Karl to make an educated guess as to where he’d go when arriving someplace new. We searched two of the town’s hotels and happened to get super lucky when we arrived at the third. Karl was registered—under his real name, which seemed careless. We’d gotten his room number and took the liberty of letting ourselves in to wait for his return. Apparently in this Wells, everyone was honest and trusting. None of the doors had locks.
Now we waited, and every once in a while, G glanced at me like there was something he wanted to say. After ten minutes, he cleared his throat. He flipped off the light by the bed and sank into the chair beside the dresser. “I’m not thrilled where this is all headed, but I want you to know I wouldn’t change what happened… Getting thrown in that cell, I mean.” He inhaled. “Cora put me through hell, but it was worth it. For me, at least.”
After having been through what we both had, would I change it if I had the chance? I got the impression that G knew more about my past than I did, but the glimpses I had been able to recall weren’t pretty.
There was a shadow over my memories, the few I retained. The nameless places and faces, the muddy situations and bits of conversation… The shadow was so dark, so crushing, that sometimes I was sure I didn’t want my memories back. Still, to have never lived through Cora’s torment and abuse? Was my old life worse than that?
The truth was, it didn’t matter.
“For me, too,” I said softly. I sank onto the edge of the bed a few feet from where he sat. Despite the horrible things that had happened to me since being torn from my home, I didn’t want to go back—for several reasons. I held up my arms, staring down at the twin scars on each wrist. “I don’t know what happened there, but home wasn’t a happy place for me. I think you know why that is. Why you won’t tell me—”
He stood and moved to step in front of me, taking both my hands in his. “Sera, I’m sorry. I—”
“Just answer one question.” He wouldn’t like it, but I had to know. “Tell me one thing, and I won’t ever ask you again.”
He didn’t answer, but he hadn’t moved, either. I traced over one of the scars. “These—I did these? I tried to hurt myself?”
“You did.”
“How do you know?”
He thought about it for a while, and just when I was sure he’d avoid it altogether, same as he always did, he said, “I remember more from my first days at Infinity than you do. I remember you telling me what you’d done.”
“Why?” My throat was thick, and the corners of my eyes stung. “Did I tell you why I did it?”
He shook his head. No words. Just a simple side-to-side motion that I was sure wasn’t a no, but a refusal to tell me.
“I wouldn’t have survived in there without you.” Heat rushed to my cheeks. “My time at Infinity was horrible, but you were there. If I skipped that, then, well, there’d be no you.”
“You might have had a Dylan back home.”
I shook my head again. “No. I couldn’t have.” I lifted my upturned wrists higher. “If I had a you where I came from, then I wouldn’t have done this.”
He pulled away and dropped his gaze to the floor. “Maybe I’m the reason you did that.” There was such heaviness in his tone. Such remorse. It was like he’d already been charged, put on trial, and declared guilty.
I laughed. “You’re the reason I didn’t do it back in Cora’s cell.” We’d talked about it. There’d been so many nights we’d debated the act. Broken and defeated, we’d come up with ways to do it. It’d been talk. A way to ease some of the misery and make it seem like we had a choice. Like there was some small fraction of our existence we could still control. But in the predawn hours, we’d each beg the other not to go through with it. “Stay and fight,” I would say to G, while he would tell me, “I can’t do it without you.”
“I believe we’re stronger together, G. I know you know that.”
“I’m stronger with you. You’re stronger without me.”
I stared at him. “How can you say that? How can you—”
He lifted his head and took a wide step away. “We’ve been over this. Nothing has changed.”
I wanted to hit him. “You stupid, stubborn ass!”
“Sounds about right.” His expression softened, and for a moment I was sure he’d reach out to me. But he didn’t. Actually, he took another step away. “If you could see the things inside my head, you would run the other way. No version of Wells would be far enough away from me, Sera.”
I glared at him. “I thought you knew me better than that.”
“I remember more than I told you,” he said. The guilt in his eyes was surpassed only by the pained expression on his face. “About before.”
“So?” I wasn’t angry at him. I wasn’t even hurt. If he remembered more and hadn’t told me, there must have been a reason. If he wasn’t telling me the truth about my scars, then I had to trust him. No. It wasn’t anger I felt, but concern. We’d been each other’s only lifeline in that hell. There’d been no reason to lie, because we never expected to get out alive. “Were you a serial killer? Did you slaughter hundreds of innocent people?”
“You’re not far off,” he said, grim.
I rolled my eyes. “G, there’s nothing you can say that will make me believe you were a serial killer.”
“Why not? Look at Dylan. Look at the blood on his hands. Look at all the things he’s done without thinking twice.” He rushed me, stopping a fraction of an inch from my face. “I am him. Never forget that.”
I pushed him hard and folded my arms. The chair beside the dresser wobbled, then tipped and fell to the floor with a clatter. “You are not Dylan. And you weren’t a serial killer.”
“I wasn’t,” he confessed. “But I was a soldier in an unnecessary war. I’ve got blood on my own hands—probably more than Dylan.”
This was what he’d been afraid to tell me? That’d he’d been a soldier? “War is bloody,” I said. “It’s violent and people get hurt. You can’t possibly—”
“I liked it, Sera.” He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, I saw the most intense self-loathing. It was crushing, the hatred I saw there. Deeper than the oceans and
wider than the entire sky. “I was in my element. I loved the violence of it. The rush it gave me… I was a good soldier. Obedient. I never disobeyed an order—even when I knew it was blatantly wrong. Immoral and cruel.”
I opened my mouth, but when no words came, I closed it and backed away another step. Not because I was afraid of him. I wasn’t. This changed nothing about my feelings…though maybe it should have. If he was right, and the memories weren’t distorted in some way—which I believed they were—that would make him more like Dylan than I cared to admit.
Correction: it would have made the old G more like Dylan.
When I found my voice, I said, “You’ve told me a hundred times. That was another life. One that’s come and gone. One neither of us will be able to go back to. Maybe you did like the war. Maybe the violence of it all gave you a rush. Maybe it didn’t… But either way, the person on that battlefield is gone. He’s still locked away in Cora’s basement, and he’s not ever getting out.”
“How can you look at me the same way after hearing what I just said?” His lips twisted, a disgusted scowl on his face.
“You’re flawed,” I said, giving in to the inevitable pull I felt for him. I stepped to him and pressed a single finger to his temple. “Things are a little jumbled in there.” I let the finger trail down the side of his face, moving slowly across his cheek and stopping at the corner of his lip. I felt him shudder beneath my touch, then I ran the tip of my finger ever so lightly along his bottom lip.
“Sera,” he warned, but didn’t move away.
“I don’t remember the day you arrived at Infinity.” The serum they used to try and wipe my memories hadn’t worked at first, and then when it started, almost everything from G’s first few weeks there faded. “I can’t recall the early days—but even without those memories, I always knew you were there for me. I might not be able to tell you what we talked about, but I know we talked.”
“We did.” His voice was unsteady, like he was trying to catch his breath.
They’d stopped giving me the serum about a month after G arrived. At least, that’s what his estimate was. “Even before we each stepped out of those cells, before I laid eyes on you, I knew you were special to me. Most people don’t go through what we did. But we survived it, and I don’t care what you say, we only got through it because we were together. I got through it because you gave me strength. You made me a survivor.”
…
“I can’t do this anymore.” I pulled my legs in close and wrapped my arms around them, making myself as small as I possibly could. Maybe they would overlook me next time they came down. Maybe they would forget I was here. It’d been a month now. I kept the wrapping paper from the straw they brought each morning. Sometimes, when I didn’t get a new one, I ripped an existing one in half. I needed it, to keep track of the time. It was the small bit of stability I had left to cling to. It only felt like a few weeks, but the boy in the cell next to mine, G, said I’d lost time. I lost memories.
“So your plan is to, what? Give up? Great idea.” G’s voice echoed down the hall. His cell was next to mine, but sometimes seemed like it was on the other end of the Earth.
“They’re going to kill us.”
He sighed. “Maybe. Maybe they are. But I have no intention of making it easy on them.”
“We don’t even know what they want from us.” So far, they hadn’t done anything horrible. At least not that I remembered. Blood tests and medical exams. It was the waiting that killed me. The uncertainty of what was to come.
“We don’t,” he confirmed. “But whatever it is, I’m not giving it to them—and neither are you.”
“How can you expect me to fight them?”
“How can you expect not to?” There was a rustling sound. “You are a survivor, Sera. You won’t roll over and die.”
“How can you say that?” I grabbed the bars and yanked violently. Of course, nothing happened, but it made me feel a little better. A little warmer. “You don’t know me. You don’t even know you.”
“Maybe I don’t know who we were—but I know who we are now. And who we are is two people who can deal with this. Together we can get through this. Together we will be strong enough. I will not let you give up. You’re made of steel, Sera. You might not see it yet, but you’re a fighter.”
…
I leaned my head closer to him, stopping just short of brushing my lips to his. He was so much stronger than he gave himself credit for. So much more…everything. I loved his flaws, but the depths of my admiration for his strengths, for the things he couldn’t—wouldn’t—see about himself? Those were boundless. “And if you think I’m going to let you get away from me, you’re crazy. After all we’ve both been through, we deserve each other. I will not let you give up.”
I was too close to him to see his reaction, but I felt it. His entire body stiffened, and both arms twitched at his sides. But he didn’t move. He wouldn’t. Not if he could help it. The thing about G—whether it was because of all the things Cora had done to him or because of his past as a soldier—was that he hated the feeling of being out of control.
A small part of me felt a pang of guilt as I pushed in and brushed my lips to his. Even smaller than that speck of guilt was the desire to stop. I could kill two birds with one stone.
I knew it was a bad idea. The desk clerk had said we’d just missed Karl, but that didn’t mean he’d be gone for long.
But I couldn’t stop myself.
“Sera,” he said again. He kept insisting he didn’t want this, but his eyes said otherwise. There was hunger there. A fierce need that, despite the situation and all the things that led to it, made me weak in the knees. “What are you doing?”
“Is your heart racing?” I placed my hand on his chest.
He swallowed and nodded once without speaking.
I rose onto my toes and leaned close, brushing my lips against his ear. “Do you feel the blood zipping through your veins?”
I felt him nod again.
My lips lingered for a moment, my warm breath tickling the side of his neck. “How do you feel?”
He stiffened and sighed. “That’s what this is about?”
I should have let him think that. If he thought that I was doing this to get him all worked up to save one of the precious doses of adrenaline we had, then I should have been more than fine with it. But I wasn’t.
“This is about proving something to you,” I said as I moved my lips down his neck. I barely grazed the skin. “If it offers a double reward, then I’ll mark that in the win column.”
“I’m not going to kiss you again.” The statement was crystal clear; it was the delivery that lacked conviction. “I’m poison. Inside and out.”
“Then poison me,” I said. I brushed my lips to his again, this time slightly harder. He stayed absolutely still. I pulled away. “Do it so that I can show you I won’t break. I’m not fragile, G. I’m made of steel. You told me that, remember? I’m a fighter, so let me fight for you.”
He stared for a moment before letting go of a growl. “You deserve… They made me a monster. There’s nothing gentle or kind left in me anymore.”
“First, I don’t believe that.” I gripped the hem of his T-shirt, hesitating for only a fraction of a second before lifting it up. Despite his protests, he moved his arms and allowed me to pull the material over his head. “Second, maybe I’m not interested in gentle…”
Chapter Eighteen
G
She let the shirt fall to the floor beside us. The sound it made was, in reality, barely there. A muted thud and nothing more. To my ears, though? It signaled the gates of hell being unlocked and pushed open wide in an earsplitting invitation for the demons to come out and play.
An involuntary growl escaped my lips as she pressed herself against me. I felt her breath on my chest, a scorching alarm that my control was in danger of slipping. My mind clouded, and my breathing quickened. She was right about one thing. The pain had ebbed, the newly released
adrenaline chasing it to the far reaches of my mind, even if for only a short period of time.
She ran her hands over my bare skin, fingers curling to let her nails graze the planes of my chest. The sensation was unlike anything I’d ever felt. No one had ever touched me like that. There was so much need, but also an unparalleled sense of connection. Sera’s fingers moved with not only lust, but something far deeper and more complex. Something I never expected anyone to feel for me. “Tell me you want me to stop…”
Yes.
“No,” I responded, my voice hoarse. If she stopped, I would break. I would crumble into a million pieces with no way to put myself back together again. “I don’t.”
“Tell me you don’t like how this feels.”
I don’t.
“I can’t.” The words came out harsh, the monster Cora created rabid and fighting to get his hands on her. But that thing would have to battle me. It was closer than it ever had been to overtaking me, but for the first time, I felt confident that I could beat it back. I was sure because I refused to taint her in that way.
“All I’m going to do is touch you, G. We’re not taking it any further than that. Not now.” Her hands continued to move, up and down my chest, caressing, playing with the lines and ridges that came from Cora’s mandatory gym sessions. Small circles and feather light skims, each touch bringing me closer to madness and peace all in the same instant. “You need to see that you’re not poison. Not to me.”
She was wrong. So very wrong.
“You can kiss me.” Hands still moving, slow and frustratingly high, she lifted her head to stare at me. “If you want…”
Perfectly pink lips parted, her body all but pleading for me to do it. I closed my eyes, remembering what she’d tasted like. No words came to mind, only a feeling of peace. Kissing Sera had been like coming up for air after suffocating. It’d been like uncurling my body and using all my muscles after being knotted up and chained in one position for what felt like decades. While I hadn’t told her the whole truth, I’d surely told her enough to send her running—and she was still here.