Leaving forever. God, he can’t—I can’t—
He zips his little bag, and I feel the ground shift under me. He says, “If you want to do something for me, see if I can get enough head start. I won’t ask you to lie, but—”
“Don’t go,” I say.
“I should stay? Fight? What’s here for me now?”
“I don’t want you to go.”
He turns to meet my gaze. Maybe he see the tears starting. “Justine, you’ll be fine.” He touches my hair. “You’ll be fine. You are the bravest, best person I’ve ever known. I see that. I’ve always seen it.”
“I selfishly screwed things up for you.”
“No. The opposite. You’ve given me so much,” he says. “Things I thought I’d never have.”
I turn my face to his hand, grab it, and squeeze it, like if I keep his hand, he can’t leave.
He draws nearer, kisses the top of my head. I feel his warmth up and down me. “There was a time when all I could ever see was the way people were doomed to behave—their tendencies, their reactions to their own idiotic histories. Misery, delusions, compulsions, all of it. I would use that to control them. But you’re not like that. The way you look at people, the questions that you ask—you make me remember that people can be more than all that. You make me remember that nothing’s decided. Nothing’s known. That is what you gave me.”
Raw with feeling, I pull away, flattening his hand, warm between mine, and we look at each other—for how long, I don’t know. His eyes still look bleary, and he needs a shave, but everything about him feels new. I have this crazy sense that I know everything about him, and nothing about him at all, and it’s the most exciting thing in the world.
I think of Otto telling me the story of Riverside Elementary; of how I couldn’t stop thinking about Packard after; of how I wanted to run out of that hotel room and just come here and tell him—tell him what?
The words come to me at last, flooding into me with certainty. I love him.
He draws a thumb across my cheek, stops on my lips, stops me from smiling. “I thought maybe if I waited …” He breaks off, eyes bleak, then smiles strangely. “Just give me my lead time, okay?”
I sniff. I laugh into his bleary eyes. “I can’t.”
He knits his brows.
I grab his thumb. “You can’t get away from me.”
He searches my face, cheeks ruddy. “What?”
“You can’t get away from me, because I’m staying with you.”
In the silence that follows, I touch his chest with my open palm. The air seems to thicken, pick up charge. “You. I won’t let you go. I love you, Packard.”
He pulses out a breath, gaze fixed so hard on me, the sensation is nearly physical. “What?” he says again.
I smile. He’s an endless, dangerous person. Because I love him.
“Have I been crazy all this time?” I ask. “Because I think I have. Last night I felt so unhappy. All I could think of was you. All I can ever think about is you. Why am I always fighting it? Always fighting thinking about you, fighting this wonderful feeling about you. This aliveness. This love.” I look into his eyes and smile like a madwoman. “I love you!” I can’t stop saying it. “I love you. Love, love love.”
“Jesus,” he says, hands trembling along my waist. “Jesus!” And with a surge of feeling, he kisses me. “Jesus, Justine!” He kisses me all over—my lips, my face, my hair. He kisses me too fast to track—it’s just this flurry of him. I laugh. I will never be safe—not ever again. Because I love him too much.
He pulls away breathless. Bewildered. Maybe he doesn’t trust it.
“You,” I say, putting everything into that little word, putting my palm to his. “You.” I rip a little hole between us, just to be more with him. No darkness flows through, but somehow, we’re more together.
He grips my arms. I feel him so acutely now. “Justine,” he says, and I know he sees me, and he knows me, and I’m home. He pulls me tight to him, and I wrap my arms around him and squeeze. We’re squeezing feeling out of each other, and making the feeling as fast as we squeeze it out. “You know I love you, too,” he whispers. “You know that, right? For so fucking long, Justine.”
Hearing this, I feel like horses galloping in me. I realize that I did know—a secret, silent knowing that had always been there, but to hear him say it is magical.
I’m aware of my own breath coming bigger, harder. His heartbeat to my breast.
“It’s decided, then,” I say, smiling into his cheek, because it’s a crazy thing to say, and because our embrace is turning animal.
He grabs my hair, and he finds my lips and he kisses me. I push him and he backs up, and we’re against the hall wall, lost in each other.
Lost.
Home.
I smash into him; I want to touch him everywhere, devour him. His face is warm under my lips, hair soft against my cheek. I pull him hard to me, fingers pressed into his flesh.
I feel teeth on my earlobe. Butterflies in the pit of my stomach. The stone of his erection between my thighs.
Vaguely I come to my senses. “We have to get you away.”
“Fuck it,” he breathes, finding my lips. He pushes up my skirt, and we maul each other. Nothing matters but us. It’s like another entity is controlling us. A tidal wave, or a comet. Love.
“Come here.” He picks me up, legs wrapped around him and all, and carries me to the other end of the bathroom, where he sets me on smooth, cool marble. He has my leg in his arm, he’s nuzzling my neck, and I’m pulling him hard to me, sucking his lip, his tongue.
I’m ready to come before he even thinks to grab a condom from a bathroom drawer. I push my hands over his chest as he rolls it on, baffled and feverish, with the sense that we’ve left the whole world behind.
He hides his face as he penetrates me. He pushes into me and stays there, unmoving, and I grab his hair and pull him away to look at his eyes. They’re shining with tears. I kiss the tears off his coppery lashes, his lids and coppery lashes.
And then he holds my face and we fuck in a wet, blind, mad way.
Chapter
Twenty-five
“SO WHERE ARE WE GOING?” I ask, buttoning his shirt. His eyes gleam. He looks wild. Alive. He looks the way I feel.
“What do you think about Mexico?”
I gaze into his gleaming eyes, wanting to kiss them. And his nose. And his lips and cheeks. “The beach, perhaps?”
He tilts his head. “What do you think?”
When he was trapped in Mongolian Delites, he dreamed of sun and the ocean. It’s hard on highcaps to live outside of Midcity, but if Packard left, that’s where he’d go. “I think it sounds perfect. If you’re there.”
He helps me down from the counter, kisses my forehead. “There’s this old beach estate I’m in the process of buying. It belonged to a 1950s movie star—a central building and smaller estate homes. A place for any and all disillusionists to come and live. A few of them will join me later this month.”
“And zing you when they want.”
“Of course,” he says.
Packard’s the only one who can handle a zing. The only one whom it doesn’t affect.
“Or we can all finally get psychological help or shock therapy or something.”
“You might need psychological help after you see this place. It’s pink stucco. And very wild.”
I pick up his overnight bag and press it into his stomach. “I’m there.”
He takes it, and we just stare at each other, and I know I’ll never get enough of him.
I ask, “Will you be able to do it? Be cut off from Midcity?”
“I’ll make it work.” He touches my hair, then pulls away. “We have to go. I have to tie up some things. Hit the bank. We can’t be stupid.”
The boxes and books are gone from the dining room. Packard sticks the overnight bag in his suitcase and shuts it, then looks up.
“What?” I say.
He comes to me and
kisses me. There aren’t words.
A harrumph from the doorway. “Have you gone insane?”
Carter.
“She’s going with me,” Packard says, in a warning tone.
Carter very pointedly makes no reply. “Vesuvius found a trade for your car. Your new one’s a red Chevy. He’ll leave it at McGonah and Twenty-second within two hours. Keys on the front right tire if he’s not there.”
Packard turns to me. “Ready for a road trip?”
“In two hours?”
“Yeah, two hours,” Carter snaps. “Or do you want to slow him down even more?”
“Stop it,” Packard says. “Nobody’s slowing anyone down.”
“I’ll be outside.” Carter stomps off.
“That’s so fast. I have to pack, and I can’t not say good-bye to people. I don’t want to slow you down, Packard, but are you sure it’s so urgent?”
“It’s urgent.” He hoists his suitcase and takes a look around his place. A last look. “Come on.”
I follow him down the stairs.
Everything seems like a dream. “Don’t you think, when Otto comes to understand that he doesn’t need us to disillusion people, and that there’s nothing wrong with his head, don’t you think he’ll release you from the bargain?”
“Absolutely not. It’ll only inspire him to seal up more people, including me.”
“But you were trying to help rescue him from the Dorks.”
“Only to prevent his prisoners from running free—or being sealed up for eternity. He knows that.”
“Come on, don’t you think he’d be a little grateful—”
“No,” he says.
I laugh. “Packard.”
“It’s not a joke.” He turns to me at the bottom of the stairs. “I scuttled the deal. He’ll be looking to put me back inside. Don’t doubt me on this, Justine. I know him. I know people. You see the best in them. But I see how they really are.”
We emerge into the bright winter day, the sky a brilliant blue. Carter’s down the block, leaning against his car.
Packard tilts his face to the sun, eyes closed, cinnamon curls shining coppery. “I won’t die in that restaurant,” he says. “And there’s no more reason for me to stay in Midcity. Especially now.” He turns to me with a pleasant gaze, features soft. He looks more handsome, more kissable, lighter somehow. And then I get it. He’s happy.
Carter comes and takes Packard’s suitcase. Parsons will give me a ride to my place.
“Two hours,” Packard says. “McGonah and Twenty-second.”
“I’ll be there.”
Packard glances at the cars whizzing up and down the street. “Maybe we should stick together.” He comes to me and winds his fingers around mine. “We’ll get you everything you need.”
I put my finger to his lips. “I’ll be there. Let me pack up my life.” And then I kiss him.
I have Parsons drop me off at the end of the block, just in case reporters are around, and I enter the building from the back. Up in my place, I scan through with a laserlike focus. Passport, laptop, my most favorite shoes, boots, clothes, books and jewelry. My Victorian lady sleuth mystery. I don’t even bother to change out of my hospital handoffs.
Not fifteen minutes later, I’m driving over to Shelby’s with two suitcases in the back of my Jetta. My car, my place—I’m leaving everything, and it feels exactly right.
“Good-bye, Gumby,” I say, putting his arms upward. Happy Gumby.
I give her a call en route. Phone off. I try Avery and he answers on the first ring. “Yeah!” He sounds distraught, out of breath. Crashes and yelling in the background.
“Where are you?”
“Shelby?” he shouts over the din. “Is that you?”
“No, it’s Justine. Do you know where Shelby is?”
“With a target. Iceboating.” More crashes from his end. “Fuck! Justine, my factory! They’re destroying my place!”
“Who?”
“The cops! They tossed us out, and they’re smashing everything!”
“What? Since when? Who the hell ordered that?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
Avery’s factory is only a few blocks away. I do a U-turn. “I’m coming to get you. We’re going to talk to Otto.”
“What if he ordered it?”
“He didn’t,” I say. He’s sleeping, or at least he was an hour or two ago. Otto needs to understand that he’s alive because of Avery.
And more than that, I need to tell Otto good-bye. I’ll see Shelby and the other disillusionists later, but I won’t see Otto—possibly ever again. He deserves a personal good-bye. I’ll leave Packard out of it.
Grimly I think about Dad way out in the boonies. He deserves a good-bye, too, but there’s definitely no time to drive out there. Then it occurs to me that Packard would gladly stop by on the way out. I know that suddenly. I know him.
A distraught Avery hops into my car, hair sticking up every which way, dirt and oil covering his clothes. Breathlessly he describes the destruction. That factory’s his life.
“Otto will want to make this right,” I say.
I slam into a parking space reserved for somebody named Kendall Cantrell just a half block down from the hotel entrance. Let them tow me. We hop out and rush through the noontime crowd. We’re almost to the hotel entrance when I spy Otto walking out and heading in the opposite direction. He’s in his disguise—no cap and dark sunglasses—and his gait is slow, hunched, cast arm tucked under his big overcoat. Should he be out of bed?
“Hey!” I don’t say his name. I don’t have to.
He turns. “Justine!” He strides toward us, looking surprised. “Where were you?”
I rub my arms; it’s blustery here near the lakefront, with no buildings to block the wind. “I had some coffee in the lobby, went to see Packard, tried to find Shelby …”
He comes to me; I put up a hand as he comes in for a kiss. “Otto, you have to hear this. This is Avery, who owns the factory that makes the antihighcap glasses. It’s because of him that you’re free right now. Avery, tell Otto what’s happening.”
Otto isn’t looking at Avery; he’s looking at me. He knows something’s wrong.
“Avery saved your life by helping us, and now his life is being destroyed,” I say.
Finally, Otto addresses Avery. “I need to hear this,” he says gravely, looking up the street, mumbling something about reporters. “Come.” We cross the street at the light and head into the lakefront parklands. Smart. Nobody in their right mind would go strolling out there on a cold, windy day like today. It’ll be obvious if anybody follows us now.
We walk along the paved path, heading toward the lake, as Avery tells the story. Otto asks Avery questions. Did the cops show a warrant? Are they searching for something? As Avery describes the violence, the destruction, Otto pulls off his sunglasses and puts them in his jacket pocket; he’s looking at Avery, but he doesn’t seem to be listening. He shouldn’t be out of bed.
We pass Kotton Krazy, a little cotton-candy stand with a clown painted on the side. It’s shuttered for the winter.
The wind blows stronger as we near the shore, and I pull my hoodie hood up and push my sleeves down over my hands, looking all around. “I don’t see any reporters,” I say.
“Good,” Otto says.
We stop beside the jumbled rows of boulders, the size of monster truck tires. Otto places a foot on a boulder and glances at me, a question in his eyes. Beyond him, more boulders, and then the waves, whipping up into whitecaps. I pull the strings of my hoodie hood tight, wishing I’d grabbed a proper coat, but who needs a coat in Mexico?
Again I remind him that if it wasn’t for the list Avery gave us, the Dorks would still have him.
“I’m grateful,” Otto says, not even looking at Avery.
“And now he’s in trouble because he helped us, Otto. He’s a friend to the highcaps. Can’t you call somebody? Call off the raid? The city needs to make this right.” The wind blow
s clear through my skirt.
“Justine—” He turns to Avery. “I need a moment.”
Avery shoves his hands into his pockets and walks over to a nearby picnic table.
Otto fixes me with a deep, tender gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“Otto, Avery’s factory—”
“No, us. What’s going on? Last night I thought it was just the events, but then today …”
I shake my head. “Otto—”
He looks at me, eyes dark, hair whipping in the wind.
I put a hand on his arm.
He shakes me off. “What’s going on?”
“I can’t be with you.”
“What? Of course you can. We belong together.”
I say, “I think we depend on each other for solace and we confuse that with affection.”
“I never confuse it with affection,” he says. “Neither do you. You fought to find me. You risked your life.”
“And I’d do it again, but it’s not love, and it can’t be.”
He dips his head, like he’s not quite seeing me right, not quite hearing me right. “Is this because of what I told you? What I did to the Goyces?”
“It has nothing to do with that. It’s just things I realized today. I realized I’ve been making my decisions out of fear. And …”
He stills, eyes glazed. “No—” He seems so far away, suddenly. Like a stranger. “It’s Packard.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Packard did this.”
“I did it,” I say. “I realized it. I saw him … that’s all.”
“You’re confused. You shouldn’t make decisions after what you’ve been through.”
“Otto, I’m clear for the first time.”
Otto’s eyes look distant, as though his thoughts are spinning far away. The wind whips his hair against the side of his face, his mouth, and he lets it. He’s starting to make me feel nervous.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You’re telling me that you went to see him this morning, and all at once you realized …”
“Yes.”
He casts a dour glance at Avery, who’s huddled on the bench.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
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