“Who—Alice?” I guessed, hating that I could hear the bitterness in my own voice.
“Yeah, ’cause some reporter is the first person I’m gonna tell after finding out my brother is a Red,” he shot back. “Vida. When I asked her where you were.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” I said. I hadn’t realized until that moment, hearing those two words leave my mouth, how carefully I’d managed to balance on the tip of a needle. But it was like every ounce of strength I’d had left just…slipped away. I felt myself take another step, and my knees went out from under me as I dropped to the ground. I couldn’t find the words I needed, couldn’t put them together. I pressed my hands against my face, crying, beyond caring. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
I heard him come toward me, saw between my fingers as he lowered himself to the ground a short distance away and leaned back against the table. He rested his arms over his knees, letting his swollen right hand hang out in the air. He didn’t say anything at all, waiting for me to finish, or waiting for something in himself; I didn’t know.
“He said he made you swear on your life not to tell me,” he said, his voice hoarse. “That I should blame him, not you.”
“Yeah, but I could have told you anyway,” I said quietly.
“But you didn’t.”
“I didn’t.”
He let out a sound of frustration, running his hands back through his hair. “Ruby…can you at least help me understand why? I’m…I want to understand. This is killing me. I don’t get why no one…why neither of you even tried.”
“It’s because…I know what it feels like to…” I struggled for the right words, but every time it felt like I had a grip on them, they slipped away. “It’s different for us—for him and me. The dangerous ones. I know you don’t want to hear that, I’m sorry, but it’s true. I saw it in the way the PSFs treated the Orange and Red kids at Thurmond, I saw it in how hard Zu struggled to learn to control her abilities, and I see it in the face of every kid I talk to. So I knew exactly why Cole didn’t tell you or your parents. I lived with the fear of being found out, and so did he. First with your family, and then with the League.”
“No one in the League had any idea?” Liam asked in disbelief.
“Three people knew,” I said. “Alban, Cate, me. That’s it.”
He released a harsh breath, shaking his head.
“I wish I was better at this—at explaining. I just kept thinking about how I had to keep my own secret for so long. Six years. And then just like that, in a matter of seconds, I had to show you all what I was to get us away from that woman. It was somehow the hardest and easiest decision I’ve ever made, because it meant you would all be safe, but I was so sure it would be over and I’d lose the three of you because you knew.”
“You…in the woods, after the skip tracer tried to take us in,” he said, fitting the right memory together, “when you thought we were going to leave you behind.”
“Yes.” There was a sharp ache in my chest as I said, “But you talked to me, you told me that you all wanted me. You can’t know what that feels like after…after being alone inside of your head for so long. It changed my life. And I know it sounds stupid, but I think part of me felt like I could be that for him. I could help him get to the point where he wasn’t so damn ashamed of what he was, make him feel comfortable about being one of us so he wouldn’t be so alone. It didn’t seem right, you know? He’s still trapped in this in-between space. Not one of us, but not one of the adults.”
“That was by choice,” Liam said. “He could have told us.”
“Did you see how half of the kids reacted when he brought up the Red camp? Olivia? Brett? He didn’t think, Oh, but I’ve proven the stories wrong; he thought, They’ll hate me, they’ll be afraid of me, they’ll never be able to look me in the eye again.”
Liam looked down at his hands again. “Do you still think those things?”
“It comes and goes,” I said quietly. “Sometimes. When I’m with you, I feel like I’m…like a beam of sunlight, you know? You chase the bad things away. With Cole, he understood the dark I could never shake. I used to think he was the kind of person that wasn’t afraid of anything, but he’s scared of his own shadow, Liam. I don’t think I understood until tonight just how scared he was of you really seeing him.”
“But that’s so unfair,” Liam said, his voice strained with a second wave of anger. “I know it’s not right, but I hate him for thinking that me and Mom and Harry—that any of these kids who basically worship the ground he walks on—would love him less. I wish he’d trusted us. He could have had support in this. Nothing’s changed for me.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” he repeated vehemently. “Except now I know he wasn’t lighting my toys on fire with matches to be a jerk. I guess that’s something.”
“He couldn’t control it,” I said. “He still struggles with it.”
Liam didn’t look convinced. “By the little demonstration he gave me, you’d never know that.”
“He does,” I insisted. “It depends on the situation.” Like when he’s terrified you’ve been hurt, or you’re dead.
“But if you can learn control, so can he, right?”
“Learning control doesn’t mean people trust you to make good choices, does it?” I felt my voice break halfway through the question, and I immediately regretted having brought it up.
“What are you…oh—you—” Liam’s brows drew together sharply; I watched the anger deflate, and dull shock swept in to take its place. “You found…my note? Ruby, why didn’t you say anything?”
“What could I say? You were right not to trust me. Look at where trusting me before got you.”
“No! Dammit, I should never have written the stupid thing, but I was so sure he would make me leave. That he would convince you I had to leave.” I pulled back, not wanting to hear the explanation, not when the pain still felt as fresh as it had that night. He didn’t let me go. Liam turned to face me fully, and for the first time in what felt like years, touched me, taking my shoulder—or trying to. The moment he flexed his hand he winced. “Ow, dammit—”
“Let me see it.” I took his hand carefully between mine, examining it. The touch was enough to drive my pulse back up, to spark a charge under my skin again. His eyes moved over me; I felt it like a second, sweet touch, and I wondered if he had missed this too, if he’d looked at me and felt the warmth pooling at his center. The need.
He’d broken the skin over his knuckles when he’d struck the wall, but the bleeding had already stopped, and the swelling and bruising had begun. I probed the delicate bones carefully, letting my loose braid fall over my shoulder. His other hand reached for it, took it between his fingers, and ran down its length. I caught my breath as he brushed against my collarbone. Closed my eyes. I felt the warmth around us shift as he leaned toward me, ran his finger along that ridge of exposed skin. I didn’t deserve the tenderness, but it had been so long, and I wanted him too badly to care.
I raised the hand between mine and pressed my lips against the torn knuckles. He closed his eyes and shuddered.
“Not broken,” I whispered against his skin. “Just bruised.”
“What about us?”
The question filled me with equal parts hope and fear. “I can’t forget, can you?”
“Does that matter, though?” he asked. “I don’t want to forget. There’s so much behind us, it’s true, but does it matter if we’re going the same way forward? The past few days have been hell. I see your face and it’s like—I wish—I wish I had never written that stupid note. I wish I had told you about Alice. I just wanted to feel something other than useless. I wanted you to see something good in me.”
“Liam—” My breath hitched. “I’ve never seen anything else. I want so much to have a real life. To be someone who can go home and be with her family again. I thought that I could fix myself and be the kind of person who deserves someone like you. Someone who deserves Z
u, Chubs, Vida, Jude, Nico, Cate. I thought I could fix myself with the cure. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to be done with this. But now, I just want to be kinder to myself. I don’t want anyone to implant anything in my head, or mess with who I am. When all of this is over, however long it takes, I won’t ever have to use my abilities again. But for now I have to, and I have to trust myself to do right by everyone. Tell me what I have to do, to earn the right to have you in my life, and I’ll do it—I’ll do anything—”
Liam’s hand slid up my hair to brush my cheek. Relief, pure and beautiful, bloomed in me as his mouth covered mine. When he pulled back, he watched my reaction carefully. When I offered a small smile, he kissed me again, and my last reservations fell away, shattering. I deepened the kiss, trying to leave him as breathless as I felt.
He pulled back, his face flushed, eyes bright. I knew the look on his face mirrored mine. My whole body was trembling, desperate to continue, to chase the fierce love I felt for him. Carefully avoiding his bad hand, Liam shifted onto his knees and started to rise from the floor, reaching down to help me do the same. He startled suddenly as he caught something at the edge of his vision.
“What is this?” he asked, taking a step closer to the printout taped up to the wall.
“That’s Thurmond,” I said. “Harry was able to work some contact in the government to get the image.”
Liam turned toward me slowly. “That’s…all Thurmond?”
I stepped up next to him, leaning against his shoulder. “Control Tower, Infirmary, Mess Hall, Factory…I labeled them, see?”
He nodded, silent. “Where did you live?”
I reached past where he was standing to one of dozens of tiny brown structures circling the imposing brick tower. “Cabin Twenty-seven, right here.”
“Ruby, this is…all the times you told me about the camp, I knew it was big, but not like…this.” He shook his head, muttering something I couldn’t quite hear under his breath. When he turned to me again, Liam looked stricken.
“Do you see now?” I asked. “If we hit Thurmond, it has to be an assault. It would take hundreds of civilians to overwhelm the PSFs, and that’s only if they can get through the gate. But I like what you guys are trying to do—I think we need to merge the plans. Focus the media blast on Thurmond and release the information in conjunction with the attack. We can use it as an opportunity to set up a meeting point for parents to pick up their kids once we have them out.”
“But someone has to go in and install a program to disable the security system first,” he said. “It’s exactly what I thought. You want to go in.”
“I have to,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” he said sharply. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting you do that! Promise me that when I get back we can sit down and talk that part of the plan through, too. Ruby, please.” He looked so devastated at just the idea of it, I heard myself agree. We could talk, but it wouldn’t change anything. It had to be this way.
He squeezed my hand. “I’m such an idiot…I really thought he only brought Harry into this to get at me. But it’s because he would actually be able to handle this kind of operation.”
“He really wants to be part of it,” I told him.
“Who—Harry? You talked to Harry?”
“Just for a second,” I said. “He told me that they found Cate and the others and extracted them from their prison.”
Liam gave a faint laugh. “Of course. Action Hero Harry. You should meet Sports Fan Harry, Master Chef Harry, and Mechanic Harry. The guy does nothing by half measures.”
I leaned against his shoulder again, trying to block out the memory I’d seen in Cole’s mind with something easier to stomach. “How did he and your mom even meet? I never thought to ask…”
“Oh, God, it’s almost repulsively romantic,” Liam said. “So, when Mom finally left…when she left her old life and took us with her, she drove straight through the night, just to put enough distance between us and the place. The car broke down in North Carolina. Harry was just coming back from his last tour of duty abroad and saw her screaming at the old Toyota, banging on the hood, everything. He pulled over and offered to take a look, and when it was clear she needed new parts, he drove us all to his mother’s place, who took one look at Mom and immediately adopted her in everything but the legal sense. And we stayed with them a week. I’m pretty sure that was the slowest repair of Harry’s life. He was coming home to open a mechanic garage. I didn’t mention that, did I? So he was determined that she’d be his first customer, and that she should let him do it for free, as a good-luck charm for the business. Kept lying about not being able to get a part in, the rascal, just to prolong the visit enough. It gave Mom time to find a job, and a sweet little place for us to live. They didn’t date until three years later. She just…wasn’t ready to move on with that part of her life until then. And after that they were just ridiculous.”
“Wow,” I said. “The luck of that. If she had taken a different road, or he’d come in an hour earlier or later.”
“Well…” Liam ducked his head a bit. “It’s kind of the same for us…right? Maybe I’ve never told you this, but it was total dumb luck we were in West Virginia at all that day that we found you. I was doing everything in my power to avoid having to drive through it.”
“Because of your father?” I ventured.
“Ah. So Cole told you the basics?” He waited for me to nod before continuing. “It’s like the whole state has this dark cloud wrapped around it. I feel really damn lucky I don’t remember life pre-Harry, because from what little Mom and Cole have told me, it was actually hell. I knew enough as a kid—a little kid, I mean—to be scared of the state and the man who lived there. That’s how my mom still refers to that part of our lives. In West Virginia this, or the West Virginia house that, that kind of thing. Cole told me once when I wouldn’t leave him alone that if I was bad, the man was going to come take me away.” He grimaced. “I know that man is still there, and that he’s alive. I had this fear, and I know it’s irrational because Chubs has told me it is a million times. Right up until I turned eighteen, I had this fear that if I went back to that place, he’d find me and force me to stay.”
“Why were you there, then?” I asked. Liam was a skilled enough navigator to have brought them around the state.
“Because that skip tracer, Lady Jane—she was running us to ground. I just wanted to lose her. And there was this moment I was driving along, and I saw the name of our old town, and it was just like…closing a circle I didn’t realized we’d left open. Because that time I had the ability to get myself out of there, I knew I could fight him and win if I had to, and Mom and Cole were safe. Driving by that last time, it’s like I stole back that last bit of control he had over my life. But it took going back to know that. I don’t know if I ever would have believed it could be that way, if I hadn’t been in that car with all of you.”
He felt my hand shaking and brought it up to lay flat against his chest, where I could feel his heart thundering against his ribs. “What I’m trying to get at is, as bad as everything seems, I think, at its heart, life is good. It doesn’t throw anything at us that it knows we can’t handle—and, even if it takes its time, it turns everything right side up again. I want this to be over for you, so, so much. I want to go to Thurmond and get those poor kids out so you can close your own circle. If nothing else, if this explodes in our faces, then I want you to know that I love you and nothing will ever change that.”
“I love you, too.” I flushed at his grin, wondering at how good it felt to say the words. I love you. I love you. I love you.
“Yeah?” he said. “The ol’ Stewart charm finally wear you down?”
I laughed. “Guess so. You had your work cut out for you.”
“Don’t I know it.”
The door opened again, and I leaned out of his grasp, craning my neck just as Nico came in. He startled at the sight of the two of us. “Oh—I’m—you’re—”
&nbs
p; “Hey,” I said.
“I…forgot I had something. To do, I mean,” Nico said, rocking back on his heels. “But if you were going to stay I’ll…figure it out.”
“Nah,” Liam said, looking at me. “I think we’re done here…?”
“All yours,” I confirmed. “But try to get some sleep, okay?”
Nico nodded absently. I lingered a moment more in the doorway, watching as he went to his station and the light from the monitor washed him in a blue-white glow.
Liam tugged my hand toward the other hall, the stairs, the bunk rooms. I turned and tugged him in the opposite direction, toward the senior quarters and Cate’s empty room. The small smile on his face made me feel a little dizzy, the good kind of dizzy. One hand began to stroke down my spine softly, sparking an entirely different feeling low in my stomach.
I stood on my toes, taking his face in my hands. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark form come out of a nearby room—the little treatment room that had been set up. Liam turned toward it as the door squeaked shut and the person—Chubs—looked up, down, then back up again as his brain processed the moment.
“Oh, there you are,” Liam said, clearly missing the way Chubs’s nostrils flared and his eyes went wide behind his glasses. “We were wondering where you’d gotten off to.”
“I was just—building some shelves, for the—uh, the supplies and books in the medical, uh, room,” Chubs said, glancing between us, the door, and back over his shoulder, literally looking for an escape route.
“Did you build them all?” I asked, noticing for the first time that his shirt was buttoned incorrectly. I started toward the door, trying not to laugh as a look like death came over Chubs’s face. “We’re happy to help you—”
Liam finally caught on, an eyebrow slowly arching up, up, up…
“Nope, no—I mean, I lost a screw and had to stop—where were you going? I’ll go with you—”
“Are you okay?” Liam asked. “You’re acting all twitchy.”
“Fine, totally.” Chubs pushed the glasses Vida had made for him up the bridge of his nose, then looked down at his shirt. Without warning, he snatched my arm and started pulling me down the hall. “How are you? Are you guys okay now? Spare no details. We’ll—”
In the Afterlight (Bonus Content) Page 36