Exist Once More

by Trisha Leigh

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Also By Trisha Leigh

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Thank You!

  Also By Trisha Leigh

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright 2016 by Trisha Leigh

  Cover Design by Nathalia Suellen

  Copyediting: Shannon Page

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used factiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Also By TRISHA LEIGH

  THE LAST YEAR

  Whispers in Autumn

  Winter Omens

  Betrayals in Spring

  Summer Ruins

  THE CAVY FILES

  Gypsy

  Alliance

  Buried

  THE HISTORIANS

  Return Once More

  Exist Once More

  Adult Novels Written By

  LYLA PAYNE

  WHITMAN UNIVERSITY

  Broken at Love

  By Referral Only

  Be My Downfall

  Staying On Top

  Living the Dream

  Going for Broke (published in Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology)

  LOWCOUNTRY MYSTERIES

  Not Quite Dead

  Not Quite Cold

  Not Quite True

  Quite Curious

  Not Quite Gone

  Quite Precarious

  Not Quite Right

  Not Quite Mine

  Not Quite Alive

  Not Quite Free (January 10, 2017)

  THE PIACERE PRINCES

  The Playboy Prince

  A Royal Wedding

  The Dutiful Prince (January 27, 2017)

  The Crooked Prince

  Mistletoe & Mr. Right

  Sleigh Bells & Second Chances

  SECRETS DON’T MAKE FRIENDS

  Secrets Don’t Make Friends

  Secrets Don’t Make Survivors

  Secrets Don’t Make Lovers (2017)

  For the readers who loved Kaia’s story enough to demand a conclusion - this one’s for you.

  Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.

  Erich Fromm

  Chapter One

  Sanchi, Amalgam of Genesis - 51 N.E. (New Era)

  Observe. Record. Reflect.

  The motto of my Academy, the Historian Academy, had governed my every move since the Elders had exiled my parents last semester. Today, not even Maude Gatling had been able to find a single thing wrong with my final Reflection file on our recent trip to witness the last days of a cathedral being built in the Middle Ages. The positive feedback surrounded me with calm waters. After the storms—hurricanes, really—last year, the peace should have made me happy. It should have given me hope that my steady, robotic behavior would earn my parents release from the penal planet of Cryon, or somehow bring my best friend Analeigh back from space.

  Maybe even without a death sentence hanging over her head.

  No matter how I followed every last rule, neither of those dreams came true. Instead, I felt like a stranger in my own skin. Worse than that, with what I had learned about our own Elders, about how they were making changes to the past that could endanger our very existence, saying nothing—pretending everything was fine—felt more like betrayal than anything else.

  The citizens of Genesis didn’t know, but I knew. And not being able to act without putting my parents in more danger grated on my conscience. My limbs itched with the desire to do something, to break out of these uncomfortable, tight bonds that stopped me from trying to…I didn’t know what. Anything, really.

  Don’t even think about it, Kaia. You know your parents can’t afford one single screwup on your part.

  I made a face at the mutterings from my own mind. The Elders were counting on the threat toward my parents’ lives to keep me silent, and so far it had worked. But that didn’t stop me from wondering, every day, whether I should continue to let it.

  And it didn’t stop me from feeling as if by doing nothing, I was letting people down. First and foremost, my sweet Caesarion Caesar, who was willing to go to his own death to do the right thing for his people.

  What about my people? The people of Genesis, who had no idea the Elders were playing fast and loose with their lives?

  I bit my lip as I hurried toward my room, desperate for a hot shower and to turn out the lights, but the sounds of an argument in my room stopped me in my tracks.

  “Why are you even still here? You don’t have to pretend to like me anymore!” My roommate Sarah’s voice, uncharacteristically shrill, barreled through the door to our shared room and banged down the hall.

  My heart sank at the noise. My palm pressed into the cold, metal wall.

  From the time we all entered the Academy at age ten, my room had been a sanctuary. A space I shared with my two best friends, the one spot that felt like home right from the beginning. But with Analeigh gone and Sarah still pissed at me for “stealing her boyfriend”—even though that was a bit of an oversimplification and not true, besides—no place felt safe or right. Our class had been made up of the same seven people since we entered, so it wasn’t as though we’d be getting a new roommate or I’d be able to make a new best friend even if Analeigh was replaceable. Which she wasn’t.

  After everything that happened, I had no home left but the Academy. And the Elders made it so I didn’t belong here, either, not anymore. I hated them for taking that away almost as much as I hated them for banishing my parents in my place.

  “I’m not pretending to like you,” Oz, Sarah’s boyfriend, replied.

  His voice was thin and exhausted, but I pushed aside a knee-jerk response of concern. It was his own stupid fault for asking for his True Companion card on his last birthday. I doubted he had any reason to suspect that my name would be listed as his one true love in place of his girlfriend’s, but still. Why did he have to do that?

  “I’m tired, anyway,” he continued, more defeated than ever.

  The sound of shuffling feet and shuffling papers suggested he was gathering his things and I leapt away to the opposite side of the hall in an attempt to look as though I wasn’t eavesdropping.

  Oz didn’t look as though he bought the attempt as he eased open the door a moment later, catching my eye as he pulled it shut behind him. I didn’t say anything, my tongue oddly tied. My stomach answered with knots of its own, just one more reminder of how our friendship and the people around us had been altered by that stupid piece of paper. Among other things.

  I was inclined to think that silly machine malfunctioned at an extremely inconvenient moment, but whether Oz believed we were each o
ther’s perfect match somehow—even though we both already had those—the awkwardness between us made everything harder. Oz was the only person, aside from Sarah, who knew everything that happened last semester. About the Return Project, and how some of the Elders at our Academy were trying to fix the past instead of simply observe and interpret it as they’d taught us to do. It went against every lesson we’d sat through over the past seven years and still we didn’t know why they were betraying us.

  We grew up believing that the most important thing we could do was to learn from the mistakes of the past in order to ensure a future free from the same complications. They insisted horrible consequences would result if we ever interfered with the way things were meant to be. That changing the tiniest of things could have ripple effects we could never predict.

  Except now, with the Projection machine they built—the one that only Oz and I had seen—they thought they’d found a way to make it possible.

  But why had they built it in the first place?

  Oz and I stared at each other for a few seconds, air wheezing out of my tight lungs. I wanted to say something. Anything. Beg him to stop avoiding me, no matter the threats made by the Elders, and figure out how to help Analeigh, and my parents.

  How to help all of us, maybe.

  But not a single word came out of my mouth. His eyes revealed nothing about his thoughts which remained, as ever, a complete mystery to me. After a few more silent seconds, he lowered his gaze and stalked away. I took a deep breath, fanning my face to cool my heated cheeks before facing the firing squad on the other side of my door.

  Sarah was always in a snit after fighting with Oz, which these days, happened pretty much every time they hung out. They never fought before the stupid True Companion card incident. Never stumbled, never doubted their future would be together…I wondered what it meant, that this one little glitch had the ability to rock their boat so hard.

  The glowing tattoo threaded into the skin on the inside of my left wrist opened the door with a quick swipe. Inside, I found our personal space, complete with three beds, three desks, and three bookshelves, quiet. Sarah sat at her desk. She quickly turned her back on me, but not fast enough to hide the tears wetting her cheeks.

  I tossed my shoulder bag under my own desk and flopped into the chair, kicking off my versatile black flats in the process. Sarah said nothing, but then again, she’d chosen not to ever since Oz pulled that card nearly a month ago, now. The only time she’d addressed me directly was when an Elder forced her in a Reflection or on an Observation, which they did on occasion since even the adults in our lives were weary of our bickering.

  The silence killed me more than anything else—our room had never been particularly quiet in the years we’d occupied it. One more item on a long list of wrongs.

  My heart ached at her unhappiness. I felt sorry for her—to think that she had found her True only to believe it could be a mistake sucked beyond belief. What I didn’t feel was guilty. It wasn’t my fault that Oz’s name showed up on her card and then my name showed up on his card. It’s not like I have stupid feelings for stupid Oz.

  No one ever heard of such a thing. No one cared, either, since the True Companion predictions were mostly a game to the people of Genesis. The Elders had shrugged and ignored our initial confusion, and had since tired of our inability to patch things up and move on. They agreed with me that it had to be a system issue.

  Even though I’d tried what felt like a million times over the past several months to make amends, I couldn’t stop myself sticking another toe into the frigid water.

  Just to check. “Are you okay?”

  No response from Sarah’s side of the room. Our space seemed so much bigger without Analeigh, so much more empty, even though our banished friend couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. That empty bed, barren desk, and naked wall reminded us every day that we’d lost a limb. One that might have been able to fix us.

  I sighed, loudly, and she whirled around fast. The look she pinned me with made me squirm, and said I’d gone and done it, now.

  “No. I’m not okay, Kaia. The guy who I thought loved me loves you instead, but he keeps coming here night after night pretending that nothing has changed. When everything has changed.” She sucked in a shuddering breath, bright red spots glowing on the apples of her cheeks. “What’s worse than that? With Analeigh gone and just you and me in this room, I have nothing to look at but your face day and night.”

  Despite the fact that we’d had this argument many times, anger swelled up and right off my tongue. “You’re being ridiculous. You must know that I haven’t the slightest interest in Oz, and he’s barely looked at me since the whole debacle last semester.”

  “That’s worse. If there was nothing there he could look at you all he wanted and it wouldn’t matter.”

  My eyes rolled so hard I almost checked for them on the floor. “Oh stars, Sarah. If you don’t want to be with Oz anymore, dump him. Everyone else knows that machine just malfunctioned somehow, or more likely, Oz or I messed something up when we were running all over the past unescorted and made it fritz. It’s nothing. Get over it.”

  She didn’t answer, her blue eyes filled with rage as she blinked back tears. I stood up and huffed into the bathroom, taking my time under the hot shower spray and brushing my teeth. At least with only two of us, the battle over counter space had ceased to be an issue. If it wasn’t such a crappy situation, it might have amused me that, when listing all of the ways our lives had gone down the toilet since last semester, she failed to mention the fact that we’d been held back a year in the certification process.

  A moment of dizziness, sharp and out of nowhere, washed over me. The washcloth fell out of my hands as I grabbed for the counter to keep from falling over, but by then the strange spell had passed. I shook my head as I stared into the mirror, momentarily confused by my environment, and frowned. The last thing I needed was to get sick.

  I opened the door to go back into our room, the fight long bled out of me. It didn’t do any good to argue with Sarah. Her feelings were her feelings, and since she and Oz had been the only living True Companion couple in Genesis, no one could really understand what they were going through. If she wanted to blame me, if that made it better, I could play the whipping boy a little longer.

  The thing that made it extra hard was that it also meant not talking to Oz. Last year, that wouldn’t have been cause for complaint but now, with so much going on and so many people in my life affected by my bad decisions, I needed someone to talk to.

  If I didn’t have Sarah, he was the only one left.

  I cast a glance at her side of the room, decked out in blues, and found her under the covers and rolled toward the wall. Pretending to sleep, probably, since her breaths came too shallow—she might have still been crying.

  Yumi, the girl who joined our room after Analeigh was banished, sat cross-legged on her bed. She’d been the only one in our year with a single and had never liked it—she’d requested the move as soon as Analeigh left, and no one had cared that neither Sarah nor I wanted to replace her.

  We’d gotten used to her pink blankets and the self-painted mural smeared on the wall above her bed, though her desk was messy enough to earn remarks from Sarah on a regular basis.

  I frowned then, thinking that I hadn’t heard her come in, as she raised her thin, dark eyebrows my direction. I shrugged in response to her silent question about Sarah, not wanting to talk about it. Yumi and I had never been close. In fact, even after living together for going on four months, I hardly knew anything about her.

  That’s weird, I thought as I changed into my purple sleep shorts and long-sleeved shirt, then crawled under the covers. Every last thing about Analeigh and Oz and Sarah and their families is burned into my brain. Even Jessica, the girl in our class I like the least, has a prestigious ancestral line I can recite from memory.

  Once the lights were out, my thoughts turned from our third roommate
and landed where they did most nights when everything else went quiet and dark—on Caesarion. My own True Companion, and the hole in my chest that I suspected would never fill.

  I didn’t suffer the way I had right after he died, when the long hours alone had been filled with tears and regret. There had been so much loss all at once, though—my parents, Analeigh, Caesarion—that it was hard to pull my response to them apart, even now.

  What I thought about more often than the grief was his advice to always remember that my people and my responsibilities had to come first. That honor and duty meant more than my love for any one person and even though I had felt the truth of his words in my core, putting the sentiment into practice came hard.

  I had lost him; my sweet, understanding, honest love. He would have known what advice to give. He was a leader. He had people.

  I was a girl who expected to be a part of the solution, not to discover it. To be one of many, not at the head of some sort of subversive movement to prove the Elders were not who they led us to believe. Genesis didn’t work like that. We all worked together toward a common goal: the survival of the human species.

  Yumi’s eyes met mine, and in them I sensed the same confusion that had overcome me in the bathroom. She often seemed out of place, even in a school surrounded by the same people she’d known all of her life. She had no close friends, even after all this time, though I had noticed her and Levi spending quite a bit of time together recently.

  I rolled over, missing Analeigh and Caesarion with a fierceness that burned. Without them, all of this nonsense weighed me down so tight that moving a muscle felt like shifting a thousand-ton boulder.

  There was still Oz. I snuck a glance toward Sarah, who really had fallen asleep. My heart ached at the strain between us. It was past time for us to stop wasting days fighting with each other and start fighting the Elders. To fight for something, once we figured out what that battle looked like.