“I’ve been thinking about what you said last week,” Leda’s dad said abruptly, lowering his voice. “You were right. I need to tell your mother the truth. She deserves that.”
Leda startled, then pulled her dad into a hug, so fierce that his head almost knocked against hers. “I’m proud of you,” she proclaimed. “But—you’re going to tell her tonight? In the Hamptons?”
“Is that a bad idea?” Her father looked sheepish, then shook his head. “Leda, whatever happens between me and your mom, I promise that I’ll be here for you. I’m so sorry that you were caught in the middle of all this. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Leda said softly as her mom turned back toward them.
Ilara looped her arm easily in her husband’s, still grinning widely. “We’re going straight to the helipad. Are you staying, hon?”
Leda watched, speechless, as her parents slipped off into the crowd. Her father was brave enough to tell the truth: to confess what he’d done and face the consequences. While Leda persisted in hiding the truth beneath a mountain of lies and blackmail and secrecy.
If her father could tell the truth, then maybe . . .
She leaned her elbows onto the table, playing idly with the fake-fire taper on its surface. Its harmless flame flickered over her bare fingers. It warmed the nitinol ring on one hand. That was when Leda looked up—directly into Watt’s eyes.
For a moment her breath caught. She’d forgotten how distractingly handsome he looked in his tux. The tailoring showed off the broad clean lines of his shoulders, set off the golden hue of his skin.
“You made it!” she cried out, rushing toward him, only to falter a little in her steps. Something in Watt’s eyes quelled her excitement.
“We need to talk. In private,” he croaked, his eyes darting around the party. “Are Avery and Rylin here?”
“I haven’t seen them in a while,” she said, fighting back her mounting sense of panic. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
They retreated toward the farthest edge of the party, where a pair of Chiavari chairs were tucked behind a towering display of flowers. Neither of them sat down.
“What’s going on?” Leda demanded shakily.
Watt took a deep breath. “I hacked the police station tonight.”
“What were you thinking? That’s so dangerous!” Leda reached for him, grabbed him roughly by the lapels of his jacket, and shook him a little in panic.
“That tonight was a good distraction, since most of the police are at this party,” he answered. “Also, I may not have been thinking clearly, since I went in for questioning this morning.”
“What?”
He frowned. “I thought Avery must have told you. I was called in for questioning about Mariel. So were Avery and Rylin.”
Leda could guess why Avery hadn’t told her. Avery was trying, in her own sweet and misguided way, to protect her. But Leda expected more from Watt.
“You should have flickered me the instant that it happened. And you should have talked to me before you tried hacking the police!” Leda realized that her hands were still clutching tight to Watt’s jacket, and she lowered them slowly.
“Don’t worry, they’ll never even know I was there. But we have a bigger problem.” Watt averted his eyes from hers. “The police have figured out the connection between Mariel’s death and Eris’s.”
Leda stumbled back a step, her whole body trembling. “You mean they know that I killed Eris?”
“Not yet,” Watt hurried to say. “I think they just know that those nights are connected. Don’t worry, Leda. I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear it.”
Dozens of emotions shot through her at once, horror and grief and regret. “Oh my god,” she said slowly, and then again, more raggedly, “Oh my god.”
“It’ll be okay. We can figure this thing out—”
“Don’t say it will be okay when we both know that it’s not true!” Leda snapped, so fiercely that Watt fell silent. She sank helplessly into one of the chairs. “It won’t be okay,” she said, much more softly. “And it’s all my fault.”
Watt took the chair next to her and reached for her hand in silent support.
As Leda sat there, the scene around her was stamped on her brain with brutal clarity. The scent of the flowers, soft and delicate. The lurid laughter, the clinking of glassware, the music emanating from the dance floor. The warm feel of Watt’s hands around hers. She felt that she would remember every detail of this moment for the rest of her life, however much longer her life lasted, because this was the moment it all changed.
She had put her friends at risk.
Leda had thought that they were all safe—that the police didn’t have anything on them, and that therefore this nightmare would soon be over. That she could pick up the shattered shards of her grief and make a fresh start.
What a fool she’d been. It was clearly only a matter of time before the police figured out what Leda had done. Which would lead them to her friends’ secrets. Rylin’s drug dealing, and Watt’s illegal computer, and Avery’s relationship with Atlas.
Leda couldn’t live with herself if those secrets came to light.
She felt like a tugboat in the middle of a hurricane, wave upon wave of regret smacking unrepentantly over her. She lowered her head into her hands and closed her eyes.
“We’ll find a way out of this,” Watt kept saying. “You and me, together, we can face anything.”
Leda forced herself to look up. The light of the holographic banners overhead was reflected in Watt’s eyes, gave a new bronzed luster to his skin. She let her eyes trace over him for a moment, memorizing him.
Then she stood up, pulling Watt to his feet with her, and kissed him. He seemed startled at first, but soon wrapped his arms around her and kissed her back.
She kissed him for as long as she dared, not caring if anyone saw. She prayed that Watt wouldn’t sense the frantic, desperate beating of her heart. This was her last kiss, her final farewell on death row, and Leda was determined to make it count. So she focused on Watt—on the feel of him, the quiet strength of him, the way his mouth fit so perfectly over hers.
She was saying, deep inside herself, good-bye.
When she finally pulled away, Watt was studying her with a puzzled expression. Leda pretended not to see. If Watt guessed what she was planning, he would never let her go through with it.
“I’m going home,” she said, and her voice betrayed her a little, because it was rough as sandpaper.
“Leda,” Watt protested, reaching for her; and Leda wavered for a moment, because it would be so easy to lean into his embrace. To lay her head on his chest and let him tell her that everything would be okay.
Except it wouldn’t be okay. Not for Eris or Mariel or any of the rest of them. Not until this whole thing was over for good.
“At least let me walk you home,” Watt offered, but Leda shook her head, and dug into a bleak corner of strength somewhere deep within her.
“I need to be alone right now.”
Watt opened his mouth to answer, then seemed to change his mind. He gave a jerky nod. “I’ll see you later,” he assured her.
“See you,” Leda said quietly, knowing it was a lie.
She waited until she saw his form disappear into the crowd, until she was certain he was long gone. Then Leda let out a great, tremulous breath. It had taken every last shred of her willpower to watch Watt walk away from her, knowing it was the very last time.
Somehow, blindly, she made it home. The silence echoed eerily around her bedroom. She managed to drag herself into bed—her ordinary bed, rumpled past recognition, which only last night had held both her and Watt. She couldn’t believe that just this morning she had woken up with him, feeling so safe in his arms.
But she wasn’t safe. None of them were safe, and it was her fault.
She loved Watt so much that it hurt, so much that it frightened her. Which was why she should never have let him back into the disaster that was her
life. She was too toxic. She had done too many terrible things, things she couldn’t run from, and she refused to let Watt be dragged down with her.
On and on her thoughts swirled, circling wildly through her fevered brain. She must have drifted off at some point; she kept waking in a cold sweat, pressing her fists against her closed eyes, but the images wouldn’t go away. Because they weren’t nightmares; they were her reality.
No matter what road she went down, Leda kept returning to the same conclusion. The cops were getting closer. Which meant that none of them would be safe until someone was arrested for Mariel’s death.
Leda couldn’t fix what had happened to Eris or Mariel. But she could still save Avery, Rylin, and Watt—that much still lay within her power. They didn’t deserve to be punished for what had happened, but she did.
AVERY
THE MORNING AFTER her father’s inauguration ball, Avery paced back and forth across the living room like a caged animal. She walked the same path each time, halfway between the cloudlike custom couches and the door that led to the two-story foyer. She was waiting for whatever would happen to happen.
It was too quiet. Avery imagined she could see the silence, undulating and cool, its waves lapping against the walls and then falling back with a soundless splash.
“It’ll be okay,” Atlas assured her from where he sat on the couch by the window. He reached out an arm as if to pull her toward him, then seemed to think better of it.
Avery hadn’t slept. How could she, after everything? She kept picturing the way Max had stood there, staring at her and Atlas with unabashed horror. He’d retreated a step, his eyes wide and wounded. Avery had stumbled to her feet and torn after him, calling out his name as she tried to chase him down the unfamiliar hallways, but Max had escaped down a staircase. He had literally run away from her.
Avery had been trying to ping and flicker him all morning, with no response. She wanted to tell Max how sorry she was, for betraying his trust in such a terrible way, and that she’d never meant to hurt him. That she hadn’t been lying when she said that she loved him.
Somehow she had loved Max and yet been in love with Atlas at the same time.
Max had been the one who put her back together again after her heart was shattered last year. He had given her his heart, had tried to build a life for them, and Avery had given him nothing in return except pain.
She was starting to lose count of all the people she and Atlas had wounded, trying in vain to fall out of love with each other. Leda, Watt, now Max: They were all collateral damage. Avery swore to herself never to make that mistake again.
Earlier this morning, she had even ventured out in search of Max, heading to his dorm room only to find the bedcovers smooth and unslept in. Eventually she gave up and came back here, where she’d spent breathless hours waiting, though she didn’t know what for. She just kept walking back and forth in her artech pants and sweater, restless and agitated, unable to shake the sense that something terrible was looming on the horizon, like a great dark thundercloud.
It was the zetta she really worried about.
She and Atlas had turned the problem over and over, but there was ultimately nothing they could do, not knowing which i-Net site it even belonged to. To own a zetta, you needed a commercial license, and the licenses were prohibitively expensive—after all, no one wanted swarming clouds of these things clogging up their city.
Whoever had that picture, Avery knew she would be hearing from them very soon. She could only hope that they would reach out to her directly, maybe hold the picture for blackmail, rather than go ahead and post it.
She reached the end of the room and turned again, fidgeting uselessly with the end of her ponytail. Next to her, Atlas sat holding his tablet on his lap, still open to the same article he’d pulled up two hours ago. They hadn’t spoken much since last night; as if they’d used up all their words on I love yous, and needed to hoard the remaining ones for whatever lay ahead.
Both of their heads whipped up as the front door slid open. Avery felt every cell in her body spring to instant alertness. She heard voices, the familiar hollow sound of her mom’s heels echoing down the hallway, and for a single instant, everything was blissfully, blessedly normal.
“We need to talk about the pro-am golf tournament,” her mom was saying. “How many people do you think you’ll be inviting?”
Pierson didn’t answer right away. Then he cursed, loudly and angrily. “What the hell,” he snarled, probably holding out his tablet.
And just like that, Avery knew that everything had changed.
Elizabeth screamed. It was a raw, animal scream, and the sound of it struck a primeval terror deep into Avery’s marrow. She glanced at Atlas, then logged into the feeds with a sickening sense of dread.
Sure enough, there was the article that her dad must have found. It had only been posted thirty seconds earlier. Fuller Siblings: Too Close for Comfort, read the headline. It came complete with a picture of her and Atlas, tangled together in a kiss, from the elevator last night.
No one could mistake them. It was Atlas’s light-brown hair, Atlas’s patriotic pin gleaming on the breast of his tux, Atlas’s hands wrapped firmly around her. And the blonde crouching among the ripples of her shimmering golden gown couldn’t have been anyone but Avery.
Avery felt a cold, detached sense of unreality. To think that after all this time—all the vast lengths she and Atlas had gone to, in order to keep their secret safe—the worst had actually happened, and the truth was out in the world.
“It’ll be okay. I love you,” Atlas whispered, and as he stood up, he let his hand brush gently against Avery’s back. A small, barely-there touch to remind her that they were in this together.
Avery’s heart crashed against her chest as her parents stormed into the living room. Her dad was holding out his tablet, which was frozen on the Too Close for Comfort article. He held it out at arm’s length, as if it might contaminate him. “What filth! For someone to use my children like that, to make up such vile slander, just to undermine my administration. . . .”
Oh god, oh god. He thought it wasn’t real. Avery tried to catch Atlas’s eye, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on their mom.
Elizabeth Fuller looked impeccable as always, in the short-sleeved knit dress and heels she’d worn to whatever breakfast the Fullers had attended this morning. She walked into the kitchen with spare, unadorned movements and poured herself a glass of water without drinking it. Avery knew that she just wanted something ordinary to do with her hands. But those hands were trembling.
Avery’s father was still yelling, using words like defamation and appalling. He’d leaned one elbow on an antique console table, making little emphatic knocks on its painted ebony surface to punctuate his words. The whole scene had taken on the sticky, unrealistic quality of a dream. Avery willed herself to wake up.
She had imagined this conversation so many times, worrying herself sick that her parents might somehow learn the truth about her and Atlas. But never in all her imaginings did she predict that her parents would willfully ignore the truth, even when the truth stared them full in the face.
Pierson abruptly broke off from his monologue. His face was deep red, veins etching themselves along the breadth of his forehead. He glanced from Avery to Atlas and back again, and something subtle changed in his expression.
“You two are awfully quiet. I’d assumed you would feel more upset about your images being violated like this. Whoever edited that photo, it looks very real.” His voice grew dangerously calm. A beat of silence stretched through the room. “Unless, of course, the photo wasn’t manipulated.”
There it is, Avery thought as her mom gasped.
It would be so simple to lie, to say that of course the images were doctored, that she and Atlas were nothing but normal adoptive siblings with a normal fraternal affection for each other. Avery had been telling that lie for most of her life—to herself, to the world. She knew the art of it
better than anyone. She knew how to bury her true feelings so deep inside her that no one could ever begin to guess at them.
It was the lie her parents wanted so desperately to hear. But for the first time, Avery couldn’t bring herself to tell it.
Instead she reached out and took Atlas’s hand. The implications of her gesture were lost on no one present.
“Avery.” A threat lay there, low and coiled, in Pierson’s voice.
Atlas let his hand close over hers, running a thumb deliberately, shockingly, over her knuckles. The touch of his skin gave Avery the confidence she needed.
“I love Atlas,” she said simply and watched the dawning horror on both of her parents’ faces.
Atlas’s hand was laced tight in hers. “And I love Avery.”
It sounded to Avery as if an alarm had gone off, but it was just the silence echoing throughout the apartment.
“You don’t mean that,” Avery’s mom said weakly.
“Yes, we do. Avery and I have been in love for years. And the photo is real. A paparazzi zetta took it when we were together last night.”
“Mom—” Avery’s voice broke. She wanted to explain all the reasons that this wasn’t as bad as her parents thought: that she and Atlas weren’t physically, genetically related. That adoptive siblings could have relationships, could get married, in all fifty states; she had looked it up a long time ago. The law only prevented adoptive parents from marrying their own children.
More, though, she wished her parents could understand how perfect she and Atlas were together, that theirs was a love that could—and had—overcome anything in its way. That no matter how many times the world tried to destroy it, their love kept emerging again, battered and bruised but still stubbornly there.
This was her forever love. The kind of love that someone would have written a novel about, a century ago. It was her and Atlas against the world, no matter what; and Avery knew that if she couldn’t have Atlas then she would have no one, for all the days of her life.
From the revulsion on her parents’ faces, she knew none of those arguments would make a difference.
The Towering Sky Page 31