by Pintip Dunn
I lick my lips. “Not at all. I know how you feel. I’m not first in anyone’s life, either. The difference is, I never was. It makes me feel so…”
…alone.
I usually never repeat a missing word. Once it’s dropped, the moment has passed. The conversation has moved on. But this time, I want to. Because if I hold it inside, I’ll only feel more isolated.
“I feel so alone, Ryder. So terribly, horribly alone.”
An expression I can’t read crosses his face. Aw, Limbo. Did I say too much? Does he feel sorry for me?
He turns his head, avoiding me. Father of Time, even his ear is perfect, a nice shape and lying flatly against his head. That, somehow, makes me feel even more foolish.
I rack my brain for another subject. Anything that will take his mind off my confession. Anything to make him stop pitying me. “You told Mikey you’d stand in for me,” I blurt. “Does that mean that you trust me?”
“No.” The answer is immediate and unapologetic. “I said that only so Mikey would let you inject Callie with the syringe. I was confident, at least, that you were telling the truth about the formula. Beyond that…” He shakes his head. “No offense, Olivia, but we just met. I barely know you.”
Oh. I expected his response. That’s why I asked the question. So that he could get all righteous and indignant. So that he would forget about my admission of loneliness. Doesn’t mean I like his answer. Doesn’t mean I agree. We haven’t known each other very long, but I’m starting to have a very good idea exactly who Ryder Russell is.
Suddenly, I’m tired. So tired. I feel the exhaustion all the way to my bones. Figuring our conversation is finished—because, really, what more is there to say?—I roll onto my side to go to sleep.
I’m just beginning to drift off when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I look up, and Ryder’s hovering above me, his dark eyes piercing all the way through me.
“I may not know you, and I can’t make any promises about the future,” he says gruffly, placing his finger on my lips. “But I don’t want you to feel alone anymore.”
20
I go perfectly still. Ryder’s touched me before, but always by accident or happenstance. But this touch is precise; this touch is deliberate. This touch is centered squarely on my lips.
I don’t dare exhale, for fear of huffing hot air onto his fingers. And even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could. The atmosphere has turned thick, like steamy soup, and it’s all I can do to take quick, tiny sips of the air.
He moves his hand, tracing his finger over my cheek, along my jaw, and back to my lips. I almost burst.
Maybe he means this to be a kind gesture, a flick of the finger to show compassion and connection. But the electricity snaps between us, and I’m acutely aware of every sensation: the nylon sleeping bag sticking to my skin; his subtle, almost spicy scent of evergreens; the sound of his labored breathing.
Wait…is his breathing labored? Or is that just my own heart pounding in my ears?
Automatically, I reach into the future. The pathways rush in on me, the hundreds of different ways the next few minutes could unfold, some of them disappointing, but most of them…very, very good.
“Are you sifting through my possible pathways?” he asks, his voice husky.
I freeze. But if I’m a block of ice, his fingers do their job, tracing my lips again and again until I melt. “How…how do you know?” Not easy, talking with someone’s hand on your lips.
“Your eyes,” he says. “They dilate when you’re reaching into the future. I’m starting to learn when you’re not here.”
I blink. Nobody’s ever told me that before. Limbo, I didn’t even know that was true.
“You…noticed?” I ask.
“I notice everything about you,” he says easily. “So, tell me. What did you see in our possible futures?” His voice is low and liquid, and it reaches inside me and caresses parts I didn’t know existed. “What did I do? More importantly, what did you like?”
Heat floods my face. “What, exactly, are we talking about?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes gleam wickedly. “What do you think we’re talking about?”
“Future pathways,” I snap. If I have to electro-whip my attention back on track, I’ll do it, damn the Fates. “I see everything from me slapping you to…” I trail off, and my cheeks flame even hotter. Oh my. I can’t possibly put into words the images flying through my head like a hailstorm.
“Now I’m really intrigued.” He moves his hand to my hair, tugging slightly. I feel the tension all the way to my toes. “Are you really not going to tell me? Because, you know, then I’ll have to guess.”
“I’m not going to tell you,” I whisper.
His lips curve in a mischievous grin that makes me want to tuck him in my pocket and keep him forever. And then, while I’m still reeling from his cuteness, he leans in.
I’m not ready. My mouth is partway open, and I’m in the middle of a breath. He kisses me anyway. His warm breath rushes over my tongue, and his lips move over mine. I shut my mouth in a hurry. And then my nerve endings explode.
Lips, so soft. His back and shoulders, so hard. Holy Fates, that was his tongue. His tongue, slipping between my teeth. His fingers caress my waist, my hips. Lingering. Sliding under my shirt. Sparks. So many sparks, igniting in the air around us.
“How’s this?” he whispers against my mouth. He’s so close, I can’t tell if my ears are hearing the words or if my lips are interpreting their shape. “Did you see this in our future?”
I nod helplessly.
He moves closer, scooping me up and shifting me on the mattress so that he can lie next to me. Our foreheads touch; so do our knees. “And this? Was this in some of our pathways?”
I nod again, but that doesn’t seem to satisfy him anymore. His eyes intent on mine, he catches my lower lip between his teeth. “Do you like it?”
Do I like it? What kind of question is that?
I’ve tasted every emotion in our world. I know the sorrow a mother feels when she clasps her deceased baby to her chest. I know the pride of a gold-star athlete when he stands on a podium and accepts North Amerie’s highest honor. I know the rage that silences the heart of a murderer as he cuts short another’s life.
I even know kisses—hot, frenzied, passionate, fumbling, sweet, aching, innocent kisses. I’ve seen them all in other people’s futures, thousands of kisses, millions of kisses, as varied as the pathways themselves.
And yet…and yet…I’ve felt nothing like kissing Ryder. Even the vision of this moment itself.
So, yeah, I like it. It scares me how much I like it.
Instead of answering, I raise myself on my hands so that I’m towering over him. So that I’m looking down on him. So that, when I lower my mouth, I’m kissing him.
And that is a whole different sensation altogether.
21
We lie on the mattress, staring up at the underside of the tent. My elbow sticks over the edge, as this mattress was designed for one, but I’m not complaining. Not when my head is pillowed on Ryder’s shoulder, and both our hands are intertwined. His chest moves up and down in an even rhythm. If he’s not already asleep, he’s on his way there. That’s what I want, too, more than anything.
Don’t think, don’t think. Don’t let the future come crashing in. I want to keep the pathways at bay. I want, with every cell in my body, to live in the here and now. I want, for once in my life, to be happy. It may have just been kissing, but, for a girl like me, with no experience, a few kisses are a big deal.
Brick by brick, I build my walls, as quickly as my mental hands can move. But the bricks dissolve as soon as they hit ground, and the future laps with higher and higher waves.
I should be better at this by now. Damn the Fates, I am good at this. But the wall is always harder to build, harder to keep intact in times of emotional turmoil.
Sure enough, one particularly powerful wave knocks the wall over. My defenses crumble, and the
futures come roaring in.
I bolt straight up, covering my ears, squeezing my eyes shut, but of course, that can’t block what I already know.
“Olivia! What’s wrong?” Ryder sits up next to me, his eyes wild. I guess he must’ve been asleep, after all.
“This isn’t going to work,” I manage.
He’s still blinking, still trying to fight through the webs of his sleep. “What?”
“Us. You and me. Together.” I shove my hand into the air between us.
For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. And then he lies back down, covering his eyes with his arm. “Never said it would,” he drawls in a couldn’t-care-less voice.
But he doesn’t fool me. Not anymore. Not when he’s shared his heart with me. Not when I know how deeply he cares—not about me, but about the people who matter in his life.
“Listen.” I owe him an explanation. “You said so yourself, we don’t know each other. A short time from now, you’re going to kill me. This was…” I pause, trying to find the right words. “A diversion. A chance for us to connect when we were both feeling low. But it doesn’t need to be any more than that.”
“A diversion, huh?” I don’t have to see his brows to know that they’re climbing toward his scalp. “Is that what this was?”
“You said it, Ryder. You said you didn’t trust me. You said you couldn’t make any promises about the future.”
Silence.
I chew on the inside of my cheek. “I’ve reached into our futures, and this ends only one way: in the execution room.”
“We’ve had this conversation.” He moves his arm so that I can see his eyes, dark and fathomless. “Not. Happening.”
“It’s not something you can change,” I say. “Callie was different. The future that she changed? The one where she sacrificed herself in order to save Jessa? That pathway actually existed. It was a single future in maybe a thousand, but she found it. She took it. I’m telling you right now. The pathway where you don’t execute me doesn’t exist. This is our Fixed.”
“But maybe—”
“There is no maybe. All of my futures lead to one moment. You plunge a syringe full of poison into my chest. And then my vision ends. Not just in my life.” I press his hand, willing him to understand. “My vision cuts out at the exact same moment in everyone’s futures.” I move my shoulders helplessly. “I’ve known this, even before I saw your vision. Ever since I was a little girl. I’ve known the exact date that I’m going to die. May Fourth. Eighteen days from now.”
He sets his jaw; his temple throbs. “There has to be another explanation.”
“I’ve accepted this, Ryder,” I say quietly. “Not at first. But I do now. You have to accept it, too.”
“I don’t want to.”
I can’t help it. He sounds so much like a little kid that I laugh through the moisture lining my throat. I wish…I wish I had known him earlier. I wish our Fate was anything but this. But it’s not. And I’m not going to waste any more seconds wanting the impossible.
Not when my seconds are limited as it is.
“When it comes to our relationship, there are two major branches ahead of us,” I say, hoping my voice sounds as sensible as my words. “In one branch, we continue…whatever this is. This game of pretend, this foolish distraction, whatever you want to call it.”
I touch him again, this time lightly on the wrist. Fates, I need to stop. I can tell myself that I’m emphasizing a point, but the physical contact isn’t helping anyone. I start to withdraw my hand, and he grabs my fingers.
“How about we’re just two people intrigued by each other?” he asks. “Did you ever think of that? What if we just want to get to know each other better?”
I drop my gaze. “You…feel sorry for me.”
“I feel a lot of things for you,” he growls. “Sorry isn’t one of them. And I’m pretty sure you felt the same way.”
“It was my first kiss! How did you expect me to react?”
His hand tightens around my fingertips. “I was your first kiss?”
Limbo. I hadn’t meant to tell him that. “Well, yeah. I’ve been in isolation for ten years. Who did you want me to kiss? The chipmunk outside my window?”
He groans, tugging me forward so that I fall against him. “You do know that just makes me want to kiss you again.”
His lips move over mine, practiced and now familiar. And not a bit less searing. An ache builds inside me, sharp and yearning. It would be so easy to lose myself in this kiss, to lose myself in Ryder. I could spend my last two weeks on this world kissing him, and then, at least, I’d die happy. Right?
Wrong. I’ve seen my future pathways, and I’ve got about a two percent chance of that happening.
I wrench my lips away, and it’s like ripping them from an electric outlet. “I’m not finished,” I gasp. “If we continue down this path, one or both of us will get confused. We’ll trick ourselves into thinking what we’re feeling is real.” I swallow around the lump that’s magically appeared in my throat. “Can you imagine how excruciating that will be, for you to kill me, believing you have real feelings for me? Or for me to die at your hands, feeling the same way?” I shake my head. “I won’t put you through that, Ryder. It’s better if we travel down the other branch, so that my execution is as painless as possible, for both of us.”
“Stop being so noble.”
“I’m not noble!” I yell, a lot louder than I intend. In the past, I’ve blamed my lack of practice with voice modulation, but now? Now, I’m just mad. “That’s what you don’t understand. I’m not Callie. I’m not even Jessa. I don’t have this all-encompassing love for others. I don’t sacrifice everything dear to me to do what’s right.” I stop, my breath coming faster. I don’t want to tell him this. This isn’t how I want him to see me. But it’s the truth.
“All my life, I’ve chosen to do the selfish thing. The thing that will help me the most. That’s why I locked myself away for ten years. That’s right: me. Not my mom, even though that’s what everyone thought. It was my decision. It was what I wanted to do.” My voice breaks. I’ve always felt sorry for myself, for having to bear the burden of everyone’s futures. But now, I’m beginning to understand that the past is equally heavy.
“I was six years old when I first saw the nightmare.” The words scrape and tear out of my throat. “Myself, in detainment. With a cell full of other Mediocres. My own mother condemned me to death for not being good enough. I didn’t fully understand what I was seeing, but it rattled me to the core. I suppose that’s why I showed the vision to Callie.”
His fingers creep toward mine on top of the mattress. But he doesn’t pick up my hand; he doesn’t even touch me. That kind of easy, casual affection is behind us now.
“Once I saw that vision, I couldn’t unsee it.” I snatch my hand away. It was either that or grab his hand, because the in-between stage was destroying me. “And I couldn’t handle it. I’d handled everything else up to that point, but this…this was too much for me. I begged my mom to hide me from the world, giving her some line about building walls and learning how to shield myself. Even then, you see, I could predict which arguments would work and which wouldn’t. But the truth was, I didn’t care about controlling my powers. I just couldn’t exist in the world any longer.
“So there you have it.” I swallow hard. “Now you know who I really am. I’m selfish. I’m weak. I’ve spent my entire life hiding. I’m a shadow, ’cause that’s the only thing I’m good for. Always watching, never acting.”
“That’s not the story I heard.” He sits up, so that his eyes are level with mine. “I heard about a girl who has the weight of the world’s futures on her shoulders. That’s too much for an entire society to bear, much less a single person. I heard about a six-year-old who was shown, in clear and distinct images, the scene of her own death, instigated by her mother.
“And that’s not the person I see. I see someone who offered to punish me, not because she’s cruel but becaus
e she wanted to help out a friend. Someone who tortured her own mother to help me escape. Someone who chased after me on a hoverboard and stood up to Mikey.” His words grab me through the dimness, holding me as tightly as any physical embrace. “You’re not selfish, Olivia. Far from it. You just don’t understand your own heart. And you’re not an observer. In fact, all I’ve seen you do is take action after action. The opposite of a shadow.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Nobody’s ever said these things to me before—for one good reason. Ryder’s the only person who’s ever seen me this way. Ever since I’ve met him, somehow, I’ve been inspired to act this way. Maybe that’s why I went down this path with him. Maybe that’s why I kissed him. So that, for once in my life, I can know how it feels to be respected. To be valued.
“Thank you,” I say quietly. “I mean that more than I can say. But I stand by my decision. From this point on, I’m cutting myself off from you. Completely.”
And then I turn and face the nylon tent wall.
It’s past time I got some sleep.
22
I jerk awake. What? Where am I? An inflatable mattress. A pile of animal skins. Nylon tent. No Ryder.
No Ryder.
Right. Deliberately, I take a deep breath, count to five. I’m camping with the fugitives, and Callie got a dose of the amber formula last night. Ryder and I kissed—and then we fell asleep on opposite sides of the tent.
The emotions flow over me. I could spend the rest of the day tucked into this sleeping bag, atop this thin mattress, wallowing.
Instead, I force myself to get up and duck outside. The sun is high in the sky, so I must’ve slept later than I thought. A fire is smoldering in the wooden pit, embers glowing bright amid a pile of ash. All that’s left of the other tents are squares of nylon folded on the ground.