The quiet, punctuated only by the faint sound of Tarver shifting in his sleep in the next room, settles in like a tangling vine—the longer it grows between us, the harder it is to break through it. I want to say something, but I don’t know what—that I’m sorry, except I’m not, because he was deceiving me too, as I was deceiving him. Gideon and I were a house of cards, nothing more. We were always going to fall apart eventually.
I shouldn’t mourn the loss of something that never existed. And yet, sitting here in the dark, fighting the urge to turn toward him and reach for him and throw myself into his arms and tell him—tell him anything, everything, whatever I can—it’s taking all the strength I have.
My self-control crumbles a little and I find my head turning, my eyes seeking his profile—but he’s already looking at me, his eyes glinting in the glow of the flare. He reaches toward me and I hold my breath. His fingertips touch my cheek, tracing a curve down toward my jaw and then lingering there, as though loath to pull away.
“Was any of it real?” he whispers.
And I don’t know if he’s really asking for truth or only echoing my own words back at me.
My head tilts a fraction, in spite of myself, unable to resist leaning into his touch. “I don’t know.”
Gideon’s breath catches, and there’s just enough light from the flare for me to see his lips hint at a smile. “I don’t believe you.”
My heart’s pounding, aching—the only thing worse than sitting here, unmoving, would be to crumble and lean into him and feel him recoil. Or to pull away myself. I want to kiss him, to wrap myself up in him, but everything I feel for him is so confused that even that instinct might be a lie.
“Gideon, this plan…” But I don’t know what I want to say, and my words peter out.
Gideon pauses, breath catching as he considers his reply. When he does speak, it’s in a whisper. “If it were you—”
“If it were me,” I break in, forgetting to whisper, “I wouldn’t do it.” In truth, I have no idea what I would do in his place, but I don’t know any other way to convince him not to pursue this. “I wouldn’t risk madness, risk…losing myself, for a plan that could end the world anyway. It’s stupid, and reckless, and however much you like doing stupid and reckless things, you could be risking yourself for nothing. I can’t sit here and watch you decide to do that.”
Gideon waits, one eyebrow lifting a little until the quiet settles back in after my speech. “You done?”
The outburst has left me breathless—I’m tired enough that my emotions are far too close to the surface. I slump back against the wall, running a hand through my hair.
When I glance at him, expecting annoyance—instead I see him smiling, just the corners of his mouth twitching with amusement. “What I started to say,” he murmurs, “was that if it were you in there, in that wreck…if you were the one whose life, or soul, or self were at stake, and I had to choose between you and the entire universe? I’d be halfway there already. I wouldn’t even stop to think.”
I can’t answer—I can’t form a single thought. He’s stolen my breath, my words, left me with just a dim roaring in my ears. I can’t breathe, feeling like the ground’s opening up beneath me, ready to swallow me, and I’m not even sure I care. “Gideon—”
“My brother felt that way about her. I’m not ready to give up on either of them yet.” He reaches out again, but his fingers halt an inch away from my face. They hover there, and I can feel the pull of him, feel it like a physical force drawing me toward him. I lean in toward his touch just as he lets his hand fall and pushes to his feet. “Get some sleep,” he whispers, before ducking back out again.
The sound of crunching debris wakes me, and it’s not until I drag myself out of the jewelry store rubble that I see the pale, thin light of dawn streaming through the opening of the arcade. It was still daylight when we came inside—I must’ve been asleep for twelve hours. My neck muscles spasm as if in recognition of that, protesting my bed of cold marble and debris.
Flynn and Jubilee are awake and moving around, their footsteps making the noise that woke me. Spotting me in the archway, Flynn flashes me a smile and then tosses one of the apples from the LaRoux estate’s kitchen my way. “Morning,” he greets me, managing to elicit a smile from me in return.
“Is it really morning?” I mumble, catching the apple with difficulty, my reflexes still trying to shake off sleep.
“It’s really morning.” That’s Sanjana, sitting on the other side of the hall, eating her own breakfast of a banana and something out of a pouch with the LaRoux lambda seal on it, no doubt taken from work. “You slept?”
“Like a coma patient.” I bite into the apple, my taste buds jolting at its flavor—it’s then that I discover I’m ravenous, as though now that my body’s gotten some sleep, it’s tackling the other problems on the list one by one.