The Van Alen Legacy

A year of sleeping back to back, never once turning to each other, not even for the Caerimonia. In bed, it would have been too intimate . . . too much like the other thing that they had resisted so far, an unspoken agreement to wait for the right time. Because what else did they have but time? They would be together always. That much they knew.

“Are you awake?” Schuyler asked. Their room was approximately the size of a small coffin. She could only just sit up. The pods were little boxes stacked on top of each other, with a fiberglass door and a curtain for privacy, and one window. The capsules were popular with Japanese businessmen who were too drunk to go home. It was the cheapest accommodation Schuyler and Oliver could find. They had stored their packs in a locker in the lobby.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m sorry I keep waking you up. It must be tiring.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you not feel like talking?”

“Mmm . . .”

Schuyler knew that Oliver was upset. And she understood why he was being cool with his one-word answers. Something between them had shifted after Paris. Something had changed their easy friendship; something had come into the hermetic little world they had made.

Schuyler had believed Jack Force was part of her past— that after she had left him in that apartment on Perry Street, that would be the end of things. But seeing Jack again in Paris had not felt like the end. Especially when they’d kissed. She didn’t know what to think. She felt so guilty about it, sometimes she couldn’t even face Oliver. But sometimes when she remembered the kiss, she would find she couldn’t stop smiling. It had felt like a beginning, like a promise of a brighter future, even as that future had begun to dim. And so every night as she lay against Oliver’s back, when she closed her eyes she would dream of a boy whose eyes were green and not hazel, and she hated herself for it.

So what if Jack was still free? So what if he was not bonded? She had made her choice. And she loved Oliver so much, the thought of being away from him would break her heart, shattering it into a million pieces.

She had to stop dreaming of Jack. That kiss. How did that song go in that movie she and Oliver used to watch all the time? A kiss is just a kiss. A sigh is just a sigh. It was nothing. It meant nothing.

Maybe she was confused because she was tired of waking up in a different city every three days. Maybe that was all it was. She was so very tired of airports and train stations and hotels and bland, overpriced hotel food. She missed New York so much it was like a physical ache.

She had tried to forget how much she loved the city. How invigorated it had always made her feel—how much she belonged there.

Outside the porthole window, Schuler could see a view of Tokyo’s neon cityscape: endless blinking lights, skyscrapers lit up like video games. Her eyes were closing, she was about to drift off , when Oliver suddenly spoke.

“You know, when I sent you off with him in Paris, it was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do.”

Schuyler knew he was talking about when he had sent her off with Jack, not with the baron.

“I know,” she said, speaking to her pillow.

“I thought you would run away with him,” he said, addressing the wall.

“I know.”

She knew all this: she had read it in his blood, but she understood he had to tell her. Had to say the words aloud.

“I thought I would never see you again.” His voice was calm, but Schuyler felt his shoulders shake a little.

Oh, Oliver . . . Her heart slid into her throat, and tears came to her eyes. He loves me so much, she thought. I can never hurt him. I can’t.

So in answer, Schuyler turned and slid her arm through his and intertwined their fingers. She pressed her chest against his back, and her knees and legs rested against his so they lay like two spoons. She had never done that before, and now she wondered why. It felt so comfortable to rest against him. To put her mouth on his neck so that he could feel her breath on his skin.

“Ollie, I would never leave you,” she whispered, and she knew she was telling the truth. She would keep his heart safe.

But he did not reply, and neither did he turn around, even with the implied invitation in her embrace. He kept his back to her all night, as he did every night.

She fell asleep to the steady sound of his breathing.





THIRTY-SIX

Mimi


To many people, Rockefeller Center was New York.