Amanda struggled to her feet. Zack watched her as she moved to the shuttered window.
“You know they’re going to get us sooner or later, Zack. Whether it’s the Deps or Rebel or Esis, it’s just a matter of time. And yet here I am, worrying about being a proper widow. Here you are, worrying about the fights we might have a month from now. There is no month from now, Zack. Not for us. Maybe we should just . . . I don’t know . . .”
Zack joined her at the window and gently turned her around. When she realized he was simply drawing her into a hug, she fell into his arms with maniacal relief. Yes, yes, yes. Hugs were good. Hugs were safe.
“I’m sorry, Zack. I’m all over the place. I don’t know what I’m saying right now.”
He caressed her back. “It’s all right. You had a crappy day by anyone’s standards.”
“Make it better. Say something sweet to me.”
“Can it be about your looks?”
“No.”
“Because you’re very, very pretty.”
“I don’t care,” she said, though she held him tighter anyway. She cared a little.
“All right. Give me a moment to think it over.” He rested his chin on her shoulder, amazed that her hair could smell so good after twenty hours of captivity.
“You remember when we were on the balcony—”
“Oh God, Zack.”
“No, no. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the moments before, when you and I were cracking each other up with silly wordplay. I said I was antaganostic. You called yourself a tempis fugitive.”
She bloomed a wobbly smile. “I remember.”
“Yeah, well, that’s when I started to get nervous, because there aren’t a lot of people who can crack bad puns in Latin, or go joke for joke with me like you did. I knew from the start that you were strong and smart and very, very pretty, but nobody told me you were funny.”
The widow’s lips curled in a wavering smile. Zack pulled back to look at her.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen with us, Amanda. I just know that women like you are jackpots to guys like me. You don’t think short term with jackpots. You don’t screw them on the couch when they’re feeling vulnerable. I’ll wait as long as it takes for us to get our shit together. I don’t want to go the way of Hannah and Theo. We do this right or we don’t do it at all.”
Amanda held him so fiercely, she feared she’d break his ribs all over again. When she first met Zack, she had no idea that he was a rigid perfectionist, an uptight moralist, a minder, a mender. No wonder it felt so good to hug him. They were practically twins.
She ran a gentle hand down his cheek. “I really want to kiss you right now, but I won’t.”
“I wasn’t saying it to—”
“I know. I’m just thinking ahead. Wherever we end up running, whether it’s Brooklyn or Canada or God knows where, the six of us are going to rest and heal. And then once we get our act together, you and I are going to slip away for an evening. I don’t care if it has to be the second room of our criminal hideout, we’re going on a date. Some things have to be done the normal way. Even for people like us.”
His responding smile was warm enough to melt her. Amanda embraced him again, speaking stern but trembling words over his shoulder.
“Just don’t die on me, Zack. Don’t you dare die on me.”
He pressed her back and let out a glum sigh. “I can only promise to try.”
“Well, if you ever need more incentive, you think about our third date. I’m not Catholic about everything.”
Amanda covered his loud laugh, and then tensely bid him good night. She would have loved to rest with him down here on the couch, but the temptation to do something—
(do not entwine)
—would mess up their wonderful new plan.
She scrambled upstairs in dizzy haste, then conducted a stealthy check on the others. Theo and Mia were visible in their rooms. David and Hannah were tucked away behind closed doors. Amanda stowed her concerns, then climbed into bed with Mia.
As her eyelids fluttered with teeming fatigue, the widow’s mind shot like fireworks into the many branching futures. She pondered all the obstacles between her and a happy life, counting her issues like sheep.
Just as she began to drift off, the dangling wires of her memory connected and Esis breached her thoughts once again.
Do not entwine with the funny artist.
Amanda’s eyes sprang open in hot alarm. She stayed awake and disturbed for hours.
—
At the jagged tail end of his twenty-hour slumber, Theo fell into a dream that by now had become painfully familiar. He existed as a disembodied spirit, a formless being drifting slowly through a silent gray void. A bright white wall stretched endlessly in front of him like a vertical tundra, radiating a bitter coldness that chilled him to the core.