“Do you ever look back on your past and wonder what things would have been like if you’d taken a different path?”
Will sets his chopsticks down, both eyebrows raising high, then low. “I think every person does. I think it’s human nature to do so.” The chopsticks are reclaimed, now tapping against the side of an ornate bowl. “Are there things you wish you’d done differently?”
Oh, to be sure.
I wish ... I wish the first time Enlilkian had found me, in that bathroom, I’d not broken down and allowed him to set his sick game in motion. I wish I’d spent more time learning who Noel Lilywhite was, rather than resenting who I believed him to be. I wish I’d not broken the hearts I treasure so often and so easily; I wish I’d told my mother I loved her more when I was younger. I wish, with all the immense powers within me, my touch was delicate rather than destructive. I wish I could let go of Kellan; I wish his life to be everything it isn’t because of me. I wish I didn’t hurt my husband because of my bond with his brother. I wish I’d been here for Jonah when he needed me after Karnach, and that on that first day he came to California, I’d had the guts to talk to him, and him to me.
I wish I could breathe without feeling tendrils of guilt lopping through the soft tissues of my lungs.
“I think,” I tell Will, “that it’s sometimes hard to finally stand still when you’ve been running for so long.”
“Oh, to be sure.” A wonton is flipped over and mashed in his bowl until its guts spread across the waxed paper. “I called Becca while you were gone.”
Ah. He says this so evenly, like we’re simply discussing the weather. “Is that how we’re dubbing it?” The corners of my lips incline upward. “While you were gone? Isn’t that a movie name?”
I like how he laughs, how his head tilts to the side so his hair falls across his forehead. “If it is, do you think it’s one I’ve watched?”
I do my best to keep a straight face. I may be able to sweet talk Jonah into watching chick flicks with me, but never Will. “Perhaps there are lots of explosions in it. And alien abductions. Then you most certainly would have watched it many times.”
He sticks his tongue out at me. I readily return the favor.
A hint of a smile remains, sincere and soft. “The point is, I’m ready to let her go.”
There’s a good five seconds of hush before I murmur, “Yeah?”
Hope is such a fragile, lovely thing. No matter how many times it fails us, it’s still to be cherished. And it blooms in me again, this time for my friend.
He cups the back of his neck and looks up at the ceiling. A long sigh fills the space between us. “Yeah.”
I poke him in the belly with my chopstick. “Is it too soon to ask if this has anything to do with a certain lady whose name starts with a C and ends in an allie?”
He bats the wood away, amused; no, exasperated is definitely a better word. “Most definitely.”
“Do you feel at peace with this decision?”
“Yeah,” he says again. “I really do.”
“Then nothing else matters.” My hand covers his and squeezes. “Nothing.”
He looks away, toward the kitchen and the clanging pots and sizzling fires, but not quickly enough before I catch the look of hopeful acceptance in his eyes. “Another thing happened when you were gone.”
I lean back in my chair. “Did the boy and girl meet cute, perhaps in the alien spaceship?”
“It’s eerie how close you are.” The side of his mouth quirks up. “Paul and Frieda eloped.”
My chopsticks clatter to the table. “SHUT. UP.”
He digs out his cell phone and scrolls through his texts until he finds just the right one. And there our friends from Ancorage and the Moose on the Loose diner are—wonderful, warm Paul and gothic, pale Frieda, and I’ll be damned. She’s smiling: genuinely, joyfully. It’s so incredibly brilliant to see that tears come to my eyes. The good kind, though. The kind brought up from the well of blessedness.
I need to call her soon.
“Seems like you’re not the only one who has been running to stand still.”
I laugh quietly, marveling over how lovely our friends look in the photo. How happy. Hope explodes throughout me. “How very old-school U2 of you, Will.”
He tips an imaginary hat at me; I gently expand the photo to focus on their faces.
Love finds a way. It always does.
I sit down in a chair and take in the view before me. Sophie Greenfield is handcuffed to the table, her eyes red and raw, her once enviable hair a snarled mess.
The Guard found her just two days after I sent them after her. Lee Acacia, the Tracker who hunted me down in Alaska, found her without even breaking a sweat. She was on the Human plane, in her parents’ home in London, packing up some belongings as she no doubt prepared to run. She’d escaped Karnach’s carnage thanks to the Elders, only to realize she better get out of town immediately.