“I am her future,” you say. Not to me, but to Logan. “Just as I am her past, and her present. And you are none of those. You are a distraction.”
“Let him shoot me. I don’t fucking care, X. Make the choice for you.”
I feel strangled. Choked by choice.
I look at Logan, and his eyes blaze with fury, melt with . . . some emotion I do not understand, soft and potent and boiling and razor sharp, all at once, all over me, for me, directed at me. His blond hair is long, so long now, wavy and curled at the ends, hanging past his shoulders, blond curls drifting over his eyes. I see his scars, two round holes in his right shoulder, white thin lines on his forearm and right bicep, and I know there’s another round puckered scar low on his right side, just beneath his ribs, and I see his tattoos covering his upper arms in a jumble of images; I see all this in a tableau, a frozen vignette, his indigo eyes and blond hair and scars and tattoos and work-roughened hands and his square jaw and high cheekbones and expressive lips that have kissed me and never demanded more, never claimed more, needing more, wanting more, but waiting until I was ready to give it. Will I ever be ready? Will I ever be free to choose him? Am I capable of it?
I do not know.
I pull away from him, for him. I cannot allow him to be hurt because of me.
He is already hurt for me, though. That is written in his eyes, and it in turn strikes my heart like a knife.
I pull away, and this is like déjà vu. Logan before me, you behind me, waiting. The car. Len. My heartache and my sorrow and my confusion. I want him, but I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my vision of the future with him. Do I trust him? I don’t know.
You, behind me, in the Maybach. You haven’t gotten out. Your eyes are darkness incarnate. Unknowable. Inscrutable. You are perfect, as you are always perfect, untouchable, carved out of living marble.
Len opens the door with one hand, gun held low in the other, out of sight. You do not reach for me. You aren’t even looking at me. You are staring at Logan, but I do not know what you are thinking. What you are feeling.
I know what Logan is thinking and feeling, because he wears his emotions on his face, he does not care what anyone sees, what anyone thinks.
He is. He just is.
But I am in motion, and a body in motion stays in motion. I cannot stop this. I cannot flee to Logan, not now. Perhaps not ever. He is too good for me, too true, too much.
He is too real.
And I . . . ?
I am a ghost.
A ghost named Isabel.
SIX
You are silent for a long time, and I watch you as you sit in imperturbable stolidity, perhaps deciding what to say, what not to say. I don’t know. I have never been able to read you.
“X—” Your voice is carefully even, precisely modulated.
“Logan found out my name.”
“He thinks so, does he?” You sound cocksure, careless.
“The story he tells makes sense,” I say.
“And? What is your new name then?” You are dismissive.
“Isabel Maria de la Vega Navarro.” I glance at you as I say it. “A Spanish name.”
You are silent a moment and again I do not know how to interpret your silence. “So you’re Isabel now?”
“I don’t know. That’s the problem, isn’t it? I don’t know. Not anything.”
“You do know, though. You know who you are.” You slide across the seat, and I notice that there are dark circles under your eyes, and that your cheeks and chin are unshaven, dark with day-old stubble. “You are Madame X. I am Caleb Indigo—” You start.
“Am I? Are you?”
“Once you begin questioning things, you won’t ever stop, X. That is a rabbit hole down which it is entirely too easy to fall.”
“Funny,” I say. “Logan said something very similar.”
“Did he.” This is phrased as a question, spoken as a statement.
“He did.” Panic still overwhelms my mind, but I am learning somehow to push through it. To speak despite the turbulence in my soul. “He told me that I couldn’t shy away from the answers, once I started asking questions.”
“I don’t care what Logan said. He is no one.” Closer now.
I can feel the heat from your body, see the way your biceps stretch the material of your suit coat. Your eyes are red, as if you haven’t gotten even the small amount of sleep you’re used to.
“He isn’t no one. Not to me. I care what he said.”
“Why?”
“Because he tells me the truth, Caleb.”
“How do you know?” Your hand floats out, comes to rest on my thigh.
I knock your hand away, with sudden violence shocking to both of us. “No. You don’t get to touch me.” I feel vehemence boiling within me. Rage. Raw, potent fury. At you. At Logan. At everything.
“How do you know he told you the truth?” you repeat. “He could have made it up.”
“I know. I’ve thought of that,” I say. “The trouble is, that same question can be applied to you. How do I know anything you’ve told me is the truth? What do I believe? Whom do I believe?”