“So you don’t deny it?”
“No. I mean, yes, I was recording,” he stammered, “but I’m not sending you to jail, Leda. I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Why on earth should I believe you, when you’ve been pretending to care about me this whole time?”
“Because I do care about you,” he said softly.
She narrowed her eyes, unconvinced.
“Leda, are these yours?” he went on, reaching for something on a table behind him. He held out a handful of cheap drug vials, the kind that people shot directly into their veins.
Leda shook her head. “I’ve never taken anything like that.”
“They were in your pocket when we found you,” Watt said slowly. She noticed the we, and realized that he meant himself and Nadia, and her anger flared up again. “If you didn’t take these, what did you take last night?”
“I didn’t mean to take anything,” Leda protested. “It was a girl named Mariel. She drugged me …”
She remembered how Mariel had bragged about slipping something in her drink—it had to be truth juice, the inhibition-reducing “chattiness” drug that Leda had given Watt when she convinced him to tell her about Atlas and Avery, what felt like a lifetime ago. God, talk about karmic justice. Leda had offered Mariel all her secrets, which she’d protected so carefully for so long, as casually as if she’d been remarking on the weather. She shivered, recalling the look in Mariel’s eyes when she’d left Leda for dead. And that awful, final thing Mariel had said about Eris, that Eris was Leda’s half sister—could it be true?
Leda wanted to explain, but for some reason she’d started crying. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to make herself impossibly small, to contain this loud, awful grief.
She was mourning everything she’d done, and everything she’d lost. She was mourning the Leda she had been, long ago, before drugs and Atlas and Eris’s death. She wanted to go back in time—to shake some sense into that Leda, to warn her—but that Leda was long gone.
Watt’s arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her close, his head tucked over her shoulder. “It’s okay, we’ll figure it out,” he assured her. Leda closed her eyes, relishing the feeling of safety, even though she knew it was temporary.
“You aren’t sending me to jail?” she asked, her voice strained.
“Leda, I meant what I said. I wouldn’t do that. I’m …” Watt swallowed. “I’m falling for you.”
“I’m falling for you too,” Leda said quietly.
Watt leaned forward—carefully, as if still not certain whether she might hit him again—and kissed her.
When they pulled apart, the winds of the ice storm tearing through Leda’s mind had settled into a bright cold clarity. She knew what she had to do.
“We need Rylin and Avery,” she said.
“I actually already had Nadia send Avery a message from you, when I was really worried,” Watt said, sounding a little embarrassed for hacking her contacts yet again. “She didn’t come.”
“Then it clearly wasn’t urgent enough.” Leda nodded and spoke aloud, sending a flicker. “To Avery and Rylin. SOS. Room 175.”
Then she looked back at Watt. “We need to tell them what happened. Mariel knows.”
“What exactly does she know?” Watt asked quietly, and Leda hated what she had to say next.
“Everything.”
WATT
WATT GLANCED AROUND the living room of their hotel suite. It was filled with pristine white furniture, fluffy white carpets, delicate white side tables, and blindingly white couches that Watt was almost nervous to sit on. Right now Leda was nestled in the corner of the couch wearing an oversized sweater, her bare feet pulled up onto the cushions next to her. Nadia was still keeping an eye on her vitals, tracking the pulse in the curve of her throat, the temperature radiating from her slight form.
He’d watched, just now, as Leda sent the SOS message to Avery and Rylin. “What’s going on?” he’d asked, but she just shook her head and insisted that they wait for the other two.
“They need to hear this. They’re involved, whether they like it or not.”
Nadia sent a message across his vision, and Watt looked up at Leda. “Nadia says you can take a sleeping pill later, if you want. Your heart rate has evened out enough that it should be safe.”
“I don’t take pills anymore. I haven’t had a single one since that night,” Leda replied, hugging a white-tasseled pillow to her chest. She looked at the spot over Watt’s ear where Nadia had been implanted. “Nadia, you can talk to me directly, you know. You don’t have to go through Watt.”
“Very well,” Nadia said, through the room’s internal speaker system. It made Watt jump a little. Leda noticed the movement, and shrugged apologetically.
“Sorry, but I’d prefer that Nadia talk aloud when I’m here, if that’s okay. I know by now that if I’m dating you, I’m dating Nadia too.”
Dating, Watt mused, trying out the word to see how it fit. He’d never dated anyone before. He didn’t even know how to start. Hopefully Leda would need as much of a learning curve as he did.
Before he could say anything, the doorbell sounded. Leda nodded, and the room comp allowed it to swing inward.
“What happened, Leda?” Rylin asked without preamble. She was wearing a simple black gown, and looked very drawn and pale.
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when Avery gets here,” Leda promised the other girl, sitting up a little straighter.
“That might be a while.” Rylin perched on an armchair in the corner, sitting just barely on the edge of the seat, as if she might at any point change her mind and run off.
It was so late that it was almost morning. The sky seen through the curved flexiglass window was still dark, though far in the horizon Watt could make out the first tentative blush of dawn, quartz and rose and the soft gold of aged champagne.
The doorbell sounded again. Watt started to go answer it, but Leda nodded once more, and Avery hurried forward into the room. Her hair tumbled riotously about her shoulders, and she was walking barefoot on the white tufted carpet, holding her delicate beaded shoes in one hand. She seemed disoriented.
Watt saw Rylin shoot Avery a look sizzling with resentment, but Avery didn’t pick up on it. She just ran straight to Leda and threw her arms around her friend. “Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Avery,” Leda assured her, gently shrugging off Avery’s embrace. “Thanks to Watt. He saved me.”
Avery turned her clear blue eyes to Watt, startled, and gave a tentative smile. I didn’t save her for you, Watt thought, but he didn’t resent Avery anymore, so he gave her a silent nod of understanding. After all, they both cared about Leda.