Never Fade (46 page)

I turned on my heels slowly, walking back toward the gas station where Liam was waiting. With the sun rising steadily at his back, his face was thrown into shadow. There was still crushed glass dusted across his shoulders, but I kept my eyes on the backpack clenched between his fingers. His cracked, white-boned knuckles.

There was a new cut across the bridge of his nose, and blood oozed from an open gash on his chin, but that was the worst the flying glass could manage. I only had to take one look at his face to know that what I’d done had cut him to the core.

He waited for me to reach him, one agonizing step at a time. I felt a flood of hot shame wash down through me, tightening my throat, pricking my eyes with tears. A flush of red swept up his throat, over his face, to the very tips of his ears. Liam watched me, the longing on his face etched bone deep; I knew how hard he was struggling with it, because I was fighting with everything I had not to reach out and take his hand, run my thumb over the warm pulse in his wrist. It was unbearable, that thing between us. How much I wanted to pretend we’d never lived a life outside of this moment.

“Did…” Liam pressed a fist against his mouth, struggling with his next words. “Did you just not want to be with me?”

It was almost too much for me to take. “How could you think that?”

“What else am I supposed to think?” he demanded. “I feel like I’ve been…underwater. I can’t get a thought straight, but I remember
that
. I remember the safe house. We were together; we were going to be okay.”

“You know we weren’t,” I told him. “It was the only thing I could do. It was the only way they’d let you go, and I couldn’t let you stay.”

From almost the beginning, Liam and I had a kind of understanding between us that lived without words, only looks and feelings. I knew, instinctively, why he made the choices he did, and he could trace my lines of thought as easily as one would follow a lit road. I’d never thought this moment would come to pass, but I also never believed he wouldn’t just
know
why I’d made that decision.

“You’re not even sorry,” he breathed out.

“No,” I managed to say around the stone lodged in my throat. “Because the only thing worse than being without you would have been watching them break you day after day, until you weren’t yourself anymore, until they sent you on an Op that you didn’t come back from.”

“Like they did to you?” said Liam harshly. “And now I just have to accept it? You took away my choice, Ruby—and for what? Because you thought I wasn’t strong enough to survive being with the League?”

“Because
I’m
not strong enough to survive seeing you with the League!” I said. “Because I wanted you, after everything you went through, to have a chance to find your parents and live your life.”

“Dammit—I wanted
you
!” Liam seized my arms, his fingers tightening like he could make me understand his pain that way. “More than anything! And you just…crashed through my mind and sealed everything away, like you had the right to, like
I
didn’t need
you
. What kills me is that I trusted you—I was so sure you knew that. I would have been okay, because you would have been there with me!”

How many times had I told myself a version of that? Hearing it, though—that was a knife to the throat, a razor’s edge I had no choice but to lean into.

“My head is so damn muddy, nothing is lining up.” He took a step back, letting himself drop down in a crouch. “Chubs was shot, and Zu is still out there, and East River burned, and—everything after that is like a nightmare. And you…you were with those people this whole time. Anything could have happened to you, and I would never have known. Do you know what that feels like?”

I dropped down to my knees in front of him, hitting the ground hard enough to finally jar the tears clinging to my eyelashes. I felt exhausted. Empty.

“I can’t fix this,” I said. “I know I’ve messed everything up, and there’s no way back from this, okay? I do. But your life was worth more than what I wanted, and it was the only way I could think of to make sure you didn’t get it in your head to come find me.”

“Who says I would have?” I knew he meant it cruelly, that it was a weak moment and all he wanted was for me to feel as much pain as he did, but there wasn’t enough venom in his words for them to sting. He just wasn’t capable of it.

“I would have torn this whole damn country apart looking for you,” I said softly. “Maybe you really would have left. Maybe you wouldn’t have come looking for me. Maybe I misread everything. But if you even felt a quarter of what I did…” My words wavered. “I used to wonder, you know, all the time, if it was all because you felt sorry for me. Because you pitied me or were looking for another person to protect.”

“And you could never see another reason?” he whispered in a fierce voice. “It couldn’t have been because I respected how hard you fought to survive? Because I saw how kind your heart was? Or that you were funny, and brave, and strong, and you made me feel like I was all of those things, too, even when I didn’t deserve it?”

“Liam—”

“I don’t know what to say or what to do here,” he said, shaking his head. “It feels like it never ended for me. Do you get that? I can’t forget it ever happened. I can’t hate you—I can’t, not when I want to kiss you so damn badly.” Then, so brokenly, I almost couldn’t understand him, he continued. “Why couldn’t you have taken everything? Not just the memories but the feelings, too?”

I stared at him, my mind blanking in confusion.

“It’s terrifying—
terrifying
—to meet a stranger and feel something for her so intense it actually stops your heart, and you don’t have
any
basis for it. No context. The feelings are there, and it’s like they’re clawing at your chest, needing to get out. Even now, even when I just
look
at you, it feels like they’re crushing me—with how much I want, and need, and love you. But you’re not even sorry; you just expect that I’ll be okay with the fact you threw your life away for mine.”

The world around us had retreated so far back from our pocket of misery, I’d forgotten it even existed. That we were out at the edge of an open highway, exposed to the freezing cold and any passing eyes. Reality came roaring back in the form of a car engine, a blaring horn, and headlights aimed directly at us.

I pulled Liam up onto his feet, reaching for the gun tucked into my coat pocket—but I saw the car now, the familiar dusty tan of Chubs’s SUV. The car skidded to a stop a few feet away, kicking up an explosion of snow.

Chubs jumped out of the driver’s seat, leaving the engine running. “Oh, thank God. I saw you both on the ground and I thought you killed each other.”

I turned my back to them both, wiping my cheeks against my coat sleeves. Behind me, I heard Chubs suck in a sharp breath, but Liam was the one to speak, his voice frighteningly calm.

“Come inside for a sec. There’s some food left we can take.”

I didn’t want to follow them, and I didn’t want to get into the car. I couldn’t move; the fight, if I could even call it that, had drained me to the point that I was seeing two of Jude as he jumped out of the car and came toward me.

“Roo?” He sounded scared.

I physically shook myself to clear my head. “It’s okay.”

“What happened?” he whispered, pressing a comforting hand to my back. “Did you guys fight?”

“No,” I said. “He remembers now.”

We turned, watching as Chubs stumbled over himself, trying to keep up as Liam dragged him over to the gas station. He looked back at me with wide eyes as Liam kicked the door open with his foot. The
bang
as it slammed against the opposite cinderblock wall was enough to draw Vida out of the car, too.

It took two, maybe three full seconds for the shouting to start. They’d moved far enough into the store that we couldn’t tell exactly what they were saying; particularly hot words jumped out now and again—
How could you?
and
Why?
and
Her, her, her
.

“Holy shit.” Vida turned back toward me, her hands planted firmly on her hips. “I told you to leave the kid alone. What did you do to him?”

My skin felt tight and hot over my face with the effort it took not to burst into tears.

“—a damn idiot!” Liam was shouting. “Because I feel like a goddamn fool!”

“He knows?” Vida asked. “You told him?”

“No…I think he remembers. I think I undid it. Or I never really did it. I don’t know. He won’t talk to me. He’s never going to talk to me ever again.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Jude offered. “He’s probably just overwhelmed. It seems like…”

“Like what?” Vida asked.

“That some part of him remembered you. He got so upset when we found you, and he thought you were going to die, remember?”

“Why was he acting like such an ass, then?” Vida asked.

“Think about it—he knew that Roo was League, but he treated her differently than he treated us, right? Maybe being around you made him feel confused—his brain was telling him one thing, but his instincts were telling him another?”

That was the way Liam had explained it; Jude had been perceptive enough to pick up on something I never would have imagined possible. With my parents and Sam…they had been cold after I’d erased their memories—sealed their memories, or whatever it was I was actually doing. I had been so young then, I’d just assumed that some part of them recognized what I was, and they hated me for it.

Maybe I wasn’t completely wrong, then. If I had taken their memories of me but none of the feelings they had, was it the same for them as it was for Liam? They were scared and just confused by what they felt? My mom hadn’t exactly been stable then—she had panic attacks if I was even a second late coming home from school. Maybe she saw me that morning, and it was too much for her. And Dad, calm, reliable Dad—he could have been worried about what she would do, and that’s why he didn’t have me come back inside.

Maybe I could fix them, too
. The voice was small, but it was there, tugging at my ear.

“It doesn’t change what Lee feels now, though,” I said. Or how my parents would feel to find out what their daughter really was.

I let the others lead me back to the car and slid into the backseat. They had packed up the tent and cleared the campsite before they’d come to get us, not only because they were worried, but because Vida had finally been able to send her message to Cate.

And she’d gotten one in reply.

Instead of taking one of the front seats, Vida slid in next to me. Jude was starting to climb in after her when she pushed him back out with her foot and said, “Will you go get Grannie and tell him to hurry his ass up?”

Jude started to protest, but Vida was already shutting the door.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling much more alert seeing the Chatter in her hand. “What did she say?”

“I don’t know… Something feels off,” Vida said. “Read it yourself.”

The Chatter’s blue-white light flooded the backseat as I scrolled up through the latest conversation.

GLAD YOU ARE SAFE // WE NEED TO SET MEETING ASAP // CURRENT LOCATION?

Vida had written back:

CURRENT LOCATION OK // CAN BE IN CA TMRW

The response was instant:

WILL MEET AND ESCORT YOU // PUEBLO, CO // DITCH TARGET

I knew you lost a person’s voice through short, abrupt messages. And that was the whole point of the Chatter: to relay information or media as quickly as possible. “Ditch Target” seemed especially terse, though. Not only that, but why would Cate—or Cole—risk leaving HQ and drawing attention to their plan?

DO NOT TELL TARGET OF MEET LOCATION

Below that was a street address.

“Do you think something happened?” Vida pressed. “Why the hell would she risk leaving HQ when it could blow the whole Op?”

“Maybe she thinks we won’t be able to cross the California border without her help?” It was a weak explanation but a plausible one. “Vida, did she give the Chatter to you directly? Like, physically handed it to you?”

“Yeah,” Vida said. “Nico set up the link between them himself.” I watched her dark eyes go wide as she finally came upon the same horrible possibility I had. “You think someone took the Chatter from her? That something happened to her? Or Cole has it?”

“I think it’s possible someone broke into our link between our Chatters,” I said, my voice sounding much calmer than I felt. “And they’ve been intercepting all of our messages back and forth.”

“No way,” Vida said. “The whole point is that you can’t hack the line. Is there any way to test?”

Maybe—one. I clenched my jaw, typing out each word carefully, deliberately.

WILL CONTACT ON ARRIVAL // LATER GATOR

The seconds dragged on and the screen dimmed from inactivity, but I didn’t shut it off and Vida didn’t pull away until it flashed back to full glow. The vibration seemed to race up the length of my bone, sending a wave of goose bumps after it.

GOOD // AFTER A WHILE CROCODILE

It was another ten minutes before the boys appeared at the entrance of the convenience store, each with something different in his arms. Chubs was all but nuzzling a package of toilet paper, Jude was balancing five different jumbo bags of chips, and Liam was struggling not to drop his ten soda bottles.

“Breathe, boo,” Vida said, “play it cool. We just gotta get to Colorado.”

And lie the whole way there,
I thought, leaning my forehead against the door. It hadn’t been much of a decision at all. If it wasn’t Cate or Cole waiting for us, it meant something had happened to them—either their plan with the flash drive had been discovered, or someone found out they knew exactly where we were, and they were doing nothing to bring us back in. So many possible suspects flashed through my mind: Alban, his advisers, Jarvin, all of his friends. I couldn’t shake the feeling that it all came down to the flash drive, couldn’t shake the thoughts of how someone like Jarvin would use the intel for his own agenda, rather than to help us. And the worst of it was, we wouldn’t know if it was safe to bring ourselves and the flash drive back to HQ unless we confirmed it first with whoever was waiting in Colorado.