know.” She looked back at him. “I mean, I feel like I have friends in your world. Jane and Manny and Ehlena. John and Xhex. Nate. And then there’s you … I would never endanger any of you. Ever. I’ve seen how the human race treats your kind, and it’s an abomination.”
As she stared at him, he felt so responsible for how this was all ending. Maybe if he hadn’t so impulsively gone looking for Xhex all those years ago… if her relatives had not taken control of his mind … if he hadn’t come out of the colony obsessed with finding her …
If he hadn’t taken responsibility for what she’d done at that first lab and then done the same kind of thing himself at the second.
Maybe the Brotherhood wouldn’t be so …
What did it matter. However he and Sarah had come to be at this point, here they were.
“I should go,” he said in a voice that cracked.
They leaned in and met halfway, their mouths finding a kiss that shattered his soul. Then he cradled her to his chest.
Of all the suffering he had ever been through, nothing compared to this.
Dawn arrived in the way of the winter season, the sun on a quiet, slow approach low on the horizon, as opposed to summer’s brilliantly streaming pop-up sunrises.
As the weak frosty light bled in through the drapes in Sarah’s living room, she turned her head and played a little game trying to guess what time it was. Not that she really cared.
Seven-ish, she decided.
As things got brighter outside, she continued to stay where she was, on the sofa, still wrapped up in the blanket. She had some vague sense that her toes were cold and her shoulders, too. But she was disinclined to do anything about it.
Next door, she heard her neighbor’s garage door go up. Moments later, their sedan putt-putted down their driveway in reverse, the tires crushing the ice pack of treads. She couldn’t see out into the street from where she was sitting, but she knew when the car went by her house and sped off, another workday ahead for them.
What day of the week was it, anyway?
Dragging herself to her feet, she went around the sofa and nearly burst into tears as she saw the track marks the piece of furniture had left in the carpet from when they had made love and things had gotten pushed out of position.
She left the sofa where it was even though the thing wasn’t lined up properly anymore and ordinarily, wonkiness wasn’t something she could tolerate.
Tucking the blanket around herself, she headed for the stairs, but stopped by the front door. Her backpack was set down by the jambs. He’d obviously brought it in for her, not that she’d noticed.
Even though there was a temptation to leave the thing where he had last put it, she picked the backpack up and carried it to the second floor. As she got to the top landing, she looked into Gerry’s study. Seeing the desk where he had done his work was a reminder there were things she had to take care of. Obligations. Loose ties.
Phone calls to make. A few personal things to pick up at the lab.
And then there was her car in that parking lot.
The former she could maybe leave behind, but her car she was going to need.
In her bathroom, she dropped the backpack on the counter and started her shower. She should probably eat something. But God, that felt like an insurmountable obstacle course of what to choose, where to find it—and then, fuck, the chewing.
Too much like work.
Under the spray, she tried not to think about what she and Murhder had done in that hospital room’s shower. And when she stepped back out and toweled off, she tried not to think about everything she had just washed off of herself.
Little by little, she was losing pieces of him. Of them together. Of her happiness.
She was familiar with this phenomenon. After Gerry had died, she had monitored the gradual forgetting. Like the first night she was able to sleep through. Or the first day she didn’t think of him at all. Or the first week she went without tearing up.
This was going to happen with Murhder, what she had refused to let him do to her mind on a oner occurring anyway because of time’s passing.
But at least now it wasn’t going to be a complete erase.