doesn’t try to answer. He just holds me, because somehow, he understands.
I’m crying again, and I’m so ashamed.
Cat saw me like this. And now Snow.
I’m weak and broken.
And that’s the real truth that torments me.
The real reason I’m so angry and alone.
“Why didn’t he love me?” I cry.
Snow puts his heavy hands on my shoulders and looks me in the face. His eyes are pale blue, clear as ice, but there’s no coldness in them.
“When you become a man worthy of love, you will receive love,” he tells me.
I search his battered face, trying to understand.
“I was alone,” Snow says. “No parents, no family. They called me Snow because I fought so cold. But I had anger inside me, too. An old boxer took me in. His name was Meyer. He was hard on me, and he was good to me, too. He showed me friendship. Love came later when I met Sasha. I saw her for what she was: a treasure to be protected at all costs. To have her, I had to become the man she deserved.”
“I don’t know how to do that,” I admit.
“It’s always a step into the dark,” Snow says. “No one knows the path they haven’t walked before.”
I look at Snow’s face, cut and swollen from my fists.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“Don’t be sorry,” Snow says. “Be better.”
Come As You Are — Imaginary Future
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I wait outside Cat’s Security Systems class for a period of time that feels equally like minutes and hours.
I keep thinking of my father’s house, burned to the ground.
It was the only address my mother knew. The only place we lived in Moscow.
If she’s still alive, if she ever tries to send another postcard . . . it will have nowhere to go.
Of course, I don’t really believe any postcard is coming.
It’s been far too long for that.
Why did my father choose to die by fire? After all the pain he suffered, I can’t imagine that anything terrified him more. Was he trying to prove to himself at the end that he wasn’t a coward?
How could he destroy the only home I’ve ever known—the only reminders I had of our old life, the few good memories.
The one blow we struck against the Gallos was to burn their ancestral home.
Now he burned ours too, as if to wreak revenge upon ourselves.
I don’t understand him. I never did.
I hear the scraping of chairs and shuffle of feet as class dismisses.
I step to the side to let the exiting students pass, watching for Cat.
When she spots me, her eyes get bigger than ever, and her mouth opens in shock. I really must look like shit.
“Dean!” she gasps. “What happened?”
For me, the opposite effect occurs.
The moment I lay eyes on Cat, the maelstrom of sorrow, anger, and resentment swirling inside of me finally eases. I throw my arms around her and hug her hard against me, pressing my face into her thick black curls smelling my favorite scent in the world—the scent of this girl.
“What’s going on?” she says, pulling back just a little to look up into my face.
“Something happened today. I had to come tell you.”
“Tell me what?” She says.
“That I love you, Cat. I fucking love you.”
“What!” Cat squeaks, sounding as terrified as the very first time we spoke.
I laugh and then I kiss her, harder than I ever have before.
18
Cat
Dean and I skip the rest of the afternoon of classes. We go up to the Bell Tower and Dean spends two hours exercising his aggression on my body, before we lay under a pile of blankets just holding each other.
It’s freezing in the drafty tower, but Dean’s body heat is always more than enough for both of us.
He tells me everything, from the moment he stepped foot in the Chancellor’s office, to his encounter with Snow, to his relief at seeing me afterward.
I barely recognize this man who speaks to me with such raw honesty. Just last year Dean wanted to kill me for witnessing him in an emotional moment. Now he tells me all his darkest fears and deepest regrets.
“He died alone,” Dean says, his deep voice vibrating against my ear as I lay my head on his chest. “I can’t help but feel I’m bound to do the same. Everyone leaves me, Cat. They always have.”
“I don’t think your father wanted to die,” I murmur. “I just don’t think he knew how to live.”
“I don’t want to be like him,” Dean says. “A prisoner