ask him how any of us could possibly be okay in this situation. We’re on the run from IA, trying to take down human traffickers. I escaped from prison and killed a man. Cecily has been abducted into slavery. And I just saw the guy I love with another version of myself. None of that is in any way okay.
I’m some kind of glutton for punishment, so I look at Ben and tell the truth.
“No, I’m not okay.”
His lips press together, a grimace passing over his face, and he reaches for me. I can’t handle that, though, and when he sees me flinch he lets his hand fall to his side.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice a little shaky.
“Is that it?” I ask because sorry doesn’t fix this.
Ben shakes his head. “I just . . . I don’t know . . . it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t be you, and . . .”
He shifts his weight on his feet, and I feel like I should say something—something to bridge the gap between us, or at least something to help him do that.
But I can’t. I just can’t—it’s like I’m waiting for this tidal wave of emotions to crash down over me and carry me away from this conversation.
“Do you remember the time sophomore year when you had that old truck?” he says. It was my first car, a 1968 Ford F-250. “It was in October, I think, and I didn’t have work. I was headed up to Black Mountain Park, and I saw your truck, empty, with steam pouring out of your engine.”
The thing was a manual transmission and it sucked going up hills, even the ones that were lame. It was always stalling out or locking up. I was constantly leaving the truck on the side of the road. That afternoon was one of the reasons I convinced my dad to get rid of it.
“I went over to check it out and see what was wrong,” he continues. “I don’t know what happened, and you had obviously stormed off, so I checked it out. The radiator hose had a leak, so I fused it back together. I even waited a little for you to come back. I told myself I was actually going to talk to you, start a conversation, but then Elijah texted and asked what was taking me so long to get to his house, and I lost my nerve.”
I remember that day. I thought the engine was going to explode, the way the steam was pouring out from under the hood. But when I made my dad take me back that night to check it out, he ruled that it just needed more coolant.
“You fixed my truck?” I ask. It’s weird to think I was so present, for lack of a better word, in his life, when he didn’t exist in mine. “Why?”
“I wanted to help you,” Ben says. “You pulled me out of the ocean and you saved my life. I owed you, and then I realized you were smart and tough and different from everyone else, so I liked you.”
I look into his eyes. They’re dark and sad.
“The decisions I’ve made, they were always about getting home or helping you,” he whispers. Then he adds, “I thought they had you.”
He doesn’t need to add anything else. I get it. I would have flipped out and done something crazy if I thought he was in danger. I did—I followed a guy I barely knew through a portal and into another world.
But that’s the logic of it, and that doesn’t help undo the fact that I was alone and he was comforting someone else.
I think about saying just that, but I don’t get the chance. Ben straightens up and takes a deep breath. “I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I just needed you to know.” Then he steps aside so I can get through the door.
Something about how resigned he is almost breaks me. I feel it in the hollow place in my chest where my heart should be. I want to tell him that of course I’ll forgive him or that we fell in love in the middle of a situation that was worse than this.
But I don’t want to lie.
02:16:38:51
My doppelgänger is awake when I enter her room.
It was Barclay’s idea that I interrogate her, and no one can really argue with him. He’s the one with the investigative knowledge and experience to call the shots—not that I’d admit