How many worlds would I burn through to be with him?
Infinite worlds, infinite life, infinite Augusts…
The greater my desire grows, the more I worry I might actually do it.
I haven’t come down yet. Not like I might have if this were just sex. I’m still in its grip, pleasure racing through my veins, his arms and his body the sunshine on my back, warming me through.
But the thing is, I don’t want to come down.
Not ever again.
I’m not even sure I can.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
BAD AUGUST
IN THESE ARMS
It takes a long time for me to let go of him. I’d happily stay here like this forever, even awkwardly balanced on a too-small desk, hoping somewhere in the back of my mind that we haven’t stained the varnish.
We’re closer to the next world now, undoubtedly. I have no idea what it’s like outside this room, but I’m genuinely impressed that August’s friends aren’t back already, banging on the door and asking where their portal is. Yet I know we did something. It’s not just that strange glow we created—the charged particles—whatever we’re doing to the fabric of existence around us. I can feel something more. An energy shift.
It scares me that we can do this—that I’m letting him do it. He’s loving in a way I’ve never experienced, and I’m addicted to him. I can’t stop myself any more than I could halt the explosion of a supernova. But I’m terrified he’s going to wake up one morning, see what we’ve done, and hate me for it.
It’s not in August to destroy. It’s not in him to turn a cold eye on a scene the way I’ve done, over and over. The August I’ve come to know will probably turn this all inward.
But I’m in too deep, and I’m never leaving him again. Not unless he asks me to. Not unless that grim day comes when hefinds himself riddled with guilt, and all my love is no longer enough.
I’ll leave that for him to decide.
It takes us a while to get things looking decent, several furtive trips to the bathroom upstairs. But we do, then we sit and we wait. And wait.
I’m pleased they’d think we need three hours.
August’s stretched out on the floor, head on my lap, staring up at the ceiling. I could look at him all day. He’s precious. Even if his features are mine, they’re not. His expressions are all his own, his moods, the way they shift his features in ways they’d never shift mine.
My fingers find a tendril of his hair to toy with, and he smiles up at me. I’d give immortality a thousand times over for one more day of this peace.
I lean down and kiss his forehead. He catches me on the way back up, pulls me down for one against his lips. “What are you thinking about?”
“I’m thinking that you can’t possibly realise what you’ve done.”
“Yeah, I do.” Words so casually spoken. “I’ve chosen you.”
My heart’s somewhere between gold-plated and dropped on the butcher’s shop floor.
Then he jokes, “I hope we don’t decide to part ways next week. That would be awkward.”
His head tilts towards me with my laugh. “I don’t think that’s very likely to happen.”
The distance returns to his eyes, fixed on the crack we put in the wall. “So, if we get through to the next world, and there is no particle accelerator again, we wipe it out too?”
“And maybe the next. And on and on until there isn’t a thing left. In theory. Not until we reach the end of the line.”
“What’s that?”
“I have no idea. Maybe Shashi’s fledgling universe. Maybe… Who knows?”
