Rattled, he pulls away from me, walking a short distance down the street. I step after him, still trying to get my idea out. “Our love is strong enough to rip holes in the fabric of reality. We’ve changed the course of worlds, we’ve taken on themultiverse and pulled it apart. August, why wouldn’t we be able to do this?”
“Because… because this is madness. We’re a time bomb, August, not a solution.”
“You’re wrong. We’re the one anomaly in this collapse. All this time we’ve been going where the universe blows us. But not anymore. Now it’s time for us to push back. Backs to the wall, nowhere else to go, ‘Blaze of Glory’ style.” My fingers grasp his. I take a hand to his cheek and force his eyes to meet mine. “This time, we don’t stop.”
“Don’t stop?” He knows exactly what I’m saying. I can see it in his eyes. “August, if you’re talking about what I think you’re talking about?—”
“You know I am.”
His head shakes against the palm of my hand. “That’s not science. That’s not something we can control. What if we make things even worse? What if we burn alive, along with everyone else? What if we find one of those other dimensions, smash into it, start this whole process in another direction, and wipe them all out too? Take a new multiverse, wreck it all?”
I hit him with my hard data: “We won’t.”
“You can’t know that. This could spell catastrophe.” He turns away and, dropping his hands to his hips, he lets out a long breath. Just for a second, I think he might be considering it. Then he rebounds softly with, “And that’s not you. You’re the Good August. I’m the Bad August. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation.”
“No. No, that’s where you’re wrong. Didn’t you see me shoot those guys just now?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Would you have shot them if they weren’t literally you?”
“Yes! I’m very bad! I’m a very bad man!”
“Slayer, you’re not.” He laughs gently, then his voice drops back to sad. “You’re loving and desperate, and gorgeous and brilliant. But I know you won’t do this—maybe put even more universes on the line. The things that could happen to these people?—”
“If you really believe that, then you still don’t know me. Even after everything we’ve been through. But I think I get it now.” I pull his two hands over my heart. “I’m justAugust. I’m good AugustandI’m bad August. August who’s sweet, and August who’s abrasive. I’m August who’s stupid, and August who’s clever. August who fucks up sometimes, and who tries his best to fix it. And that’s okay. All of it. I’m August. And so are you. And there’s nothing wrong with any of it. If you could stop hating yourself for five minutes, you might realise you’re the one trying to convince me not to do this. What does that make you?”
He averts his eyes, looking for a way to deny what’s happening right in front of us.
So I tell him, “You know what’s funny? I spent years feeling guilty about the mistakes I’d made. About Jon, about spending all the inheritance, about not going to university. But then you came along. And you had fucked up on such a monumental scale that all other fuckups in human history pale in comparison.”
“Thanks for that,” he mutters, colour rising to his cheeks.
I lift his hands a little higher, dropping a kiss on his fingertips. “But you didn’t give up. You fought on and on. You never gave up because your heart is good and pure. And when you had more right to be a more horrible, nasty, miserable person than anyone else who ever lived, you chose to spend your last mortal days making me feel better for the tiny, inconsequential things I’d done. Saying all those amazing things to me. Holding me and making me feel like I mattered. You’re not bad. You have so much capacity for love. We both do. We all do. Don’t give up on me now, because I’m not giving up on you.”
His hands wrap tighter around mine, and he comes closer, chest to chest. “Slayer, if I could, I’d smash through that wall with you right now, and go on and on, let destruction chase us across the stars. I’d throw it all in for another minute with you. You know that. But I don’t believe you’re going to be okay with mass destruction if this goes wrong.”
I place a slow and gentle kiss on his lips, then meet his eyes. “This can’t be destructive, what we have. I don’t believe that. I know destructive. I know loss. I know giving up, and I know feeling hopeless. I know when the universe has a miss and your whole world falls apart because of it. But chaos doesn’t have to be destructive. Chaos is beautiful. You and me, we’re the patterns in the clouds of Jupiter. We’re the snow falling on Enceladus. We’re the perfect accident of a beautiful constellation stretching across the night sky. We are the beauty that comes of chaos.”
His eyes flutter closed, so I kiss him again, even as his shoulders dip, as the strength of the fight leaves him. “That’s beautiful.”
“It’s true. Every word of it. You can’t tell me we’re inconsequential. You can’t tell me that what we have isn’t sublime—that it isn’t a force powerful enough to reshape the universe. Our lives, everything we went through, what’s coming for us now… We can fight this. Together. I believe we’re stronger than all of it. I don’t just love you, August. It’s beyond that. Come with me. I want you to take this leap with me. Maybe we are impossible. But that doesn’t make us any less right.”
He returns my kiss so ardently it makes my heart ache. “There’s nothing I want more than to be with you. I never had a thing to believe in until I met you. You’ve taken every broken piece of me and pulled me back together, better now than I was before.” His long eyelashes squeeze, hiding his thoughts, hiding the struggle within. Until he opens his eyes again, piercing andbright. My heart leaps with the small nod he gives me. “I believe in you so completely. I’ve always known you were brilliant. And to see you now, saying these gorgeous things… I don’t care what comes next. So long as I get to spend this with you, it can be the end of existence.”
“It won’t be. I promise you. You’re the one thing I wouldn’t risk.” I almost kill the poor man, throwing my whole body at him to kiss him and kiss him again.
He stumbles, then finds his footing, holding my face and my fate in the palm of his hands. “And you’re the one thing I wouldn’t risk. I believe in you. I believe in us.”
I lean into his touch, feeling more complete and certain than I have in all my life. “Then please, will you come cause some chaos with me?”
His own smile widens to match mine. “There’s nothing in this universe I’d rather do.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
GOOD AUGUST
POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME
I’m not ending the universe with him in some shitty alley. I lead him back up the street to the posh-looking hotel we walked past.
