“We have time,” he protests. “We can fix this. Unchain me, I’ll help you?—”
“We never had time, August. It’s moving on without us. You and me, we can’t be in the same place without destroying this world.”
“No. That’s bullshit. It can’t be that bad.”
I drop a finger over his lips to quiet him, so different to the last time I did it. “I just wanted to be near you. You bring me so much peace. So much happiness. Just by being close to me. That was selfish. But I am selfish. I’ve been a horrible person, more horrible than you know. I don’t deserve you, and I don’t deserve the…” I want to say love. I do. I don’t know the word for it if it’s not love. So I only tell him, “You’re too good for me. And I want you to know what I’ve done. All of it. So you’ll understand why I’m doing this. And what an awful person you’re wasting your time with.”
“I don’t care.” He pulls away from the headboard, locking a leg around me, trying to hold me to him. “I don’t care if it was your maths or your formula that did it. I don’t care if you haven’t told me all the details. August, I don’t care.I don’t care. You’re good. You’re good, and I won’t ever believe otherwise.”
I drop my hand to his leg, wanting more than anything to throw my arms around him, to cry against his chest.
But it’s all false, whatever affection he might show me now. He won’t want me soon.
“What I’ve done, it’s so much worse than anything you can imagine. I want to prepare you. But there’s nothing I can say that will do that. So…” I have to get it out quickly, before my need for his approval gets the better of me. “When I came to you, when I met you in the street, that wasn’t the first time I’d jumped worlds. I lied to you from that very first day.”
His breath catches, dancing on his open lips, soundless.
“I’ve done it before, countless times. Hundreds of times. I’ve been living in this loop for years. But it’s not a loop, not really. It’s a new universe every time.”
He doesn’t say a word.
“I have three weeks. Each time I hop worlds, it’s three weeks. I search, and I try to find the answer, the way to get back. I’ve done everything. I’ve done it over, and over, and over. I’ve found other quantum physicists. I’ve pleaded my case, begged them, held guns to their heads and made them work for me. I’ve been all over the world. I’ve met so many people. And I’ve destroyed them all.”
His head shakes, my vision of him obscured by my tears flowing fast and free. “Every time, it’s the same. I come here, I search, and I try, then three weeks later, it’s all fallen apart. The world dies. Everything breaks. It must start in some distant part of the universe, and it falls away, piece by piece until one day, the final day, the portal opens. And I go through. Then it starts again. I leave chaos in my wake. I leave death everywhere I set foot.”
My hand, on his leg, crumples into the sheet, desperate for the touch of him, the comfort I have no right to. “I did it. I did it all. It wasn’t ‘some physicist.’ It was me. I set off a chain reaction that ends only in death. Space, those stars, those moons and lonely rovers, all the things you find so beautiful… I rip them apart. I’ve destroyed every planet and every star, life I can’teven conceive of, tentative and miraculous. I’ve taken it and dismantled it.”
He watches me, tears staining his face, but he’s not crying now. His face is horror. Aghast, as I knew it would be. The very vision I abhorred and ran from. The reason for every lie.
“I didn’t mean to do it.” As though that could make any difference. “I made a mistake. One stupid mistake, driven by pain, by grief. Our parents died, then when Sarah died too…” It sounds so pathetic. So small. Such a hopeless explanation for all the things I’ve done. “I think I wanted to believe it was all theoretical. As though I’d have some distance, or it didn’t matter. It was just calculations, numbers, an experiment. So I did it. And August…”
I pull my hand away from him, completely unworthy to touch him or be near him. But he locks his leg around me, and he holds on tight, while the whole thing comes out on a mess of tears. “I’m so terrified. Of me, and of what I’ve done. What I’m capable of. I can’t take this back. I can barely even let myself think about the enormity of it. I just keep going, acting like it’s nothing. Because I can’t survive if I don’t push this down.”
My hands clench into fists lest they take hold of him again. “I have fucked up on a scale that literally no other person in existence can comprehend. And now I’m sentenced to watch myself destroy these worlds one after another. Every second of every existence, every heartbeat, every tear and raindrop and scatter of stardust, one miracle after another, I watch them fall apart. And it’s all my fault. And there is nothing I can do about it.”
My hand drops to his chest, frenzied, clenching so that it hurts, begging for his understanding. “I want to put them back. It’s all I want. It’s all I’ve lived for. I’ve tried so hard. But it can’t be done.”
“August…” His head drops to the side, tears trailing down his cheeks. “Please, I want to help you.”
I let myself take a shaking hand to his cheek, the feel of him leaning into it like hot tar dousing my insides. “You did help me. More than you’ll ever know. Meeting you has changed everything.”
I drop my forehead to his, breathe him in on hitching breaths, then press a kiss to his brow.
He whispers, “Don’t leave me.”
I hold him against my chest. “Me being here is what’s causing the problem. It must be. It follows me.”
His head shakes against my body. “You can’t leave. You just said the portal won’t open until it’s all destroyed. You have nowhere to go. We have time.”
“No. Not this time.” I kiss his forehead again, then make myself meet his eyes. “This time, I’m not going to wait for it to open. This time… I’m going first.”
He stares back at me, trying to read my expression, while my heart sinks deep. “I don’t understand. Are you…” But he does understand. I see it dawn on him—the revulsion and the anger. “No. Let me go.” He rips at his binds, so I hold his hands back to stop him from hurting himself while he cries, “No. No, August, no.” He slams his hands down so hard trying to escape that it scares me, and I grip him twice as tight.
“Please stop. There’s nothing you can do. Believe me, I know. I’ve killed so many people now. August, I’ve killed billions,billions, over and over. And I’ve tried so hard to put them back. I thought if I figured out how to tear it up, I could figure out how to fix it. That with enough time, I could put it back together. But I see now. It’s over. I’m not having any more death.”
“You can’t do this,” he pleads.
“I have to. I switched off. For so long, I stopped feeling. I just worked, and wandered, and let it keep on… but you…” My fingerslides down his beautiful face. “You put all the feelings back in me. And I can’t face what I’ve done. So this is the last time. This is all the good I can do, to try to make up for the bad.” I take his face with both hands, and promise him, “You’re not going to die. You’re going to live. You’re not going to be my mistake.”
