“I’m generally suspicious,” she says. “I don’t trust anyone. Ever. As a rule.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you really mean that, or are you exaggerating to make a point?”
“I never exaggerate.”
“What about Clara?”
“Clara’s mind doesn’t belong to her,” she says, looking away. “I can’t trust her, not even if I want to.”
This leaves me a little stunned.
It hits me, with sudden clarity, how isolated Rosabelle must feel all the time. It’s no wonder she doesn’t speak to people. She comes from a place where everything she says is recorded and dissected. I hadn’t realized that she needed to police herself around her own sister. It had never occurred to me, until just now, that there was no one in the world she could freely talk to.
No one she could trust.
I still don’t know what kind of hell she lived through on the Ark. I don’t know why she first showed up here with all those bruises on her body.
Standardized torture, Warner had called it.
I can’t wait to murder these people.
Suddenly, the words I say next mean more than they ever did. They feel heavier to me. Revolutionary.
“But you trust me,” I say to her.
Even with a few feet between us, I sense Rosabelle stiffen. She turns her face away from me, from the moonlight. “You’re different,” she says.
A fucking firework goes off in my chest.
“Different how?” I ask, sounding calmer than I feel.“Please be specific. I’m fishing for compliments. I’d prefer your answer in essay format.”
Rosabelle cants her head. A band of light falls across her face, illuminating her lips. She smiles softly and I experience a minor heart attack. “You know,” she says, “sometimes I think there might be something wrong with you.”
Wow.
My disappointment is real and stunning. A little embarrassing. I would not look at myself in the mirror right now.
I take a tight breath. “I have to be honest, Rosabelle, that was not the answer I was hoping for.”
She laughs softly beside me and I have another minor heart attack. “You don’t count,” she says, finally putting me out of my misery. She turns her eyes up to the night sky. “There’s no one in the world like you.”
The effect these words have on me is a little alarming. I feel dislocated in my own body. Something dangerous detonates inside of me.
I release a breath, feeling shaken.
“You’re really trying to kill me tonight,” I say quietly. “I thought you didn’t want me to die.”
She turns to me, wearing my hat, and smiles.
Fuck.
“Look,” she says, “I just think there’s a high chance the situation at the hospital isn’t as bad as they want you to think it is.”
And it’s like being pushed face-first into the snow.
“Right,” I say, emerging from my own head. I force myselfup, onto my feet, suddenly fighting for air. I do another quick check beyond the alley, but I feel blind. I need to get away from her. Stay away from her.
Marry her, maybe.
