CHAPTER18
My chest burns with righteous vindication as I storm away from Reggie (I knew I didn’t like him!), right up until I realize that I can’t see anything under the canopy of trees. The farther I press into the forest, the less moonlight filters through the leaves, and Theo’s long legs are moving quicker than I can keep up with. The only reason I know I’m going in the right direction is because he makes no effort to be quiet.
My side cramps, each breath more painful than the last. The ground slopes up and my legs join the long list of body parts that are in pain. (At this point, it’s everything except three fingers on my right hand.) I’m starting to worry how far Theo’s anger is taking him away from camp when the sound of his footsteps is drowned out by flowing water.
I duck through a thicket of trees and step into a clearing. Squinting, I see the outline of Theo standing on the bank of a small stream, barely there moonlight reflecting off his rigid shoulders.
I take a tentative step forward.
“It’s not a good time to be with me, Wren,” Theo says. There’s an unfamiliar note of warning in his voice.
I exhale a long, slow breath. “Okay.”
He stuffs his fists into his pockets, but not before I realize that he’s shaking. It creates a schism in me, dividing my life into two parts: there is before I saw Theo silently falling apart while trying to keep himself together, and there is after.
“Why are you still here?” he asks after a long stretch of silence. The words scrape painfully against his throat and my heart.
“You don’t have to be alone right now.”
“What if I want to be?” he asks sharply. Impossibly, his gravitational pull only gets stronger. Not even a rescue helicopter could pull me out of here, because I recognize a defense mechanism better than anyone.
“If you want me to go, look me in the eye and tell me to go.”
He turns, and my breath catches. Even in the dark, his eyes simmer with rage and heartbreak. He tips his chin up and holds my gaze.
I’m sure he’s used to people backing down, but I won’t. I pull my shoulders back in the way I’ve seen him do a hundred times. “Tell me to leave, Theo.”
His eyes shutter when I say his name. He turns his head and swallows heavily. “I can’t.” His hoarse voice cracks on the last word, snapping off a piece of my heart in the process.
I cross the distance between us and wrap my arms around him. I press my cheek against his chest and listen to his heartbeat while his body shakes. I hold him tighter, not to keep him from splintering apart, but to let him know I’ll gather the pieces when he does.
“It’s okay,” I whisper.
“It’s not.” His voice is thick with restrained emotion.
Hot tears spill over my cheeks and run down his chest. I hate his family for teaching him that a stiff upper lip is more important than anything else. “It’s okay to not be okay when you’re with me.”
I feel his intake of breath, and then the whole weight of his body at once as his shoulders crumple. He presses his face to the hollow in my neck and shakes. I don’t realize he’s crying until his tears slide over my skin. I cry harder.
The almost-apocalypse robbed me of the fantasy that life will be fair. I’ll never expect that again. But I still don’t understand how a nineteen-year-old with no political aspirations can end up with the weight of a country on his shoulders. Or why I fell in love with someone who only fits into my life when our world is ending. Or how a boy with no parents is supposed to accept that his sister might die, and the people around him won’t let him do anything to help.
I know the world isn’t fair, but I wish it weren’t this emotionally devastating.
I cry with him until my knees buckle and we both end up on the ground, tangled together on damp soil. I rack my brain for the right thing to say, but he speaks first.
“What am I going to do?” he asks at last, repositioning us so that we’re sitting side by side.
I begin turning over possible solutions, sorting through our short list of drastic options. I lean forward and dip my hand in the cold water before unscrewing the lid of one of our bottles and filling it to the brim. I hand it to him.
“Start with a drink” is the only thing I can think to say.
Theo’s fingers brush mine as he accepts the bottle, and thelast inches of me that didn’t hurt, those three fingers on my right hand, ache with painful wanting.
He takes a long sip, then looks at me with a cocked head and a grim smile. “Problem solved,” he says solemnly, and I can’t believe I ever thought I didn’t love him. It was pure denial—like swimming in the ocean and claiming I wasn’t wet.
“We’ll figure something out,” I tell him, because I’d say just about anything to smooth the crease between his eyes. “We’ll make a bigger fire and write a message in the sand and search for food for Victoria. It hasn’t even been a day since the crash. We still have time.”
His gaze sweeps up to the looming mountain. “We need to go over it.”
