June’s staying in a penthouse across from the Elector’s suites on the top floor of their hotel. As we enter the space, the security system greets us both by our names. I watch the light shift against June’s back as she removes her heels and walks on quiet feet toward her bedroom.
I lean against the kitchen counter and let myself admire the main chamber, trying not to think about June changing out of her dress in the other room. Our President definitely spares no expense in making sure foreign leaders here have a full sense of how well Antarctica’s doing.
I walk over to the long glass windows overlooking the black ocean. I’m still staring at the view when June emerges from her room.
Her hair is down now in soft waves against her face, and she has changed into a comfortable wrap that drapes silken against her figure. Her eyes are liquid dark in the night, as mesmerizing as I remember.
Hell. She’s still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.
Was I ever able to relax in a room with her? Or was I always like this—my heart beating rapidly in her presence, every sense of mine attentive to her and ignorant of everything else?
She seems to notice my sudden discomfort, and for a moment, we just stand stiffly apart, not knowing what to say.
“You look nice,” I end up blurting out. Immediately, I regret it. Could I have thought of something dumber to say? Probably not.
She clears her throat, unsure what to say back. I curse inwardly at myself. Way to make her uncomfortable.
To my relief, she flashes me a small smile. “Thanks,” she replies. “Always the flatterer, even when things are going wrong.”
Another shard of a memory comes back to me in that moment. We’re sitting side by side, passing a bottle of cheap sea-grape wine between us and squinting at its sour, salty aftertaste. I don’t know who she is, and I don’t know what I say to her. But she’s so beautiful and strange. Our lips touch.
The memory fades, and I find myself back in June’s hotel room, blinking at my recollection. Beside me, June tilts her head curiously.
“What did you just think about?” she asks.
I hesitate, then look down. “I remembered something,” I reply. “About us, before.”
At that, she brightens. “A memory?” she asks. “What was it?”
I glance at her with a bashful smile. “The first time we kissed.”
June’s lips quirk, and a little laugh escapes her. She looks away too, out the windows at the black ocean and the lights of the city. “Do they come back to you in pieces like that? Your memories?”
“Yes. Specific things will trigger new memories. Most of the time, they’re just fragments. I remember kissing you, for example, and the bottle of wine we were passing between us. But I don’t remember exactly where we were, or who else might have been nearby then. I don’t know what I said to you, or you to me. I just remember… the feeling of being near you. As if it were from a different lifetime.”
June closes her eyes for a brief moment, as if soaking in the memory herself, before she looks at me again. “We were on the streets of Lake, and you didn’t know who I was yet. I didn’t know you were Day. It was right before everything unraveled.”
Before everything unraveled between us. Now I remember. It was before my mother died, before the Republic arrested me. It was the beginning of being forever linked with her.
I turn back to her. “But nothing’s unraveling for you now, yeah? You seem really happy these days,” I say.
She smiles a little. “I am,” she replies. “Tess is still doing well. You know she’s been promoted to head doctor of her hospital? I see her often. Pascao and I hang out constantly. Life has settled into a nice routine, and it made me realize how much I missed having that.” She nods out at the city. “Some sense of balance. Of normalcy after the war. Isn’t that strange?”
Normalcy. Routine. I find myself smiling at her, content to know that she was content. Then I wonder if my presence in her life—and all the chaos it currently has—would disrupt all of that for her.
Maybe I’ve always been the reason for the unraveling of her life.
She looks at me. “And yours?” she asks. “What has your life been like?”
I shrug and look away, reluctant to break this peaceful moment with my problems. “Good,” I reply. “Great, actually. Sometimes I still can’t believe I live here, in luxury. I’ll never have to spend another day fighting to survive in the streets.”
June hears the hesitation in my answer. “But you’re fightingsomething,” she says.
For a moment, everything in me resists telling her. But June steps closer to me and forces me to face her head-on, then crosses her arms. “Tell me,” she says, her eyes dark and warm.
Her presence is overwhelming in every sense. I have to tear my gaze away from hers in order to think straight.
Finally, with a deep breath, I start to tell her. I mention the missions I’ve been running lately in Ross City, the man I’ve been hunting down. I tell her about the hierarchies of this place’s skyscraper tiers, how the Leveling divides the classes, how even though it’s all more fluid than anything in the Republic, it’s still as imperfect as anything else in this world. I tell her about the murders of anyone who has been unable to pay their debts to Dominic Hann, and the seedy underground of the Undercity.
