Later that same night, he got a call from his father.
He woke from a fitful sleep to see the ID on his phone. Hesitated.
The number rang for a while, went silent. Then rang again.
Winter sat there and stared at his father’s name. He could imagine the entire conversation, knew that it must be about the book, could see in his mind his father’s cold eyes, his cruel face. Even so, everything in him—the once-obedient son, the ashamed child, the lonely boy—screamed to pick it up, to answer in spite of everything, because a son was supposed to pick up for his father.
But this time, he didn’t. He stayed there, his hand trembling, his jaw set, and let the phone ring. Let it go silent again. As it did, he thought of Sydney and let the memory of her give him strength.
Sometimes you didn’t have to let people back into your life, to absorb all the cruelty of the world. Sometimes you didn’t have to open your heart. Sometimes it was okay to just let them go.
So Winter gathered his courage, put his phone away, and let his father go.
A month passed. He still hadn’t heard from Sydney.
“You haven’t been eating,” Dameon told him as they lounged in the living room of Winter’s home.
November had arrived in earnest, and a steady rain pelted the windows. Winter looked out at the soaking world and shrugged. “I’m okay,” he said.
Dameon gave him a skeptical look. He hadn’t asked details about what happened with Panacea after their harrowing flight home, but Winter could see the questions imprinted in his friend’s eyes.
“How areyou?” he asked.
“Well enough.” Dameon leaned back on the couch. “I don’t know how you deal with all the media these days. I still have nightmares.”
“I’m sorry.” Winter looked down and ran a hand through his hair. “They’ve stopped trying to interview you, though. Right?”
“It’s quieted down. New phone helped.”
“It wasn’t supposed to go like this.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think you expected any of that to happen.”
Winter laughed a little, then shook his head as Dameon regarded him with a careful eye.
“How’s Sydney?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Winter replied. Dameon might have uncovered some of their secrets, but he wasn’t meant to get more, and Winter found himself folding back in again, protecting her as much as he could. “I haven’t heard from her since we returned.”
Dameon nodded. “So that’s why you’re not eating.”
“I’m eating just fine.”
Dameon studied him with a thoughtful expression for a while. Then he leaned forward. “When you first agreed to work with Panacea,” he said slowly, “you hadn’t met Sydney yet.”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“You risked your life for them. Why would you agree to do something like that?”
Winter turned the question over in his head. It was a very Dameon question, the kind that got under his skin and stayed there, seeking the truth.
“Because they needed me,” he decided to say.
Dameon searched his gaze.
“I wanted to be their answer,” he explained. “I wanted to do something important, without it being broadcast all over the world. I wanted to do something that no one will ever know about.”
Dameon didn’t reply to that. Instead, he leaned forward and regarded Winter carefully. “Do you remember,” he said, “when we first got together?”
