“Go public with the news that I’m not there anymore. I’m not in the country.”
“You—what? How did you get out?”
“I’m safe. I can’t share where I am.” He lowered his voice. “Tell everyone I’m not there anymore. And give the phone to Claire.”
She hesitated, and he added, “Please, Gavi. Just this once, with no strings attached.”
“All right.” To her credit this time, she didn’t fish for more details. “Here’s Claire.”
Her voice abruptly turned distant, and a second later, Claire’s came on strong and clear. “Winter?”she said.
Relief flooded through him. “Claire,” he muttered, looking at Sydney. “Don’t kill me.”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t,” she snapped. “Where the hell are you? You’re not in the country anymore?”
“Don’t say a word out loud,” Winter replied. “But I need you to send my plane to an airfield.”
23Love on a Dead-End Street
The clock on the nightstand, which read 10:30P.M., was an old-fashioned one, which meant the ticking now sounded overwhelming in the silence of the room. Sydney spent the first hour pacing back and forth, peering through the window at the back alley of the hotel every few cycles.
“The gate’s locked in the back,” Winter said to her on one of the cycles.
“I know,” she muttered.
But she kept checking anyway. She looked at her phone, waiting for a message from Tems, some warning for them to leave, some signal from Sauda. But there was nothing. Claire had gotten Winter’s message, had kept it secret. Now all they could do was hope that the plane would be there for them tomorrow. All they could do was wait. As the night deepened, Sydney ran out of things to check, and her mind settled at last on what she was dreading.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. All she could hear in the silence was the crunch of metal as Niall’s car flipped over, the scream that ripped from her throat as Niall looked at her with a dazed, bloody face, the explosion that threw her off her feet. Her ears still felt like they were ringingfrom the force of the blast. In the darkness, she felt like the world around her was still spinning, careening out of her control.
“Sydney.”
She realized her eyes were closed, and opened them to see Winter sitting beside her, the weak light from the window painting stripes across him, his face pointed at her in concern.
“Hey,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“Hey,” he replied.
He didn’t ask if she was okay, and she leaned in his direction, grateful he understood.
He did the same lean, although she wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. Still, neither of them touched shoulders. They were careful to stay apart, their bodies so used to keeping distance between them.
“After I lost my brother,” he said slowly, “I realized that maybe I’d been anticipating losing him my entire life. That was why I felt so afraid every time he left on a trip.”
Sydney studied his face. “Like he might never come back.”
Winter looked at her. “Have you ever missed a person even while they’re still next to you? Like you’re waiting for their absence someday, so you try desperately to hang on to the moment, so much so that you can barely exist in the present with them?”
She knew exactly what he meant. “Yes,” she answered.
He nodded absently, as if his mind were somewhere else. “That was how I felt whenever I was with my brother. Like he was gone already. Like I already knew what would happen to him.”
His words hit true. It was how she’d felt when her mother was still alive, when they’d sit together by the river to watch the freight trains, or take walks together to the grocery store.This will pass,she remembered thinking at the time.She will be gone someday.And the thought would send a pang of missing through her. She’d felt that same fear whenever Niall trained her for a new mission, like that would be the last time theyever spoke. She’d felt it when Niall had announced his retirement, the inevitable realization that, someday, Niall wouldn’t be there for her anymore. And she’d felt it when she and Winter had strolled through Kew Gardens at the end of their last mission together, knowing that their lives were going to take them in opposite directions.
She had spent her entire life missing people who were still beside her.
“I know we’re not alone,” she said softly. “But I feel like it.”
“I know,” Winter replied. Here, in the shadows and highlights of midnight, he looked like someone not entirely real, the glow from the neon signs outside the window painting his skin in a pattern of colors.
