“You don’t know,” I echo, the words splintering in my throat.
I feel like the ground has cracked open beneath my feet, and I’m free-falling.
Silence stretches between us. Suffocating. Raw. I’m desperately, irrevocably in love with him, and he’s telling me hedoesn’t knowwhether it’s over.
“I tried,” he says, his features straining as he slowly shakes his head, as if that mere act exhausts him. “I thought I could fix the system from the inside. Tear it down piece by piece, protect as many Mods as I could. But all I’ve managed to do is watch people get destroyed.”
My heart clenches with pain, and I can no longer hold back the tears. They escape, spilling down my cheeks.
Cross looks down at his hands as if he doesn’t recognize them. “I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired of pretending this world is salvageable. If I stay here one more second, I’ll lose whatever the fuck is left of myself.”
“Please,” I implore him. “Just give them a chance.”
“I don’t belong there,” he says simply. “I’ll never belong there.”
I can barely see him through the sheen of tears, but I feel his pain, his exhaustion.
“Wren…” His voice shakes. “Come with me,” he begs. “Please.”
The last time we were in this position, I was the one begginghim.Pleading with him to come with me. And he turned around and left me.
“I can’t.”
A sob catches in my throat. Then, as if the sky itself feels my agony, it suddenly starts to rain. Not a drizzle, either. Rain falls over us in a steady rhythm, soaking my hair, making the rocks beneath our feet slick.
His expression scares me. There’s something…broken in it.
As moisture clings to the chiseled planes of his face and slides down his throat, he finally wrenches his gaze off me.
“Then I guess this is it,” he mutters.
“Yeah,” I whisper, my heart shattering to fragments. “I guess it is.”
Chapter 29
I don’t say a word on the flight back. Everything feels hollow and pointless. I sit in the cockpit and stare out into the abyss. Every now and then I wipe away a tear that breaks free. Gray doesn’t comment on it. At least not until we return to the Dagger. Before I can duck through the air lock, he tugs my arm back, stopping me.
“You all right?”
I open my mouth, but no sound escapes. My throat is too clogged.
“No,” I croak, and then the tears come in full force.
It’s humiliating. I don’t cry in front of other people. Uncle Jim never said it out loud, but I know he viewed tears as a sign of weakness, and I suppose I never wanted him to view me as weak.
But I can’t stop those tears now. A dam of emotion has broken, causing sobs to rack my body. I feel like a vital part of me has been stripped away.Thisis why I never cared about relationships before. Why I never put myself out there to love or be loved. Love comes with vulnerability and desperation and that terrifying awareness of how fragile it is.
Gray pulls me into his arms, holding me tight. It reminds me of the morning I killed Bryce, one of the recruits in the Program. He did the same thing then, hugging me, telling me it was going to beokay. And just like last time, the tears slowly subside. My shoulders stop shuddering. A feeling of numbness settles over me, replacing the agony.
He gazes down at me. “It’s over with you two?”
I draw a shaky breath, jerking my head in a nod.
He tugs a strand of hair that’s fallen loose from my ponytail, smooths it away from my wet cheek, and tucks it behind my ear. “I know it hurts now, but it’s for the best.”
No, it’s not for the fuckingbest.
I only just found Cross, foundWolf,and now I’m just supposed to…lose him?
