“After this is over,” he says quietly, “I’m going to move somewhere no one recognizes me. Somewhere small and forgettable. I’ll find a shitty job. I’ll disappear.” He looks back at the road and swallows, then his eyes drift to the mirror. “And if you want to join me… I’d be honored. All of you.”
The car goes silent.
Even Mark seems frozen.
It’s not every day Cassian uses a word likehonored. I think it hits all of us somewhere deep.
Talon’s the first to respond.
“Huh,” he muses. “Nothing stays the same forever, am I right?”
Nathaniel exhales.
“I don’t hate the idea,” he admits.
Talon tilts his head. “You serious?”
Nathaniel nods once. “We can always break the system once we’re dead.”
“I mean, yeah…” Talon huffs a laugh. “That shit’s eternal, right? What’s a couple decades’ delay?”
“Skye could forget all about this jackass, her ex,” Cassian adds.
“Live some quiet life, huh?” Nathaniel supplies. “At least for a while.”
“We could buy new identities… I know a guy who could help,” Talon says. Then he glances at Nathaniel. “Hey, man, maybe you could start practicing again? You’re, like… the most qualified among us. That’s gotta pay decent.”
I swallow hard, because none of this is funny.
And all of it is overwhelming.
A future?
I told Nathaniel last night that it wasn’t meant for us. Now I turn and look at him. He just shrugs.
“One could always try,” he says.
It sounds like he’s replying to Talon, but it’s for me.
Try.
Try.
I… I want to. Of course I want to. But… how?
I turn my face toward the window, needing the cool glass, needing something that isn’t the suffocating weight ofhopesuddenly foisted into my hands.
Outside, the world slides by in strips of muted blue and gray. Low stretches of highway. The shadows of clouds skimming across the asphalt.
When I don’t reply, the conversation dies. They don’t push it, even though Talon’s leg has started bouncing and hasn’t stopped once. Still, time tilts sideways after that.
I stay quiet for the most part.
Worry and hope tangle together in my head until I can’t tell which is which.
We stop once for gas and a bathroom break. Talon threatens to leave Mark in a dumpster as a joke. I’m only eighty percent sure it’s a joke.
By the time the landscape starts changing, my back feels welded to the seat.
