His hands drop from my shoulders. He takes a step back, and I can practically see him running through options, deciding how much to tell me.
“Why are you asking?”
“Because I deserve to know.” I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly aware of how vulnerable I feel in this room that isn’t mine. “Last night, you brought me back in time with you for multiple loops. You said you’d never brought someone with you before.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“That means I don’t remember all the other times you’ve used it on me.” My brain is working through the pieces now, connecting dots I didn’t know existed. “I just appeared in a new timeline without knowing I’d...”
I trail off, the word catching in my throat.
Died.
“It started at the Hydra trial, right? You saved me during the trial, and afterward you were so…” I stop to rethink. “You kept touching my face and my arms, checking to see if I was solid.”
“Four times.”
The words hit me like a sledgehammer.
“What?”
Logan moves to sit on the edge of his bed, his elbows braced on his knees. “You died four times in the Hydra trial before I found a timeline where you survived.”
Four times.
I died four times during the Hydra trial, and I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember the pain, the fear, or the moment everything went dark. I just remember waking up with Logan braced above me, looking at me like I was a corpse come back to life.
Because I sort of was. To him, at least.
“How many other times have you reset things? Changed outcomes? Saved me from a disaster I didn’t know happened?”
Logan laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. I really do.”
His knuckles turn white where his fingers are laced, and when he finally speaks, his voice is detached, like he’s reading a casualty report about someone else’s war.
“The Forge Night party at the Drowned Tower,” he starts. “I went back four times before I found a version where you didn’t expose your electricity to the entire school when Alessandraconfronted you outside the bathroom. I watched you drown two times during the Lampades attack. And when I threw the dagger at you?—”
“You mean when you almost killed me and I somehow caught the dagger even though I’ve never caught anything in my life?”
“You didn’t catch it the first time. Or the second.” His jaw tightens. “I went back until you did.”
The memory replays in my mind—the dagger flying toward me, the terror, the impossible way my hand snatched it from the air like I’d been training for years. I thought it was adrenaline, or instinct, or a latent Jedi ability I didn’t know I had.
Turns out it was Loganrewinding realityuntil I didn’t die.
“But it doesn’t matter, because it wasn’t real,” he continues. “I made sure none of it was real.”
“It does matter.” I cross the room to stand in front of him. “You’ve been watching me die over and over again and then just... pretending it never happened?”
“What was I supposed to do?” The last word splinters, his voice fraying at the edges. “Say, ‘Hey, Jade, you died thirty seconds ago, but I rewound time, so now you’re fine?’ How would that have helped you?”
“I don’t know. But at least I wouldn’t be walking around with gaps in my reality.”
“There are no gaps.” He’s on his feet now, moving to the window. “Every timeline I create flows seamlessly. You never feel the difference because there isn’t one for you.”
“But there’s a difference for you.”
