Ari
Sam. You are my heart. If you die, I die.
“Will tells me that you still haven’t said a word,” she tells him.
“Is that why you’re here?” he murmurs. “To get me to talk?”
She holds out the glass of water. “First,” she replies, “you need to drink something.”
He refuses at first, suspicious of the liquid, but when she doesn’t move away, his body gets the better of him, and he finds himself turning to the water and accepting it as she lifts the glass to his lips.
His body takes the liquid eagerly, flooding his thirsty limbs. He drains the glass, wishing for more.
“Better?” she asks quietly.
Now she sounds concerned for him. And although he doesn’t answer, the haze that has hung over him since his fitful sleep now lifts a little, and his mind sharpens, quenched partially of its thirst.
“I suppose I can’t be that much worse,” he answers.
Her eyes flicker once again to the corner of the ceiling before returning to him. “Lumines is negotiating with us tomorrow for a prisoner exchange,” she says. “The exchange itself should happen in two days’ time.”
He doesn’t really understand why she’s telling him this. “They sent you here to tell me about their plans for me?” he mutters. “Seems generous.”
“No one sent me,” she says.
It takes him another moment to realize what she means, that this is why she’d glanced at the security cameras before approaching him.
He frowns, more alert now, and his eyes dart to the nearest camera too.
There, he sees that the light on it is red instead of green, and flickering rapidly. The camera is on, but dysfunctional.
When he meets her gaze this time, he sees that behind her resolute exterior is a current of fear and urgency.
“We aren’t being watched?” he whispers.
She puts one hand on each armrest and leans closer. Her nearness sends a shiver through him, and he finds himself wishing his arms weren’t bound.
Sam bends toward him and whispers in his ear.
“You told me once that you wanted to be free.”
He looks quickly at her. At first, he doesn’t think he heard her correctly. “What’s going on?” he murmurs.
She leans so close now that her lips touch his ear.
“Ari, listen carefully.” There’s a slight tremor in her voice.
“Diamond has no plans to hand you back to Lumines. They’re going to kill you at the exchange.
So tomorrow night, I need you to be ready to move.
I’m going to come see you then, do my usual interrogation and check on your health.
When I do, your guards will be changing shifts.
I’m going to leave your hand ties loosened.
When you get the chance, get out of here.
I’ll do everything I can to cover your trail.
Find a way to get out of the country, as fast as you can. Doesn’t matter where.”
A shudder wracks his bones. She is orchestrating something big behind the scenes. “What happens to you when they find me missing?”
“They won’t think you’re missing. They’ll think you’re dead.”
Dead. He imagines her transmuting misleading evidence on the floor—smears of fake blood, a story that Lumines had killed him before he could tell Grand Central anything. A story that will hold, at least for a little while.
She is risking her life, doing this.
“What about you?” he insists again.
“I’ll find my own way. You have to trust me. But you need to move quickly. I haven’t bought us much time. If you get enough of a head start, Lumines will be too distracted by the fall of Grand Central to go after you, and all of them will want to lie low while authorities descend on them.”
The fall of Grand Central. She is moving against them. And in a flash, he understands.
“You found out who killed your mother,” he whispers.
A sheen of tears shines against her eyes. She swallows, quiet for a beat as she seems to gather her strength.
“It was Will,” she whispers back.
Will did it.
Ari suddenly thinks of what she once told him, that she joined Grand Central in order to save her mother, because they were desperate for money. He remembers her pale, withdrawn face in the days after her mother’s accident, and how helpless he felt in his attempts to comfort her.
The things they did for the people they love.
The consequences that haunt them. And yet, even now, Ari thinks back and wonders how they could have done anything differently.
Had he known, how could he have refused Rudra when the man took him from India?
How could Sam have saved herself and her mother, if it weren’t for the syndicates?
What other options were there? What choices do you have, when you have nothing?
The universe had placed them on a path that was doomed from the start, and they had simply followed it.
Until now.
“Sam,” he whispers, “you can’t do this.”
“They aren’t invincible.”
“Neither are you. They’re going to kill you.”
“I’m not going to be acting alone.”
“Do you really think the police are going to move against Grand Central?”
“Yes.”
“How can you be certain?”
“Because you helped make sure the police chief is in Lumines’s pocket.” She nods at him. “And it will be very much in Lumines’s interest to see Grand Central fall, once your mayoral candidate wins.”
He studies her gaze. “What did you give them?”
“What I could get my hands on. Enough to cut off the head. A start.”
“Sam—”
“I’m going to do it,” she whispers. “But I need your help.”
He shakes his head once. “Don’t.”
“Please, Ari.”
Now there is desperation in her voice, an urgency that tells him she has already set too much in motion.
He looks at her face. She glances up at the security camera again.
They must not have much time left in here.
Ari can feel the risk growing with every second they speak.
Sam is suggesting the impossible, but in his chest, he starts to feel the sensation that perhaps it is possible.
That perhaps she has found a way for them to escape their fates, that the two of them can find a path out of this.
Sam gives him a look that reminds him of her as a young girl. She rests both hands on the chair’s armrests and leans toward him. “Ari,” she murmurs. Her voice falters for a moment before she goes on. “What you told me that night, on the beach.”
He knows she’s talking about his confession to her. That he loves her.
She swallows hard, as if she can’t bring herself to say more, and tries again.
“Ari,” she whispers, like her heart is breaking. “Ari, it’s always been you.”
An ache builds in his chest. It is his soul, trying in vain to reach her, to find some way to comfort her, to tell her that he knows, he has always known, he has waited for her all his life.
And behind the grief he has caused her, behind the grief she has caused him, he sees a fragment of that girl still intact, as beautiful as she ever was, looking back at him in a way that tells him she is really here.
She leans nearer. His lashes lower, his lips part.
This close, he can sense the life in her, the million complexities that make up the living body of a human, the beating of her heart and the blood warm in her veins, the air that comes and goes, and the soul, the soul above all, powering her life from within. She is as bright as the sun.
Her lips are trembling slightly. They graze one side of his mouth with the lightest brush, like a butterfly.
He barely feels her, but a shiver rips through him.
He is so sensitive to her touch that it almost hurts.
She lifts away, then brushes the other side of his mouth with the touch of a ghost. God.
She’s real. He closes his eyes at the exquisite agony of her.
She comes to rest against the top of his lips, then the bottom, her breath faint and warm against his skin.
As she goes, he leans gently in the direction of her kisses.
He can hardly breathe, afraid to move too much lest he breaks the moment.
His entire body is on fire; he tingles at every touch.
She pauses to fix her gaze on his. Then her eyes flutter closed, and her lips are on his at last.
He strains against his bonds, leaning into her as much as he is able, mouth shifting against hers, soft and warm.
The tingle at the back of his neck spreads along his limbs and into his chest, and he shudders with pleasure.
The kiss stays gentle, the lap of a wave.
She moves with him and he with her, careful with every tiny gesture, as if afraid to startle them out of this moment.
There is no anguish or urgency. There is instead the curious feeling that everything is just right, like they had been meant to kiss a long time ago, that even though they should hate each other now, their bodies have done this dance around each other so often that now they know every pain and grief and joy. They know, and they fit.
Ari shivers as Sam deepens their kiss. She is everything he has ever imagined.
He wants to undo his bonds and wrap his arms around her, wants her to sink into his embrace.
He wants to get to know her in the way that they always should have, wants her to get to know him. He wants to be free with her.
Can that ever be possible?
And perhaps this final thought is what ends their union.
She pulls away reluctantly from his warmth.
His lips part from hers. They gaze at each other through lidded eyes, breaths shallow, yearning for more.
Neither of them says a word. They don’t need to.
They remember that they are not free yet, that the trap is still all around them.
“Be ready,” she whispers.
Then she leans away from him, straightens, and turns away.