Chapter 38
Later that night I’m lying in bed, watching the clock slowly lurch toward midnight, trying and failing to feel anything but slow boiling inner turmoil.
We’ve come this far, but there’s still so much out of our control.
Lionel checked the Space Weather Prediction Center website before we parted ways, and even though the geomagnetic conditions are in our favor tomorrow, it’s still a prediction.
There are possibilities where things go wrong.
What if there’s not a large enough coronal mass ejection to create the geomagnetically induced current we need?
That would mean there’s no strong current to fuel the isoborometer.
And even if there is, what if the isoborometer doesn’t work?
Where do we go from there? There’s no backup plan—not even an estimated future date where the forecast predicts another geomagnetic disturbance as intense as this one.
Dread winds around my lungs. The elimination of my existence in this time hangs in the balance of whatever happens tomorrow.
A gentle knock startles me from the depths of my thoughts. My pulse rockets. It must be Sabine or Inessa—I don’t know who else could need something from me at this hour—but when I open my door, it’s not them.
It’s Sumner.
The initial shock of seeing him steals my voice. His hair is windswept and disheveled, made messier as he runs a hand through it. What is he doing here? Every siren in my brain repeats bad idea, bad idea. And instead of heeding those alarm bells, I wave him inside, a silent beckoning.
He steps around me, and I’m careful to noiselessly close the door behind him. My sun lamp casts the room in an orange glow, light bouncing off my disco ball to create tiny, fractured pieces of radiance that rotate across my walls. When I turn around, he’s reaching into his jacket pocket.
“From the library.” He hands me a paperback copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Valley of Fear. “Since…”
I swallow a lump in my throat. He knows what these books mean to me. Like my dad’s ring and journal, they hadn’t been on my shelf when I returned earlier. The devastation hasn’t fully passed. I tried not to dwell on it.
I hold the book to my chest. “Thank you.”
His familiar maroon sweater is tugged over his shirt, signs of pilling on the collar, but it’s so uniquely him that a tender ache of longing grows inside me. Next to him, I’m underdressed in an oversized sweatshirt and sleep shorts.
“That’s not the only reason I came,” he says hastily. He’s pacing now. I don’t know if he realizes.
“Oh?” It comes out as more of a sound.
He powers on, as if he can’t keep it in any longer. “That night in my room? Over Thanksgiving break? You were right. About all of it.”
I step closer. “You don’t—”
But he shakes his head. “I need to say this. No one has ever seen me the way you do, Delaney.” He stops.
Looks at me. “To be confronted like that—it scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t expecting it, and my reaction wasn’t great, but you were right.
I’ve never felt like enough. It’s a huge insecurity and you just… you saw right through me.”
I set the book on my desk. “I was harsh.”
“You were honest,” he says, voice ragged. “I didn’t want to accept that I’m someone who tries so hard to meet some arbitrary threshold of being enough.”
“You weren’t wrong about me either.” My racing heart gives way to everything I’ve needed to tell him. “When you said the fear of fucking up my life was preventing me from living it? That was true.”
He winces. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“Sumner, I called you a self-righteous dick.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
His eyes cling to mine, clouded with emotion and something I can’t quite pinpoint. He wrings his hands, the movement anxious. I haven’t seen Sumner this emotionally fraught, well, maybe ever.
“I know it’s late,” he goes on, “and I know everything feels impossible, but I was lying in bed and suddenly it felt so—urgent.” That tormented look returns, a flash of vulnerability in his eyes.
“God, Delaney. I’m in love with you. I’ve loved you since I first knew you.
You’re like the sun at the center of my galaxy, so bright even when my own world feels dim.
It’s like I can sense you with my eyes closed.
Every moment you’ve spared me—every glance—all of it’s made me love you more. ”
His voice cracks on the final word. I’m barely prepared for the dizzying sensation his words impart on me. All my breath gathers at the base of my throat.
He changed for you, I think. All of it was for you, to be seen and accepted and loved. This brilliant boy who’d bend and stretch the bounds of the universe, defying all laws of time if it meant spending one more day in your presence.
But that’s where he went wrong. My love doesn’t need earning. Not in that way. He’s never had anything to prove to me.
“What about last summer?” I whisper.
He sucks in a breath. Runs a hand down the nape of his neck.
“I wanted you then. You have no idea.” A muscle in his jaw jumps.
“But, Delaney, we were at your house. Anyone could have walked out on us in the backyard. If it were Jared, he may have murdered me. It’s a big reason why I said we shouldn’t.
That and—I mean, I worried I was someone who happened to be there, you know?
Not someone you necessarily wanted. I needed you to be sure, because it would break my fucking heart if you weren’t.
You’d gone through this enormous loss and I never, ever wanted you to feel like I was taking advantage of you in a vulnerable state. ”
“I never felt that way,” I get out, throwing my arms to my sides. “I was the one who kissed you.”
A ghost of his tilted smile appears. “Trust me, I remember it well.”
Heat coils around my belly. Emotions cumulate in my heart like the start of a rainstorm, begging for release. “You never said.”
“I screwed up, and I’m really sorry. I could have handled it better—I should have told you everything then. But when things went back to the way they’d been between us? I thought I had my answer. That you regretted it.” A hand twists through his hair. “Until you told me otherwise.”
I’d been so caught up in my hurt and embarrassment that I hadn’t thought to see it from his perspective.
Sumner was never a distraction from my grief.
He’d let me talk through the hard parts and kept me company on reflective nights and listened to old stories transformed into memories.
And all this time he assumed he wasn’t enough, resetting our friendship as a defense mechanism.
He’d said he hadn’t known how to talk to me when we first met, but that wasn’t true.
Maybe we’d exchanged sparring words and teasingly riffed off each other for the sake of casual conversation over the years, but even when I was pretending I didn’t, I liked his attention.
Hadn’t I felt empty without it? Shouldn’t I have known then?
He leans against my desk. My face flushes.
“I had a crush on you.” It comes spewing from me like a geyser. “The time Jared called me out in the common room? I lied.”
“He only did that because he used to catch me staring at you,” Sumner says, eyes flitting to mine.
“And then, that day in the common room, he straight up asked me. I didn’t deny it.
But then you got with Brayden, and I…I couldn’t escape you.
So I tried to move on. And I was pricklier to you, which was unfair, and I am sorry for that—but god.
I was bitter. And jealous. Maybe it’s wrong to say, but Brayden is a pretentious dick.
His disinterest in you killed me. Because I would’ve swapped places in a heartbeat. ”
My heart flutters. All this time I’d been on his mind. This entire time I hadn’t known.
“What about Hailey Collins?”
“We’re friends, that’s it.” His eyes flash. “Maybe part of me hoped you were jealous. And don’t get me started on William. I get he’s the real-life Mr. Darcy—”
“Wrong time period.”
He barrels past that. “—but it was the worst feeling seeing him do everything right. You deserved it all. The romance, the chivalry, the kindness. Meanwhile I’m over here goading you like it’s an Olympic sport and wishing I was half as good as him.”
“He wasn’t right for me,” I confess. “I’d come to that conclusion before we knew about the disappearances.”
Deep molten gold shines around his pupils as he tips his head toward me. His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose, and my first reaction is to reach out and push them into place. His eyes search mine as my hand slowly lowers.
God, how long have I spent denying I loved him, too?
“Earlier you said you know me.” I move forward another inch.
“But I know you, too. You call when you say you will, and you always show up, even if you’re late.
You see the best in people even when they’re, like, throwing your boxer briefs in a tree.
And yes, you wear a guarded exterior, but you are kind.
When I said I’m glad you’re here? I really meant it’s no small miracle to know you.
” My gaze clings to his. “You’re not half as good, Sumner. You’re the whole thing.”
His throat moves around a swallow. And I’m struck with a sudden realization.
How fast this could end, even as it’s only beginning.
I don’t want to be alone with the knowledge we might not have this one day.
That I might not remember him. That my existence now lies within the delicate balance of the universe.
And if our days are numbered, I’d rather spend them together.
“Sometimes,” he breathes, “I think you’re the only thing that makes sense.”
A rush of emotion tips from my tongue. “I don’t know how long I get to love you.”
His eyes go soft, a faint smile playing on his lips. “So you’re saying you love me, Carmichael?”