21. Isla #2
“If they secure it. If the plans are current. If Korte hasn’t anticipated exactly what we learned in Atlanta.” His right hand closes at his side. “I can plan around guards, power loss, contaminated air. I cannot build a contingency in which they take you from me and I remain useful.”
“You’re not worried that I failed the route,” I say.
“No.”
“You’re worried that a correct route won’t be enough.”
His eyes meet mine. “Yes.”
The answer is worse for being honest.
I take his right hand and place it against my ribs. My heart is beating too fast. He feels it immediately.
“I’m frightened too,” I tell him. “But if we use training to feed the fear, we’ll still be standing at this wall tomorrow morning.”
His fingers spread against my side.
“One more run,” I say. “Not the same route. Give me a problem I haven’t memorized. Then we stop.”
He studies my face, and I watch him force his breathing to slow.
“All right.”
This time, he removes half the things I have relied on. My escort is injured. The service corridor is blocked. The primary and secondary rally points are both unavailable. I have no audio and no facility plan. There is smoke moving under the eastern door.
I get one decision wrong. He tells me why. I begin again and find a route neither of us marked, through the specimen-transfer bay and out beside the waste dock.
When I finish, Theon is quiet.
“That was better,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Do you feel better?”
“No.”
I almost smile. “Neither do I.”
He lifts our joined hands and puts his mouth against my knuckles.
The rest of the afternoon is quieter. We review the hand signals Damon will test tomorrow.
Theon watches me with an attention that has nothing to do with my answers.
I understand what he is doing because I do it too: learning the details while we have them.
The small scar at his temple. The pattern of callus along his fingers.
The way fear makes him more controlled, not less.
He isn’t afraid I will fail an assessment. He is afraid there won’t be enough time to know me completely.
There would never be enough time for that. I don’t tell him. He is already having a difficult day.
Evening settles over the room without sunlight to announce it; the overhead lights shift to their warmer setting. Theon finally takes down the plan and folds it with his usual care.
“I know you have it,” he says.
“I know.”
“I also know I’ve been—”
“Terrible?”
His mouth twitches. “Thorough.”
“You can be both.”
I take the folded plan from him and set it aside. Then I put my palms against his chest, over the formulas inked into his skin beneath his shirt.
“You’re terrified,” I say.
He covers one of my hands with his. “Yes.”
“So am I.”
We walk back through corridors carrying the smell of Raphael’s dinner.
Lucien is stretched on the common-room floor with a book open above his face.
Jenna and Nikolai are arguing quietly over a map.
Darius says something from the kitchen that makes Damon tell him to shut up.
The sound follows us toward our quarters.
Theon’s hand remains at my back. It no longer feels like steering. It feels like a count: here, here, still here.
Inside our room, he locks the door.
Neither of us wants to talk anymore.
I unbutton his shirt and ease it down his right arm first, then carefully over the healing left shoulder. The sutures are covered by a narrow dressing. There is no spreading redness at the edges, no stain, nothing to justify the amount of attention I give it.
“I’m fine,” he says.
“Raphael decides that.”
“You sound like him.”
“A devastating insult.”
His right hand closes around the back of my neck, and the humor disappears.
“Tell me what you want.”
“You.” I pull my shirt over my head. “No distance. Just don’t tear your shoulder open trying to prove something.”
He sits on the edge of the bed, and I step between his knees. He undresses me slowly with one hand, taking his time over every fastening, every newly exposed piece of skin. We have not had nearly enough nights for the familiarity in his touch, which may be why he is so intent on earning it.
I push him back against the pillows and climb over him. His injured arm stays supported. The right hand travels from my hip to my throat and closes there with the exact pressure that makes heat break beneath my skin.
“Still here,” he says.
“So are you.”
His thumb finds my pulse. He feels what he does to it.
We aren’t playful. He watches my face as I take him, as though he can fix every change in memory if he refuses to blink.
I trace the chemistry across his chest and read the symbols he has taught me: reaction rates, antidote ratios, the private record of a life written where no one could confiscate it.
He touches me like a man making evidence. I answer with my nails, my mouth, the movement of my body over his. When his grip tightens at my throat, I give him the sound he is waiting for.
“You come back with me,” he says.
It is not a request. It is also not something either of us can promise.
I bend until my mouth is against his. “We do everything we can.”
His eyes open beneath mine, furious at the limit of it.
Then he pulls me down and makes me forget language for a while.
Afterward, I stay draped over his right side until our breathing slows. Somewhere above us, rain is falling over Chicago. I checked the forecast at dinner. The first thing I ever wanted for myself was to stand outside in weather no one had scheduled.
I still want it.
Now I know whose hand I want in mine when I do.
“You’re not going to talk me out of Phoenix,” I say.
“I know.”
“And I’m not going to talk you out of being afraid.”
“No.”
His fingers move along my spine, counting vertebrae.
“I updated the children’s taper notes,” I say. “Raphael has the clinical copy. Ezra has an encrypted duplicate. If I don’t come back—”
Theon’s hand stops.
“Don’t.”
“We prepare contingencies for everyone.”
“Not this one.”
I lift my head. His face has gone still in the way that means the opposite.
“Theon.”
“I would survive.” His voice is rough. “That’s the part you keep getting wrong. I would breathe. I would work. And I don’t trust what I would become when there was no longer any reason to come back from it.”
I understand. I wish I did not.
“I don’t trust what I’d become either,” I whisper.
His hand resumes its path down my back and brings me closer.
“We’re probably going to be fine,” I offer.
He is quiet for a beat. “Yes.”
“I’m excellent at following instructions when I agree with them.”
“So never.”
“Occasionally.”
“Name one occasion.”
“I followed the instruction to get on top.”
The tension in him shifts. His mouth brushes my forehead.
“Phoenix,” he says.
The word is no longer an argument. It is a place on a plan, five days away, holding sixty-three children who cannot wait for either of us to stop being afraid.
“Phoenix,” I agree.
I settle against his uninjured side and count his breaths until they deepen toward sleep.
Neither of us lets go.