Chapter Twenty-One #2
Sabine felt like she’d been hit in the chest by a charging elephant. Two charging elephants. A whole fricken herd of charging elephants. Had she misheard? Surely she’d misheard. There was no way in hell that there were three votes against them because that meant that everyone...
“I’m sorry,” Vivian said. “You are the bottom pair.”
Noooo, Sabine thought, as her stomach dropped somewhere near her ankles and a cold rush tore through her chest, sharp and blinding, like she’d missed a step.
This wasn’t happening. She was dreaming.
Of course, she was dreaming. In fact, this was probably one of those hyper-realistic nightmares a person’s brain cooked up due to sleep deprivation.
But last night Sabine had slept like a baby with her arms wrapped around Talia.
She’d only woken once, and that was to nuzzle her nose into Talia’s neck.
“Please come up onto the platform,” Vivian said.
Talia stood up.
And Sabine’s body followed, floating forward, her feet moving even though she couldn’t have said how or why. By the time she stepped in next to Vivian, her eyes flitted toward the others for answers. Had they really just willfully stabbed them in the back?
The answer, she came to learn, was yes. Connie stared fixedly at her feet.
Charlize was worrying about a loose thread on the hem of her pale blue kaftan.
Monique and Amy kept their eyes on each other.
The only person looking directly at Sabine was Isla, wearing a smile so smug it took everything in Sabine not to clean it off her face.
“I am sorry, ladies,” Vivian said again. She looked sorry, entirely apologetic, which only made it all seem more real. It was real. They were going home. Or at least one of them was.
“Unfortunately, the votes have spoken. Now you have a decision to make.” Vivian paused for a second too short.
Sabine hadn’t expected to be voted off tonight, but she always assumed that if she did, she wouldn’t think twice about facing The Sending.
Now she was thinking twice. Three times.
Four times. Going home suddenly felt like the kind of letdown that hollowed you out from the inside.
She wanted to win. She wanted to get to the end.
But did she want that without Talia? “Will you face The Sending?”
“No,” Sabine said at the same time Talia said, “Yes.”
“What?” Talia stammered, turning toward Sabine. She frowned so deeply that Sabine wanted so badly to reach out and smooth the creases. “I thought you said no one in their right mind would choose not to go to The Sending.”
“I’m not in my right mind,” Sabine replied.
This, she realized, was the truth. Her usual mind had gone quiet, and in its place was this traitorous, softer version that kept supplying images she hadn’t asked for: Talia sliding into the booth across from her at La Loba, rain tapping against the windows.
Talia stopping by the hospital between shifts, two paper cups of burnt coffee in her hands as they stood pressed together near the elevators, pretending they had all the time in the world.
Talia stretched out beside her on a faded Pendleton blanket in Gas Works Park, pointing at the clouds.
And then, the two of them packed Sabine’s Volvo for a twenty-hour road trip to Boulder, because Sabine wanted to meet Talia’s family, see where she grew up, her school, the bar she worked at, and the places she frequented.
“I haven’t been in my right mind for days,” Sabine added before Talia could say something or Vivian could hurry them along.
No one had given a speech during The Sending.
Not even after the votes were declared. Though Sabine had a feeling Vivian had been momentarily thrown.
She had at least been thrown enough not to interrupt.
“Not since we started this game, not since we were paired up on that very first day. All I could remember was you back at the villa breaking the only rule and as someone who likes rules, follows them, I thought we would make the worst pair imaginable...”
Was she seriously doing this here? Confessing everything she’d felt over the last two and a bit weeks? Yes, it appeared she was.
“...but I was wrong. I was so very wrong,” Sabine said, her voice soft and pathetic sounding.
Or at least that was what it sounded to her.
“You talk a lot. You say things without thinking. You’re impulsive, spontaneous, and adventurous.
Everything I’m not. You see things with a cup that isn’t just half full but bubbling over.
You’re inspiring, Talia. And you don’t just see me, you see beyond my cracks, beyond even the wall that I built up long ago.
” Sabine laughed because, really, she couldn’t believe this next bit either.
“I can’t remember the last time I wanted to be this close to someone.
Now, every day I catch myself looking forward to bedtime just to be near you. To spoon you.”
Talia choke laughed. Her voice was thick, and her eyes were full of tears. She rubbed the back of her hand across her nose, which was all splotchy and red.
Sabine stepped closer and brushed away a tear from Talia’s cheek.
“I’ve been picturing what it would be like to take you on a date.
A real date with glasses of buttery Chardonnay and a walk along the waterfront.
I’ve been dreaming of us lying on a sofa, arguing over which movie to watch.
I’ve been dreaming of a life with you, Talia.
Which is ridiculous, but also terrifying.
More terrifying than working the night shift on New Year’s Eve.
” She was not going to add that she might also be falling in love with Talia.
That would be too much. Even for a confession of this magnitude.
“Really, it terrifies you?” Talia asked.
“Yes,” Sabine said, stepping even closer. “And honestly, the only thing worse than getting eliminated is staying in this game without you. But I won’t stop you from staying. If you want to go to The Sending, I’ll ask everyone to vote—”
“I don’t want that,” Talia cut in. “I don’t want to stay here without you either.”
“You don’t?”
Talia smiled, and Sabine’s heart swelled five hundredfold. She stepped in and before she knew what she was doing, she cupped Talia’s cheeks in her palms and pulled her closer. Close enough to kiss her.
There were gasps. Several of them. Someone muttered, “I knew it. I knew there was something going on between them.” Someone else said, “You did not. You’ve been as oblivious as I have. As everyone else has.”
But Sabine barely heard a thing. All she could concentrate on was Talia.
The way her lips felt against hers, the way her tongue tasted, and her body responded.
They kissed until Vivian cleared her throat, and then they kissed some more.
Sabine had never kissed this publicly before—surely they’d cut it out in the edits—and frankly, she found it thrilling.
But not as thrilling as what she was going to do to Talia later behind closed doors.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sabine muttered. “I could do with a shower.”
Talia laughed. “I’ll join you.”