7. Six Days Until Bonding #3
I want to argue, but the words stick in my throat because I finally see where this has been leading. Not to the families downstairs. Not to fathers and children or baseball games or braided hair.
To the ceremony waiting for us back at Ashford. To the blade. The blood.
Most of all to the sealing.
“Before me, you had options.” The guilt in his expression is painful to witness, nearly unbearable.
“Now, every day you stay with me, there are fewer of them. Once the ceremony is complete you aren’t just bonded to me, you’re bonded to The Order.
For life.” He shakes his head sadly. “They’re going to put us on display.
Weaponize what’s private between us and then use it against us. ”
The stars blur above him. Maybe because my eyes have filled.
Carrson reaches up and brushes his thumb beneath my lashes before the tears can fall. “You made me wonder if my life could belong to me,” he says. “Every time I let myself want you, I wonder if I’m taking yours.”
I know exactly what he means, and I hate it.
I hate that he can look at me with all that guilt in his eyes, like loving me is another crime his father taught him how to commit.
I hate that The Order has found a way to make even this feel like theft.
His want. My want. The terrifying, fragile thing growing between us.
I swallow back my tears, not because I’m scared to let him see them, but because if I start crying, I’m afraid he’ll use it as proof I’m not strong enough for what I’m about to suggest.
“Let’s run away,” I blurt.
Below us, the sign flashes red and white. Red and white.
Like a heart beating…or a warning.
“What?” He sits up, still holding my hand.
“Let’s just go.” My mind is racing now, running ahead to all the possibilities before fear can catch up. “As far as we can. Leave The Order, your father, everything behind.”
“We can’t.” He pulls his hand away from mine.
“Why not?” I argue. “We’re already gone. We left Ashfordville. We crossed state lines. Nobody here knows who you are. Nobody cares. You’re just some guy waiting for mozzarella sticks, remember?”
“But school. Your dreams.”
“I won’t give those up. We’ll go somewhere else.
Enroll under different names.” I’m grasping for straws.
I know it, but I can’t seem to stop. “We could find some town with a diner and a motel where no one asks questions. You could be nobody. I could be nobody.” My throat gets scratchy. “We could choose.”
The last word comes out smaller than the others because it’s the only one that matters.
He doesn’t answer. He just stares out over the highway and the empty land beyond it. For one brief second, I can tell he sees it.
Us.
Away.
I know because his breathing changes. Because his hand finds mine again. Because suddenly he looks at me like I’ve placed the whole world in front of him and told him he’s allowed to have it.
Then I watch the dream die.
“Carrson, please?” My voice trembles though I try to hold it still.
He closes his eyes, unable to look at me. “They’d find us.”
“No.”
“They would.”
The sure way he says it makes my stomach roll, because it isn’t arrogance. It’s knowledge. Carrson knows The Order’s reach the way other people know weather. He knows which doors open under his father’s command and how people disappear behind them.
Carrson pulls me closer until my knees bump his thigh.
“I want to,” he says. “I want to get in the car with you and keep driving.” His forehead lowers until it touches mine. “I want to see who you are when no one’s hunting you. I want to see who I am when nobody’s watching.” His breath ghosts across my mouth. “I want it so badly it hurts.”
My tear slips free, and this time he lets it fall.
“So why not?” I ask, though I know it’s ridiculous. I know being young and in love and smart isn’t enough to overthrow a centuries-old secret society. I know that believing otherwise is stupidity.
But I’m so damn tired of being reasonable with a life that has never once been reasonable with me.
“We’re not big enough,” he says gently. “Just the two of us. They’re everywhere. Even here. In the cameras. The police at the local station.” His head dips, the guilt coming back. “We wouldn’t make it three feet before they came for us.”
I nod, tears slipping silently down my cheeks.
“When they came for me,” he adds.
That’s the part that breaks through the last of my panic. How he says it like the worst thing he can imagine isn’t being dragged back to Ashford. It’s me being dragged back because I chose him.
I press my forehead harder against his and close my eyes.
Above us, the stars keep spinning. Below us, the sign keeps flashing, the hotel uncaring who sleeps under its roof tonight. Tomorrow families will pack cars full of sleepy children and dirty uniforms. They’ll drive home complaining about weak coffee, uncomfortable mattresses, and bad referees.
Tomorrow Carrson and I will go to the rehab center in upstate New York.
I’ll ask my father why, when he was wounded, he ran to Ashford University.
That’s what Silas was getting at.
Not an answer. A question he wanted me to ask, but that’s for tomorrow.
Tonight I’ll go to bed and try my best not to dream impossible dreams.