Chapter 15 #3
“You’d leave all this?” I ask, gesturing around. We’re arcing around the end of the island, poised against art deco facades,
as a stately bridge looms ahead, suspension cables reflecting the submarine’s lights.
And Callum is a fixed point, even more enduring than a bridge or a skyscraper. He rests his palms on the sides of my face.
“Yes,” he says earnestly. “We’ll leave. You and me. I promised I’d keep you safe. I’d do the right thing, Ripley. I always
do.”
“Your dad—he’d never stop hunting us. We’d never be safe.”
Callum shrugs, a wild look in his eyes. His hand drops over his father’s campaign pin on his chest, covering it like his dad
can hear us through the metal dome. “I’d keep you safe. I can run faster than my father could find us. And then we’d be alone,
for real.” But he stops, like another thought has pulled his attention. “I believe in my father, Ripley. But when I said I’d
protect you, I meant it. Even from him. I’d do anything.”
It feels like a dangerous thing to say. A dangerous thing to think. For half a second, I wonder if Callum knows about the
Machs. About their plan—the figurative knife to my throat.
“What are you talking about?”
Callum runs his teeth over his bottom lip, like he’s taking a second to see if he can trust me. “There are people who are
trying to expose . . . things,” he whispers carefully.
“People. Things,” I whisper hollowly, because he must know how vague it sounds.
Callum sighs. “You don’t get to this level of politics without getting your hands dirty, Ripley. That goes for anyone.”
Hux’s words echo in my mind: We can’t kill him. Not until we can expose him. Otherwise, he’s a martyr.
Callum looks down, and I know the feeling, the fear.
Of living a life alone, feeling like you can’t tell anyone the truth, and then regretting the moment you let someone in.
My heart aches anew, because that’s been me, until I found him.
I open my mouth, trying to find words. But Callum shakes his head and looks up at me again.
“I want to do something good. I don’t know how, but that’s all I want. But I don’t want to do it without you, okay? We’re
endgame, Ripley. However our story started, I know how it has to end. It’s always been you. It has to be you.”
I’m clutching at his shirt before I realize it, fighting to swallow, because my heart feels like it might jump out of my chest
and explode. An entire sunken city whisks by. The submarine must have deployed drones, because the heart of the city burns
with light; outside, I can hear the press oohing and ahhing. It’s like a firework show underwater, but I’m caught in the sparks
of my own chest. All I’ve ever wanted is this feeling. I’m not alone. Callum’s sea-blue eyes are locked on my face, and I
know, for the first time in my life, that someone really sees me.
Then, his hands move from the sides of my face to the back of my neck. His fingers tangle in the hair at my nape as Callum
pulls me in and presses his lips to mine.
His mouth slants, opening, and I close my eyes and give myself to the kiss.
I’ve been waiting eight years for this kiss. His tongue moves over mine, and I push myself up on my knees to deepen the kiss.
He laughs into my mouth, and I swallow the sound. His arms snake around me, holding me to his chest, and I’m glad, because
otherwise I might disappear, might fizzle out into nothing but ash and sparks.
Finally, he gasps us apart, holding my jaw to stare down at me, and it’s that same look, the one that they said on the DopaMine was the look of a boy in love. But this time, there’s no camera. It’s just for me.
I’ve spent half my lifetime writing an ending to our story, but I forgot that Callum was across the country. That he was real.
He isn’t a character in my head or a daydream to sustain me through long, boring days at school.
He loves me. And it has to be enough, to save the world.
“Ripley,” he breathes. “Look.”
My arms are still around his neck, my legs on either side of his, as I crane my neck up to see.
The submarine dips, threading between skyscrapers at what used to be street level. The buildings stretch up above us, a residual
haunting of what used to be. What may have been silver and mirrored windows have transformed, the sleekness of the city turned
into rock and rust and colored glass. Schools of brightly colored fish dart though the hollowed-out skeletons of old cabs,
their taxi lights cracked and covered in barnacles.
“Wow,” Callum says, flopping back on the bed. I fall with him, and we both turn on our backs and watch the city stretch above
us. His fingers intertwine in mine, and I feel a deep peace that I’ve never felt before in my life.
I don’t need to be where I don’t fit, where I’m not wanted. Lyceum, home, even Nef. I was too much, too loud, too everything.
Hux mocked me for my emotions, but I cried and Callum held me, and kissed me, and now he’s tracing gentle lines, white-hot,
up and down my arms until I shiver.
I don’t need anything else.
I just need to be here. With him.
This is how the story was supposed to go. I couldn’t have written it better myself.