14
What is the heart, if not a wasteland of love?
Khalani noticed that Takeshi kept to the back of the group as they traveled along the hopeless highway, weaving around the empty vehicles scattered about.
The sunlight reverently haloed his black hair and highlighted his dark eyes. Others collapsed under the weight of the vast unknown, but Takeshi thrived in it.
Khalani’s brows pulled together as she watched him stare at his hands with an odd fixation.
She intentionally slowed her pace.
Takeshi’s expression remained puzzled as he studied his palms, but when she drifted closer to his side, he stiffened, his face turning guarded.
“Why do you keep looking at your hands?” She kept her voice calm, nonthreatening.
Takeshi didn’t answer.
His glare intensified, and he increased his speed, but Khalani deliberately kept pace beside him. When he realized she wasn’t going anywhere, he sighed.
“I’m looking for signs.”
“What kind of signs?”
“Radiation poisoning,” he muttered, staring at his palm, almost willing a painful rash to appear and solve the mystery.
She finally understood.
With his memories gone, Takeshi still believed the surface was contaminated.
“You won’t find any,” she said.
“But how is that possible?” he hissed.
“The Governor of Apollo said there used to be radiation, but it’s all gone now. We can’t trust anything he said, though, considering he was a robot.”
“A what?”
Takeshi stopped dead in his tracks. His fingers trembled by his side, and he seemed dangerously close to spiraling out of control.
She halted beside him, meeting his unsettled gaze. Maybe now wasn’t the time to tell him everything, but something in her chest urged her forward.
“Are you ready to hear what really happened the past few years?” she asked.
Takeshi’s jaw worked. His weight imperceptibly shifted like he’d rather discard her on the road than listen to anything she had to say. But he glanced at his hands again, the radiation lie clearly gnawing at him.
Finally, he looked up. “Tell me.”
Khalani inhaled. This was her chance. Her small wish beaming through the dark clouds.
She didn’t waste another second and told him everything that happened in Apollo. They kept walking along the cracked concrete as she relayed how they met in Braderhelm. The crop failure. Genesis. Their escape to Hermes. How they infiltrated a prison camp.
Everything that led to this moment.
Well…almost everything.
“What about the rest?” Takeshi asked. He’d been silent the whole time, absorbing every word.
She wrung her fingers together. “What do you mean?”
“In the cell before, you made it seem as if we were…close?” His brow knitted, as if he wasn’t sure he’d chosen the right word.
He hadn’t. They were so much more than close.
But he wasn’t ready to understand the depths of her heart.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat. “We were close.”
“Tell me about that.”
“Why? Would you believe anything I said?”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he admitted in a low voice, that simple dark truth haunting him more than anyone.
“I know you don’t trust a lot of things right now,” she swallowed, “but you can trust me.”
He shook his head. “You might be the person I trust the least.”
“Me?” Khalani reeled back. “Why?”
He let out a humorless laugh. “If there’s no radiation, then my superiors lied to me. I can’t dismiss that. But that doesn’t mean you’re not lying either.”
“That’s such bullshit. What about everything I just told you? If I know about Apollo and Braderhelm, that means I’m telling the truth!”
“Or…you’re a spy and had research to use against me.”
“You know, for someone so good-looking, you’re incredibly stupid. Did you know that?”
“I’m aware of my looks.” He shrugged. “Just didn’t know you were affected by them.”
“I’m not affected by them,” she lied. “I’m just objectively pointing out something that others might find nice to…you know…” She gestured to him, and he raised a single eyebrow.
“Not quite sure I follow. Please elaborate.”
“Ugh. Just forget it.” She stormed past him, wondering why she’d thought this conversation was a good idea.
All her “good ideas” should be thrown in a casket to die.
“I’ll add easily flustered to the list,” he said, his stupidly long legs keeping up.
“What list?” she snapped.
“My list of targets.” He spoke casually, but his eyes were bone-chillingly cold. “I’m cataloging my enemies’ weaknesses so I know how to ruin them first.”
“Ah, yes. Can’t forget that killing me is still your favorite thing to dream about.” She mimed slicing her throat.
“That’s not what I dream about,” he murmured in such a low voice, Khalani wasn’t sure if she imagined it. But he didn’t clarify or say anything else, he just stared ahead in a strange daze.
“Well, as fun as this was, I’m gonna keep walking,” she grumbled.
But what Khalani really wanted was to bury her head in the sand and never come back for air.
“Wait,” he said before she could catch up to the others. “You still haven’t finished telling me the rest.”
His charcoal eyes sliced her open.
Like he needed to hear more.
“What do you want to know?” Unable to help herself, she glanced back at him, nearly tripping over a metal car door that was flung across the road.
In an instant, Takeshi reached out and gripped her elbow. But he released her just as quickly, putting even more space between them than before.
“If what you say is true,” he said bluntly, “tell me this. Why would I have gotten close to you if you were my prisoner?”
“I don’t know.” Khalani exhaled. “I got beat up in Braderhelm and needed to learn how to defend myself. When I asked you to teach me, you said no.” She rolled her eyes, remembering how Takeshi wanted to be anywhere else but in the medical ward beside her.
“I think you took pity on me and said yes,” she continued.
“I was the one who taught you how to fight?” He frowned.
“Yes. Every week, you trained me in the basement. At the beginning, we hated each other, but eventually we were able to be in each other’s presence without wanting to stab something. That worked for a while until something changed.”
“What changed?”
She hesitated. “A guard attacked me.”
“What?” His head snapped toward her.
The air thickened, Takeshi’s expression twisting furiously. She didn’t understand why, though.
“Don’t worry about it.” She waved it off. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did he…” Takeshi’s throat bobbed, “He didn’t—”
“No,” she answered. “You killed him before he could.”
“Good.” He nodded, like anything less would’ve been unacceptable. It startled her, this brutal honesty. Khalani had thought she was as insignificant to him as the billion grains of sand they walked over.
“What? Are you saying you believe me now?” she asked.
He paused, giving it deep thought before responding.
“If someone told you the last few years of your life were gone—that everything you believed was a lie—would you believe them?”
She looked at the people walking ahead of them, her family that kept her sane and grounded. Even Takeshi’s dark and commanding presence still made her burn and feel more protected than the sun rising above them.
Khalani knew how stupid that sounded. She didn’t care.
“If someone told me none of this was real,” she said, “I’d tell them to drown in a tub of poison.”
The answer didn’t help her cause, but Takeshi had been lied to so much that all he deserved the rest of his life was the truth.
“What happened after the guard attacked you?” he asked.
“A lot.”
“Say what you need to, Kanes.” He glanced at her. “You won’t get another chance to convince me.”
The pressure nearly buckled her knees. But she had to keep going. She couldn’t quit until the world tumbled around them.
So, Khalani told Takeshi their story.
He listened intently, brows creased as she spoke in soft whispers, their tale a dangerous and delicate thing to convey.
She recalled the longing stares in prison. The way he fiercely protected her. The shared moments they held in secret. She told it all.
But Khalani didn’t dare say the three words that poured from the vestiges of her soul.
Honestly, she didn’t know if she’d ever have the strength to offer the last remnants of her heart. But she refused to consider the possibility until Takeshi remembered her.
When Khalani finished, he didn’t speak for a long time. He stopped and stood motionless. His jaw clenched. His body was tightly composed—the only thing he seemingly had control over.
“Thank you for telling your story,” he finally said before walking away, drifting farther and farther from her.
Your story.
Not theirs.
Solely hers.
She must’ve made a mistake.
Khalani replayed every word, searching for the spot where she’d messed up. He’d been so attuned with her for those brief moments, and for the first time, it felt like Takeshi was coming home.
And now…
He prowled down the desolate road like a man plotting unholy revenge. He gazed ahead, playing with something in his pocket, a million thoughts seeming to race through his mind.
But she was privy to none of them.
Even though his lingering gaze burned, like a secret part of him wanted to be as invisible and necessary as her next gulp of air, he didn’t react on those urges.
He chose to walk away for good, and the renewed distance between them was greater than before.
And Khalani wasn’t only losing her mind.
She was beginning to lose her faith.