Page 149 of Fated

“If we go to the hill and nothing happens, then fine, we wasted an hour. If we go to the hill and there’s another earthquake, then you live. You live and you can come find me, in Geneva, in the future, where I’m loving you.”

The waves crash against the shore, the chickens crow, and down the beach I hear Amy pounding on a cottage door. The thick heat of the island pulses between us.

“Please,” I whisper.

And then Aaron nods. “Okay. Yes.”

He sets me down, and then we run.

With three minutes to spare, the last of us climb the slope of the whistling pine hill. The shade falls over us and everyone watches and waits. Some are unsure. Some look toward the sea. Everyone is talking about what they were doing when the earthquake struck.

We stand in the flickering shade of the tall pines. The sappy evergreen scent is strong in the noon heat. I hold Aaron’s hand. Sean’s in my arms.

Aaron runs his thumb over the back of my hand, and every few seconds he looks down, just to make sure I’m still me.

Robert is with Junie and Jordi, their baby girl between them. Robert has a cooler full of bottled water he’s set to hand out to the older people who are exhausted from the run.

I scan the crowd, count the people,sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four.

I stop.

Sixty-four, including me.

But there are sixty-five people on the island. One more with Junie’s baby.

Then my heart slams against my chest. “Amy!”

She’s not here.

I glance around the hill, checking every face, every figure. “Amy’s not here.”

Aaron drops my hand. “She was. She helped Robert with the water.”

We run to him, and the heat and the weight of time presses down on me. “Where’s Amy?”

Robert shakes his head, running his hand through his sweat-soaked hair. “She said she had to find Dost something, Dost?—”

“She went back for a book. She went back to the cottage.” My stomach plummets and I turn, scanning the grass at the bottom of the hill and the long, empty sandy path.

Sean grips my neck, his wet cheek pressed against my shoulder. He cried nearly the entire run up the hill. “Mimi,” he says, sniffing into my shoulder.

Mimi is his name for his sister. It’s what he calls her when he wants a cuddle or to be picked up.

“When did she leave?” Aaron asks. The lines of his shoulders tense and his entire body vibrates with a suppressed tension. He scans the empty horizon.

“Five minutes ago,” Robert says, his mouth drawn, eyes worried. “I didn’t know she was leaving. I didn’t think?—”

“I’m going after her,” Aaron says.

Robert grabs Aaron’s forearm. “If Becca’s right and you go back for her, you die.”

“Then I die,” Aaron says. He shrugs out of Robert’s grasp.

Then Aaron turns to me. He doesn’t say anything, he just looks in my eyes.

And for a single moment, a second that lasts an eternity, he tells me everything in a glance.

I love you.

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