Page 83 of Anchor

He chuckled. Actually chuckled. “They tortured you, and you’re worried about them?”

“I’m not—I’m worried aboutyou! Maybe you don’t believe me but?—”

“Stop.”That one word had so much power.

I clamped my mouth shut instantly.

“Sweetness, I would have believed you if you said the earth is flat. And the sky green. And the sea red. I would have believed you if you said we could fly,” he whispered. “I wouldn’t have believed the world, but I would have believedyou.” His hand came up to my cheek and he turned my face toward his, but I could barely see him through the blur of tears. “Don’t you know that you’re the only thing that matters? Theonly.”

This he said in a broken whisper and it was the final blow to my shattered soul. It turned every little piece of me into dust, and the relief that came with it waseverything.I stopped clinging to everything I knew, everything I believed about myself. About Taland. About this world. I gave it all up, and the power that came with it brought me back to life again.

“I’m sorry, Taland,” I said, and I said it with my whole heart. “I wish I’d had the chance to do all of it differently. I’m so sorry, so,sosorry.”

“The only thing you should be sorry about is that you didn’t tell me that night in the basement,” he said, pulling my head up again, catching my tears with his thumbs. “You should have told me then. You should have told me…”

He said it over and over again, but how could I when I was chained to that chair and never in a billion years would have thought that he’d care or that he’d believe me.

“I thought you hated me,” I said, shaking my head because there were too many words in my head, but my mouth, my voice, had no strength to say them out loud.

“Never,” he said—from the bottom of his heart, that word. “Not ever.Never.And not just because you saved my life.”

Then he laughed.

He laughed a good long while and held me and kissed me, and so it didn’t occur to me to even ask…until it did.

Until those words rang in my ears and my instincts insisted that there was more to them, that I needed tothinkabout them more, and so I did. And I realized…

“How do you know Isavedyou?” I’d never told him that. As soon as I was done crying, and I could breathe properly again, I planned to tell him everything in detail—but I hadn’t yet.

“I heard it,” Taland said. “I heard the voice in the speaker, the order that agent received. I heard it.”

There went my brain, malfunctioning again. “Wait. Wait…” I leaned back a bit, as far as he let me, and though it was dark, I still saw his eyes. The stars shone in them just for me. “What do you mean, youheardthe order?”

He nodded and he smiled, like he was in awe of my—probably swollen and red—face. “I heard it,” he simply said.

“Buthow?” Because he’d been too far away that night, and he hadn’t heard when I dropped my purse, even though the metal part of it had made quite the noise when it landed on the floor.

“Throughyou,” said Taland, confusing me even more. “Through your memories.”

I could have been making things up. “I don’t understand.”

“Me, neither!” Taland laughed again, and when I pushed myself off him just so I could turn and see his face better, he let me.

“Taland, what’s going on?” At least my tears had dried now. I was too confused to cry.

“I don’t know, sweetness, but I saw right into your mind—no. Wait, no, I don’t think that was it.” He closed his eyes and rested his head back against the car. “More like, your memories wereuploadedinto my head, you know? Like, a blink and Ikneweverything, saw into your head, had your thoughts and your emotions in my system. Does that make sense?”

He genuinely asked me that. He genuinely asked ifthatmade sense to me.

“No!” I whispered, suddenly hyperaware that we were sitting at the edge of the road on a highway in the middle of nowhere, where cars passed and anybody could spot us. Anybody could find us. “No, it doesn’t make sense, Taland! It doesn’t make sense at all.”

I might have said it a couple of more times, just to make sure he got it.

And he did—his wide grin said so. “That night I carried you through the Drainage, something happened. I’m not sure what it was, but at some point, I gained these memories, just like that, within a second. I gainedyourmemories, like I took a glimpse inside your mind. It was your most powerful memories, I think—memories of me. When you first saw me. When you kissed me. When you hugged me. When you lied to me and all that you felt.” His grin turned up and up and up… “When you followed me that night and when you hit me with the candleholder. When you heard the words coming out of that agent’s earpiece.”

Again, I shook my head. “I don’t understand.” What he was saying didn’t make sense—there was no way to access another person’s mind. That wasn’t possible—no spell like that existed. That I knew of, at least.

“Me, neither, but I don’t care about understanding. I saw you, sweetness,” he whispered, leaning in until his forehead touched mine. “Youdidn’tbetray me.”

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