Page 81 of Kiss Across the Universe
“He’s left town.” Kit’s tone was cold. Flat.
“I don’t think he has.”
Kit rolled over to face her. His eyes, in the dark, were black pits, hiding everything. “You can see him on the timescape? Here?”
“I don’t want to look around the timescape,” she said quickly. “This shield, whatever it is I’m doing to hide myself there…I don’t know if it will hold if I access the timescape in that way.”
Again, the heavy beat of her heart filled his silence.
“Then you’re guessing,” he said, at last.
“It’s a good guess,” she protested.
“He turned in the Mustang. He wouldn’t deprive himself of transport.”
“Maybe he has different transport now,” Alannah said. “Maybe it wasn’t even him who turned the car in.”
“Allies?” Kit shook his head, denting the pillow. “He was alone at the hotel. You’re scared and reaching, Alannah. That’s understandable—”
“Idon’t want to go home!” She did her best to keep her voice down, but it came out strained and hoarse, instead. “You don’t know how ruthless enemies can be….” She bit her lip.
“I don’t?” Kit seemed amused.
“I mean…no, of course you do. That’s not what I mean, either. You don’t know…I grew up watching my parents fighting to defeat Tira, who kept coming back at them, over and over. Uncle Rafe killed her, in the end, but that doesn’t mean she can’t return, because she canuse time. Before Rafe killed her, she might have jumped ahead to this time, or some time in our future, and kills us all. You don’t know how time can twist on you. You can’t know, you haven’t grown up with it the way I have.”
She stopped, because her voice was trembling and she knew she was on the verge of tears. The last thing she wanted was for Kit to see her cry. It would confirm his opinion that she was saying all this just because she was scared.
Kit let out a slow breath. “If I properly followed all that, then I have to point out that if Tira does pop up in your future somewhere and kills you all, then she has no reason to later turn up at the time point where Rafe killed her.”
Alannah sat up. “You’re laughing at me.”
Kit propped his head on his hand. “Not even close to what I’m doing.”
Alannah twisted the sheet into a tight knot in her hand. “I want to stay out in the mountains longer.” She knew she sounded petulant. “I want to stay out there with you.”
“This afternoon, you offered to jump us both directly to your secret basement,” he said slowly. “What has changed?”
Alannah squeezed the cotton in her hand. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. “But when Joe said I was free to go home, something…jumped in me. And I…” She ruffled her hair, feeling heat prickling along her neck. “Iamscared,” she said. “And…”
“And…?”
“And…and…once I go back, then I have to…we have to…” She swallowed. “We have to explain us. To my family. And I’m not even sure if thereisan us.”
“I see,” Kit said. He laid down.
Her heart fluttered in weak, sickly way. “What doesthatmean?”
“It means I see,” Kit said, his tone cool. “Nothing more.”
Alannah cast about, looking for words, for a way to dig deeper, to find out what he really meant. Her fear about going home was eclipsed by an entirely new one. Did his dismissal, his ending the conversation mean that he agreed with her? That he’d come to the conclusion that they had no future?
She already knew that Kit could not be bullied or prodded into speaking about anything if he wasn’t good and ready.
Alannah’s heart shuddered. Her breath was uneven. But all she could do was lie down and pretend to sleep.
Kit was going to insist she jump them to the house tomorrow, and everything she feared might come to pass. Including, now, this new fear that Kit no longer wanted her. He’d seen how pathetic she could be.
Had she ruined everything by revealing too much of herself?
