Page 55 of The Darkest Half

I lean inward and kiss his lips.

“No,” I begin, “I never thought you lied to me, Victor. I always knew you told the truth when you said you loved me. Only now, I feel it.”

I drop my hand from his cheek.

“All this time,” I begin, “you’ve been fighting yourself. From the moment you saw me in the backseat of your car in Mexico, you fought against your feelings for me. You could’ve taken me back to Javier, but you didn’t. You could’ve given me over to Izel in that shitty motel room, but you didn’t. You’ve had so many opportunities to rid yourself of me, to go back to the only life you’ve ever known, but you couldn’t.”

I place my hand atop his on the bed; his gaze finds mine again.

“You told me often that you loved me,” I go on, “and talked to me, even with what seemed like passion at times, about how your love for me changed you, changed who you were, and while although I never once doubted the words, a part of me always questioned just how confident you were in saying them. Not that you didn’t believe them, but because being in love was a foreign and dangerous feeling you were raised and trained to reject.”

I slip my hand beneath his and interlock our fingers; he squeezes and swallows and never takes his eyes from mine.

“So, I only have one question,” I say.

“And whatever it is, I will have an answer.”

I smile softly and squeeze his hand in return.

“What changed? What happened to finally make you trust yourself and your feelings and reject the part of you that you’ve been fighting?”

He looks confused and thoughtful.

“I…I just could not bear the thought of losing you,” he says. “And I suppose I had more than enough time to think about everything when I left.”

When you left…

“Victor, did you intend to never see me again?”

He shakes his head.

“I left you because I had to,” he explains. “And I could not risk telling you the real reason why.”

“You needed everything to be authentic,” I say, already knowing. “You wanted Vonnegut and The Order to believe that I no longer had your protection. They needed to be confident in their ability to capture Niklas and me. If I knew it was all just part of your plan, my reaction to your abandoning me wouldn’t have been as believable.”

“Yes. That is…” He laughs lightly, and it makes me smile. “That is everything, in a nutshell, I suppose. But you knew all of that already, didn’t you?”

“I had a feeling. Though I won’t lie and say that too many times, especially when I was locked in that room starving to death, I thought that maybe I was just being delusional. My mind told me that you would never come, that it was over, not only between us but my life, too. But my heart, even if only deep down, knew otherwise.”

Victor stands from the edge of the bed, walks to the window, and pulls open the long curtain to reveal the cloudy sky. Far off in the distance, I see an airplane, almost nothing more than a dark speck, slip between thick clouds and disappear.

We must be in a tall building, a skyscraper, no less.

“Where are we?”

“New York City,” Victor says.

Then he turns from the window and looks at me.

“And our permanent home,” he adds with a smile in his eyes. “No more moving around. No more running.”

I get out of bed. My legs are still shaky, but I’m managing well enough. And I can now recall a few times before today when I woke up. Bits and pieces of my memory become more apparent as I walk across the room with my IV bag hanging from its wheeled contraption to join him at the window. I remember the IV being changed often; Mozart and a few male and female nurses coming in to tend to my needs. But this is the first time I recall seeing Victor in this room. He likely visited before to check in on me but never wanted to disturb me while I mended. I wasn’t recovering only from starvation but emotional trauma as well, and nothing makes everything worse than emotional trauma, stress, and anxiety.

“Niklas?” I ask. Whether he was alive or not plagued me, and I was afraid to ask until now.

“He is doing well.” Victor looks over at me. “But he is no longer here.”

I blink, confused.

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