I feel the acid rise in my throat. I knew I was his mission, but I had still hoped I was more than that, that maybe he felt the same immediate connection I did.
“But, Lydia.” He puts his fingers under my chin, lifting my face when I would turn away. “I did change. In nineteen forty-four you were so defiant, so ready to protect your family, even at the risk of your own life. It changed me, seeing that devotion. All I wanted was to have this red-haired girl care about me, too. I was upset in LJ’s room, because I never wanted you to know that you were supposed to become a recruit. I wanted to keep you away from this life. But I wasn’t lying when I told you I fell in love with you. Everything I did after that was for you.”
I pull my face away and his hand is suspended between us, grasping only air. “Turning me in was for me? All that lying was for me?”
“I was pro—”
But I cut him off. “Don’t say you were protecting me. Don’t say it. Loving someone means you trust them enough to deal with the truth together. It doesn’t mean you shelter them with lies.”
He is silent and the stream sounds impossibly loud, the water churning over the rocks and tiny waterfalls.
“There was a reason for what happened,” he says softly. “For what I said that day, for why I turned you in.”
“I can’t hear it. Not now.” It is getting closer to night, the treetops outlined black against the sky. My leg is throbbing and I shift my weight, aware of every cut and bruise on my body. “In the barn, when Twenty-two pressed the knife to my neck, I thought you had something to do with it.”
He takes a step back, and even in the near dark I see the color drain from his face. “You really thought I would try to kill you?”
“I see the way you are together. You lied to me about not knowing her.”
He shoves his hand through his hair again. “I . . . there was . . .”
It makes it worse, that he has no answer, that he has no good reason for lying. I picture the way they stood so close together, how she tilted her head back to stare at him, how he bent to hear her better. “She told me you were on missions together, before this. Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t want you to think there was something between us. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter.” I think of Twenty-two’s face when she described the torture. “You know why she’s scared of water.”
But he doesn’t understand what I mean. “I pulled her out of the water once. It was on a mission. She hasn’t been able to handle it since.”
“I thought it was—” I shake my head. “You saved her life?”
The recruits have been taught to hide all emotions, not to care about anything but the Project. It takes something huge to open them up, even in a small way. I can imagine Twenty-two on the bank of some faraway river, coughing and gasping as she relived the feeling of being tortured. And then there was Wes’s face looming over her. She must have known, in that moment, that he was her key, that she was still capable of wanting.
But still.
“She pulled a knife on me.”
“You know why she did that.”
“Does that excuse it?”
He doesn’t answer, just looks down at the rocks at our feet, and I realize that for him, it does. He is not on my side, even though Twenty-two threatened me. He understands her, maybe more than he ever understood me. “She won’t do it again,” he finally says.
“How comforting.” I reach down and pick up the jug. The water sloshes against the lid and I struggle to keep it upright. Wes lifts his arm, then sees my expression and drops his hand to his side. “I’m going back.”
He reaches out again and touches my shoulder. I flinch at the contact. “Lydia . . . I don’t want to leave things this way.”
“I need time.”
He looks over my head to the north, where the Secret Service are probably scouring the dark woods to find us. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“But I still need it.”
He takes his fingers away from my arm and closes his eyes for a few seconds. I look away before he can open them again, afraid that I will give in if we stare at each other for long enough. Instead I grip the slippery plastic jug in both hands, holding it tight to my body as I make my way back up the bank.
Tim leans against the tree next to me, our legs stretched in front of us on the moss. It is spongy, almost as soft as a mattress, but we cannot sleep yet. We are scanning the forest, listening for a snapping branch, watching for a stray beam of light. After we ate the slimy catfish, Tim and I volunteered to stay awake for the first shift. Though Wes’s expression darkened, he didn’t protest, just lay down on the ground with his back to both of us. Twenty-two is not that far from him, her body curved in his direction. If they reached out they would be touching, and I stare at them more than I stare out at the trees, cringing every time one of them shifts in their sleep.
“He’s not into her,” Tim whispers.
I jerk my head away from the center of the clearing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He snorts under his breath. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m keeping watch, that’s all.”
“It’s like you’re in some daytime soap. Jealous over a pretty boy.”
“I don’t know a lot of soap operas where everyone’s running for their lives.”
“Then you don’t watch enough TV.”
“And
