“I feel stronger. I feel like I finally understand what time means, after they screwed with my head for so long. I needed to stop running, to just . . . stop for a while. I got that here. And now you’re here. That’s why I want to help you stop the Project. I want us to have a real life together.”
Wes has finally become the person I saw glimpses of from the very beginning. All I’ve ever wanted was to see him like this, to see what he would be like without the Project’s rigid control holding him back.
I move my hand away and he closes the gap between us. “I love you, Lydia,” he says softly.
I circle my arms around him and stand on my toes, trying to get closer. “I love you too.”
He leans forward and kisses me, just a brush of his lips against mine. “I won’t let you go.”
Our lips meet, for longer this time, but still slow. We break away only to lean in again, and I move my hands through the dark threads of his hair. He starts to walk me backward toward the bed and his fingers glide from my shoulders to my sides, to the front of my dress. I touch my tongue to his as he undoes a button, then another and another. My skin feels so fragile, like every brush of his hands will mark me, will leave an invisible bruise. He parts the fabric of my dress and I watch him pull back to look at me, hear the ragged breath he takes. I feel the mattress behind me, then beneath me. He moves his body over mine. My heart is beating so loudly that he places his hand on it, whispers, “Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not,” I answer. “Not anymore.” And I reach up to pull his weight down onto me.
We lie side by side beneath the blanket, only an inch of space between us. The candles have burned down low on the table. One flickers and then goes out, making it harder to see Wes’s face. But I don’t need the light to trace my finger over the dip below his cheekbones, the curve of his brow.
“I want to give you something,” he says. He lets go of my hand and stretches his arm over his head, reaching for a shelf that I didn’t notice before, tucked between the wall and the bed. He pulls out a small tin, the kind that holds mints or chewing tobacco. “Here.”
I take it from him and pry open the lid. Inside is his gold pocket watch, delicate leaves etched onto the surface.
I touch the smooth curve of it. “Are you sure you want me to have it again?”
He traces the edge too, his finger so much larger than mine, almost covering the locket entirely. “I’ve always wanted you to have it. I’m sorry I ever had to take it back.”
He pulls it up out of the tin and leans over to clasp it around my neck, his fingers lingering in my hair.
I start to move in closer to him, but I’m distracted as another candle sputters out, and the room grows darker. It must be midnight by now, or even later. The moon is hovering somewhere over the small cabin, no longer visible through the smudged glass.
“You haven’t slept in days, have you?” he asks.
I shake my head against the pillow.
“Sleep, Lydia.” He closes the tin and puts it back on the shelf. My eyes are half shut, the metal of the watch cool against my chest. In that heavy place right before sleep, I feel his lips against my forehead, his hand settling, warm and solid, over mine.
Chapter 22
The choppy waves beat against the sides of the boat as Wes pulls in his fishing net. I sit on a small wooden bench, watching the muscles in his back flex, his arms strain. With a grunt he yanks it over the edge and it drops to the bottom of the boat in a rush of salt water and green, twisting seaweed.
Fish are flopping back and forth inside the net, their tails caught in the coarse rope, iridescent scales reflecting the hazy morning sunlight. Wes is already kneeling, his dark pants wet at the knees, his shirt rolled up over his forearms. He sifts through the net, detangling the fins and ignoring their constant, churning movement. “You can help me throw back the ones that are too small.”
I am only a foot away from him on the bench, but I still crouch down, feeling the water soak into the cotton of my dress. Wes has opened the net and he hands me a fish, firmly caught in his grasp. I take it, unprepared for how slimy it is, how slippery, and it slides from my fingers back down to the floor. I laugh, chasing it with my hands across the wood as it tries to flop its way to freedom.
“There.” I finally catch it, tilting it up over the side of the boat and sending it back into the blue waves. “Be free.”
I look up, pushing my hair out of my eyes with my forearm. Wes is smiling at me, so widely that I see the dimple in his cheek. He leans over the fish and presses his mouth to mine.
It is a firm kiss, over in a second. “You’re here,” he says.
“You’re here,” I repeat.
I’m not naive enough to think it will last, this easy feeling. In a few hours we will go to East Hampton to buy supplies for the bombs, and later tonight, we will finalize our plan. I want to be in the Facility, destroying the Project, by tomorrow night at the latest. It doesn’t give us much time, and whenever I close my eyes I smell the bleach and battery acid from those endless white hallways.
I try not to think about it as I help Wes sort through the rest of the fish. The
