I take in his trembling body. His pale face. “You’re scared,” I say.
Liam’s gaze rushes back and forth between my eyes. “I’m terrified,” he whispers, tilting my chin upward. “I keep thinking unless we get answers out of Matthews, I’ll never see you again.” He presses his forehead against mine. “And I’m afraid of the things I’ll do to get those answers. I can’t lose you again.”
“Then take me back with you,” I beg, resting my hands against his chest. “Silas will talk to me. I know he will.”
He shakes his head, as if compelling his fear away, and places his hands over mine. “Ella, I came back to check you’re okay. And to let you know I’llneverstop fighting for you. And I know I’ve said goodbye about a hundred times now, but this is it for a while. At least for me. Until Rose and I figure everything out. Please try to understand.”
Salty tears wet my lips. I want to tell him to stay. To run away with me so we can have the time together we deserve. To get to know each other without breaking oaths and the pressure of Neurovida. But that means asking him to give up on his future and saving his friends. To give up on Rose. To give up onme.
I take a breath and stare into his golden eyes. “I understand, but it doesn’t make saying goodbye any easier.”
“It’s not really goodbye. Not forever.” He lifts his hand to brush a stray lock of hair from my face. “Matthews has the answers, I just need to get them. And if I can’t, I’ll figure it out myself. Now I know changing the past is possible…” He smiles at me and a wide, mirroring grin pulls at my lips. “The next time I see you, I’ll tell you how happy we are together in the future.”
My chest swells, yet tears fall down my cheeks. I need to believe that time will come. That Liam will be in my future. That he will save my life, and we’ll be together. And when the day he speaks of comes, I’ll go to Professor McGregor and ask for the antidote. But until then, I’ll keep my lost powers a secret. I won’t add another burden to Liam’s shoulders.
I stand on my tiptoes and press my lips to his. He wraps his arms around me, lifting me off my feet, and his tongueparts my lips in slow, worshiping strokes that make my heart stammer. Fire erupts under my skin. Will any length of time with him satisfy the burning ache his touch provokes? The sparkle in his eyes tells me I’ll soon have a lifetime to test my theory.
My feet touch the ground, but Liam’s arms linger around my waist, as if he can’t quite let go. A mischievous grin plays at his lips. “There’s no coming back from you, Ella. You’re an addiction. The guy you’ll meet at Neurovida… has no idea what’s coming.”
“I want to knoweverythingabout us, and Neurovida… and time travel.”
Liam laughs. “See, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve told you there’s no fun in living if you know how everything’s going to turn out.”
“If you say so,” I murmur.
He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Goodbye, Ella.”
“Goodbye,” I whisper, and in an instant, he’s gone, the moving box filled with documents disappearing with him.
I move toward the office, but another noise echoes in the corridor. Smiling wildly and heart racing, I whip around. “I wasn’t expecting—”
The words disintegrate on my tongue. I stand mute, staring at the man walking toward me. A man who, seconds ago, was at least five years younger. Subtle lines crowd the outer corners of his eyes, yet somehow he’s more handsome than ever.
“Liam.” I reach out and brush my fingers along his bearded cheek. “I don’t understand. How long has it been?”
He grasps my hand long enough to draw it away from his face. “The last time you saw me, I was six years younger.”
“Six years? I don’t—” A heaviness settles in my stomach. Six years and he hasn’t come back.
“The next time I see you, I’ll tell you how happy we are together in the future.”
The day never came. He and Rose didn’t discover how to change my future. They couldn’t stop my death. It’s written all over him. He can’t save my life, and we won’t be together.He’s here to say goodbye.
For a fleeting moment, I’m falling, the world spinning around me as my body hurtles toward the ground with nothing to slow my descent. The resignation on Liam’s face confirms it, but I still ask, “You didn’t figure out how to save me, did you?”
Liam’s face twists, as if the words he speaks are agonizing. “I swear to you, Rose and I have tried. I’ve spent every waking minute since we left in the past, but we haven’t been able to change anything.”
“And Silas, he didn’t—He said he wanted to save me.” And despite everything he’s done, I believed him.Fool.
“He was an exceptional liar. If he wanted to save you, he could go back and stop it from happening, just like he could erase turning Neurovida against us,” Liam says.
“But if he already knows I won’t survive, then why bother entering my past?”Why push me to let him in and take away my powers?
“We only know he came to this time looking for us. We think he knew I’d try to find you, so he needed a reason to stay close to you.”
An uncomfortable tightness forms in my chest as I scan Silas’s neat cottage. The dark leather sofa where I opened up to him about my past. His white tiled kitchen where hecooked us dinner, his gray-blue eyes tracking me as I studied at his dining table. Whenever our gazes locked, the tension around his eyes would ease, as if I were his salvation in a life of damnation. All a lie. A trick. To get close to me, to find Liam and Rose.
“I didn’t think… Was itallfake?”
