35
Nathaniel
Aweek later, Lincoln and I move Julia’s stuff into our house.Ourhouse. The house I share with my brother and my girlfriend. It’s a gift. I don’t need the cane anymore and feel totally fine unless it rains. She’s still a little bruised but healing fast. It doesn’t take long to get her moved in. She didn’t have much except Ginger and her collection of sad plants. It will take some getting used to us living together, but we have time. Time.
There was no hesitation in our decision to move in together. We haven’t left each other’s side since the hospital. It may be the honeymoon phase but I think more than anything it’s the understanding that everything could be lost at any moment. We aren’t willing to lose even a second.
I’ll never forget the fear that flooded me when I saw that gun pointed at her head. The look in my father’s eyes. He was going to kill her. If that room hadn’t collapsed around them… I can still feel her lifeless body in my arms as I carried her out.
I shake my head to clear away the visions that still haunt my nightmares.
There is concern about the looming, unnamed threat that whoever was working with Zebulund and Moore are still at large, but the immediate trouble with my father has been taken care of. They found his remains. Lincoln and I did not go to the memorial.
I stand in the kitchen window looking out at the small patch of asphalt where Lincoln and Julia are playing basketball.
“HO!” Julia yells at Lincoln and I shake my head with a smile.
“You better be playing HORSE,” I yell out the window, but they just ignore me with a smile.
I unload her teacups and mugs from a box and place them on the shelf next to mine. Seeing my assorted collection with logos of tech companies next to her blue phone box mug on the shelf together makes me ridiculously happy.
Neither one of us have been back to the labs since the attack. The explosion in the abandoned mines in the mountain caused enough structural damage to some of the old areas of the campus that they have shut everything down until the structural integrity of the buildings can be confirmed. That means everybody gets a paid two-week vacation.
The Lite-Brite contract was put on hold. Ken decided to come forward about his involvement in the damage. He has been fired but I don’t know anything more than that. With William Moore’s sudden death, the town is in a state of flux. The board of directors has hired an interim CEO for Moore Investments Inc., but in light of the most recent allegations against the former CEO, the stocks aren’t doing well. Who knows what will happen. Hopefully the town will be fine.
I miss the team. I even miss working. I’m happy for the break and to be with Julia and Lincoln all the time, but I think about my friends. I wonder where they’ll go now. I miss coming up with insane ideas with Jared and Kate. I miss seeing how Dylan and Febin make it a reality.
Julia misses them too. I told her about the conversation with Ken and how they came to her defense. She was happy to hear it but since she hasn’t heard from anyone, I can tell she still thinks that they are mad at her.
I didn’t tell her that they may know more about her than either of us told them.
It is still impossible to believe that Will is dead. My father is dead. I’m an orphan. I can’t quite wrap my mind around it.
Later, after Lincoln goes out with friends, Julia and I thoroughly christen our shared bed. It’s gentle and luxurious and I take care to make sure she’s okay. But she’s healing at an amazing rate. Just like the flourishing plants that clutter our home. She has made some sort of breakthrough with her plants, and I often find her whispering or singing to them.
I hold her in my arms as we quietly breathe the same air. Every once in a while she shudders and a little harmless spark flies off her.
“Mm, that was nice,” she says.
“Agreed,” I say.
I kiss the beauty mark on her shoulder and inhale her deeply.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks me.
I love how she always wants to know what’s on my mind just like I want to know what’s on hers. We can’t seem to get enough of each other. Our relationship is one neither one of us thought we could ever have, and we feel lucky every single day.
I sigh. “Nothing.”
She props up to look at me. “Don’t lie. Is it your dad?”
Yes. More than I thought I would think about him. “Not exactly.”
“Because it would be okay to miss him. Or at least what you wanted him to be. What he had the potential to be.”
I never thought for minute he would change but a little part of me hoped he would be better for Lincoln. I worry she feels guilty about his death. We’ve gone over and over how he was responsible for his own destruction but there was that moment … That moment I try not to think about. When I was so close to ending his life.
I answer honestly, “Sometimes I’m thankful the choice was taken away from me. Sometimes I’m angry about it. But mostly I don’t think about him. That alone is a gift.”
