“Us.”
“There is nous.”
Another blow. Another hole to match the others. Soon he’d be riddled through.
He looked at her then, and surely the light shining at that moment wasn’t a coincidence—the way it clung to her and brightened her skin, turning her ethereal, as though even the heavens were determined to keep his attention on her. “There is to me,” Theo murmured, broken but true. “Everything you’ve ever said to me, everything you’ve ever done—it’s still here.” He pointed to his chest, where he felt her beating heart next to his own. “I can’t simply tear it out.”
Her jaw tightened. “You can.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Not hard enough,” she said, turning to him. “It isn’t easy. It takes time. You have to halt those thoughts in their tracks. Divert them, until you can’t recall any of it. Not the touches or the laughter or the promises. Eventually you’ll find that all of it, every single piece, is imaginary. Just a memory, a little more faded each time it’s inspected, washed of whatever magic it had.” There were no tears in her eyes, no shake to her lips. She spoke as though she read from a transcript. “Then other things will return. The ability to think without thinking of me, to hear another woman’s voice and not compare the sound. Eventually, the pain won’t exist at all. You’ll be free of it.”
The ocean blurred. He did not lift his fingers to wipe his eyes out of defiance—even that felt like a shedding of her.
“Was it truly as easy as that?” he asked. “To be rid of me?”
Something in her expression closed. “I’ve had more than enough practice.”
He thought of whatever family she’d left in Scurry, her Aunt Francis, her mother… and him. Perhaps, that was the difference between them, that she was in flux, morphing to the shape of her confines, peeling off her home and her name and moving onward while he stayed as he was.
“Are you asking me not to follow you? Or are you telling me?” he said now, bracing himself.
He remembered her at a much younger age, dressed in Artisan navy and unable to meet his eye.
Now she looked at him unflinchingly. “I’m telling you.”
He pressed his hand over his bullet wound, thinking for a moment that it had reopened and that he was spilling onto the ground. “Where do you propose I go?” he asked, and now it was he who could not stand to meet her eyes. “I thought—” he started, but couldn’t finish. It sounded so incredibly stupid now. He’d thought they’d find each other again. He’d thought she’d love him. He’d thought all the problems in the world would become negligible if he had that.
“That’s not for me to say, Theo,” she said, looking out at the sea. Then she forced a painful sort of grin. “Maybe here. You’d have the whole ocean to command.” Her hand touched his shoulder briefly, and still he felt changed by it, as though there was something tangible passing from her to him. Surely, she felt it, didn’t she?
How many times had they walked along the cliff edge on their excursions to Lavnonshire, him making shapes out of the sea mist, her laughing at his cleverness? But she’d forgotten it all. Still, he could remind her—he would.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers, and she flinched in surprise, then froze, her lips unmoving.
But there was a breath’s moment when she didn’t pull back, and his hands were holding her face again, and it felt like coming home.
Then he was stumbling back, the wind leaving his lungs, Nina’s hands shoving him away.
A charge running wild over his skin. “Nina—”
She was breathing heavily, hair falling free from her cap and covering her eyes. “Are you insane?” she said, furious now. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Me?” he said, laughing without a hint of mirth. “No, Nina. I’m thinking clearly. One of us ought to.”
She huffed out a breath of indignation, mouth agape. Then she stormed off across the lane, and slammed the door to Mrs. Trunk’s shop.
Theo followed.
He watched the back of her vanish through the maze of the shop, ignored John’s queries as he went after her, took the stairs two at a time, and ignored the flaring pain in his side.
He caught up to her in Mrs. Trunk’s living room.
“Leave me alone, Theo,” she said, ripping herself free of the oversize coat.
“You don’t want me to leave, Nina.”
She laughed. “Lord have mercy.”
