I have to keep pretending that I barely knew him before this past week.
Ross blows his whistle, and Salvatore and I launch into our match.
When the mafia heir swings at my jaw, the ephemera I embedded there helps me jerk out of the way fast enough. The magical barrier around my gut deflects a lance of energy he flings my way.
The captain compliments my defenses, and I smile as if I’m pleased. But underneath, a deeper pain is churning in my chest around a question I’m not sure how to answer.
I’m carrying even more secrets than I ever did in my own reality. Am I going to have to spend my whole life holding my matches at a wary distance, as if they’re as much my enemies as my lovers?
Seventeen
Elodie
At one o’clock on Wednesday, I hand the excusal Professor Raith wrote to one of Luminary’s admin assistants and stroll out. Seven blocks down the street and after a turn to the left, I spot an almost familiar car.
He bought the same model as my original Cole did, just in a different color: a gunmetal gray Corolla rather than black. Because the owner he bought it from used had different tastes in this reality, or because this Cole ended up buying from a different owner?
I come to a stop beside the car, grappling with the uneasy mix of jangling nerves and bittersweet nostalgia. Through the driver’s side window, wrapped peppermints glint in one of the cupholders, where my original Cole also kept them. A pale blotch shows on the dash where ten-year-old Asher stuck a sticker and Cole couldn’t completely scrape it off.
I remember the way his voice thickened when he told me that story, regretting every chiding word.
But this Cole won’t regret that moment, because his Asher is still alive. This Cole isn’t taking me for a drive as a doting partner but as my skeptical professor.
I’ve tapped into my ephemeral impressions of my original matches often enough in the past few days that the other Cole’s voice rises up in the back of my mind without my consciously summoning it.
“He wants to handle this union right, just like I always did. No matter what he says, I can’t imagine he wants tohurtyou. Give him time, and he’ll adjust.”
I want to believe that’s true. To have faith in the man who balked but then stepped up more than anyone could have asked of him in the world I left behind.
It’s just difficult when that man lived a much different existence in the past three years than this one did. Unlike Salvatore and Byron, his life wasn’t just shifted by an unexpected bond but by the loss of the only person in the world he cared about.
How much did the grief change him in ways I’ll never see in this Cole?
The man in question approaches with muted footsteps, but I sense his arrival with a tingle from my marked palm to my heart a few seconds before his tall, lean form comes around the corner. He frowns at me as if he was hoping I wouldn’t have shown up after all.
In an attempt to keep the peace, I restrain the urge to roll my eyes at him. Even though that would be a very Other Elodie thing to do, I’m sure.
Would Other Elodie have found herself on a mission like this? She poked her nose into strange goings-on throughout the lucent community, but today I’m drawing onmyinside knowledge rather than hers.
Which is what makes having an unknowing companion along for the ride that much more precarious.
The car doors unlock with a softbeep. Cole jerks his head toward the passenger side without a word, as if there’s any doubt about who’s driving.
As I sink into the seat, familiar smells wind around me. I can pick out the prickly evergreen tang that’s all Cole mingling with the warm amber note lingering from Asher’s regular presence.
It’s like I’m soaking in their essence. I haven’t breathed in Asher’s scent this deeply since the last time he hugged me—the other him, weeks before I killed him.
A burn forms in the back of my eyes. I blink quickly to dispel the threatening tears and inhale much more shallowly, taking in as little of the atmosphere as possible.
I didn’t have that Asher as my match for more than a few fleeting moments, but I can’t imagine he’d rather I was back in a reality where he was dead. Of course he’d want me to find whatever happiness I can with an alternate version of him, given the opportunity.
I just don’t know if I can do that without wrecking this Asher’s life all over again.
Cole doesn’t speak until a tickle of ephemera has brushed past me, I assume to hide my presence from anyone who looks through the window.
He starts the ignition. “Where exactly are we going?”
“Sunlite Plaza.”
