Page 25 of Five

And that’s when I remember how my dream should’ve ended.

With me, showing horses that summer. I did win all the prizes and I did turn all the heads.

But that was nothing compared to what Five did with his time off. He did wow the world with his robots. And that’s how he got that offer to go away to Oxford.

He was… seen.

And sometimes being seen is the most dangerous thing a person can do.

Chapter Eight - Five

“Five?”

“Yeah,” I say, still lost in our undisclosed problems. But I catch up with reality real fast when the princess stays quiet. “What?”

She’s staring down at the water, her legs dangling over. Stiff elbows lead to flat hands propping herself up on the rock. She turns her head. Slides a piece of long, golden hair behind her ear. Waits a beat. Then another. Until the tension is thick, and the waiting is unbearable, and—

“Did you know…” she starts, then pauses.

Her eyes are darting back and forth on mine. And there is this moment when I feel panic. Like I’ve missed something. Like I fucked up. That gut-wrenching moment when you realize you lost, and buddy, that loss happened a long time ago, you just never knew it. I have this crushing, suffocating feeling that she’s gonna say something bad, like… Did you know that if you leave your girl hanging for too long, she’ll move on? Or, Did you know that childhood sweethearts almost never make it? Did you know—

“Did you know,” she starts again, “that everything comes in fives?”

I let out a breath, then a laugh. “What?”

“It’s true,” she says. “There’s five senses and five fingers. Five toes and five vowels in the English language. There’s five Great Lakes, and five points on a star.”

My panic goes away and a smile begins to creep up my face.

“Five golden rings in that song. Five people in the Scooby-Doo show. Five digits in a zip code, five days in the work week, five—”

“Five Aston,” I say.

She stops her litany and nods. “Five Aston. Who is the only five that matters. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about fives. And do you know what I figured out?”

“What?” I ask.

“There’s only one of him.” She places a fingertip on my chest and presses. “This one. So if you plan on doing anything stupid, you’d better take me with you.”

I swallow hard. I know what she means but… but it just comes out wrong. Like I’m planning for something bad to happen. For failure or death or something like that. It feels like a pact that has the potential to go very wrong.

“Don’t shake your head at me, Mr. Aston. I won’t take no for an answer. You know I’m capable of taking care of myself. You know I can find out what you’re hiding. And I will if you lie. If you lie to me, Five, I’ll figure it all out on my own and then I’ll force my way into your world and all your best-laid plans will go to shit.”

She crosses her arms. Exhales. Smiles.

“Rory…” But I stop.

The future passes before my eyes. Every possibility I’ve come up with. I’m capable of running numbers in my head. I can do some pretty goddamned hard calculations up in my big brain. I can run probabilities and plot trajectories. And everything I’ve come up with leads to—

She reaches for me. My hand. She takes it in both of hers, stroking it. Then she places it on her cheek, cuddling it. “We’re a team,” she says. “You and I, OK? Spencer Shrike raised a warrior princess, not a helpless one. You, of all people, know this.”

“Rory…” But there’s no good way to tell her. “I… I love you,” I say. “I love you so much and I can’t—”

“You can,” she insists. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on. Please. Don’t make me do it alone. That’s fucked up, Five, and you know it. Anything can happen. At any time. You can’t keep me safe if I’m in the dark.”

“If anything ever happened to you,” I say, shaking my head, unable to finish that thought.

“We’re a team,” she says. “Just like my mom and dad are a team. Just like your mom and dad are a team. They stuck together and we can too. They made it, and we can too.”