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I am so sorry. Can we please talk? Jericho.
Just reading the note upset Evie. But she didn’t want to leave with only yesterday stretched between them. She needed answers.
Jericho was hunched over his untouched plate of eggs and flapjacks when Evie walked in, baseball bat in hand. He saw her and stood, like a gentleman would. Evie startled and raised her weapon. “I’m no Babe Ruth, but I have a decent swing.”
“You won’t need it. I promise,” Jericho said. “Ames is in the kitchen, right there.”
Evie flicked her eyes toward the swinging door behind Jericho with the inset porthole window. Through it, she could see
Ames and the kitchen staff hard at work. “From what I saw yesterday, Ames would be no protection.”
“His gun would.”
“Let’s talk,” she said. Jericho took his seat again, and Evie sat at the opposite end, keeping the long dining table between them. She did not drop the bat.
“I’m sorry. I’m… I’m horrified,” Jericho said, staring down at his plate. He still seemed a bit dazed, and Evie wasn’t sure if it was the tranquilizer darts or the guilt or both. Her earlier resolve retreated some. She hated that she felt frightened of Jericho and angry at Jericho and sorry for him and angry that she felt she should have sympathy for him when she was the one who got hurt. And still, underneath it all lurked that twisted, awful physical attraction to him. Never had she been more confused.
“Jericho, what’s in that serum Marlowe’s giving you?”
“I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”
“It seems dangerous.”
“It’s keeping me alive right now,” Jericho said, glancing up at Evie for just a second, then having to look away again. The shame he felt was like a trapped animal scratching inside him.
“Maybe it’s not,” Evie said. “Maybe that serum is making you sick and dependent. What if you stopped taking it? You could come back to the city with us. Right now. Today.”
Jericho’s head shot up. “Go back… with you?”
“On the train,” she said, and the implication was clear: with us but not with me.
Jericho shook his head. “I can’t. I made a promise.” He sneaked another look at Evie. There was a bruise on her neck. The shame was overwhelming. “I wouldn’t blame you for hating me. But if you could see it in your heart to give me a second chance…”
The way he was looking at her now, like the Jericho she had known and loved, the studious boy with all the books who had talked soothingly to her on the roof of the Bennington when she had been at her most vulnerable, the one who fed the pigeons, who burned with ambition just like she did, who understood the darkness that roamed her own soul—did that Jericho deserve another chance? Was she being unfair? Had what he’d done to her been brought about solely because of Marlowe’s serum, or was Sam right and the serum had only brought out something that already lived deep inside Jericho?
Yes, he was beautiful. Yes, her body still yearned for his touch, she hated to admit. And she’d seen tremendous good in Jericho. But now that she let herself see more clearly, there was something else in there as well. A deep, dark struggle whose ending she couldn’t read, something that both intrigued and frightened her.
“I don’t hate you, Jericho. But I’m all balled up right now. What happened yesterday… well, I need time to think,” Evie said.
Jericho nodded. “It’s more than I deserve.”
Evie shut her eyes and let out a long breath. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
She blinked her eyes open. “Don’t say things that make me feel sorry for you.”
Sam and the others arrived. Their suitcases were packed and waiting in the foyer. Jericho could feel everything slipping away from him. He’d always said that a man was defined by his choices. He didn’t want to only be defined by what he’d done yesterday.
“Before you go, there’s something I want to show you,” he said.
“She’s not going anywhere with you, pal. Not without the rest of us,” Sam said.
“I can speak for myself, Sam,” Evie said. She looked into Jericho’s face for an uncomfortable moment. “What is it?”
“I need you to follow me into the woods. All of you,” Jericho said.
Sam picked up the bat. Evie pushed his hand down. “I think we should trust him on this.”
