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“Oh shit. Why do you look like you’re about to cry? Please don’t cry. He’ll fucking kill me. It was the dog, wasn’t it? I shouldn’t have brought up the dog. Don’t watch that shit. It is deeply depressing. Here. Let me get you a napkin.”
“It’s fine, Seb. It’s fine. I’m not going to cry. Just…stop. Seriously, I’m fine.” I am not fine, though. I’m hanging on by a thread, barely keeping it together.
“It won’t always feel like this. Things will be better once you get the surgery out of the way. Then you’ll have all of your memories back and you won’t ever have to worry about the whole, ‘Who-am-I gonna-be-today? Do-I-love-Theo-or-do-I-want-him-dead?’ bit.”
“I’m sorry,what?”
“Yeah. He said it was risky, but I’m sure you’re sick of all this—”
My hand tightens around my beer glass. “Whatsurgery, Sebastian?”
His mouth opens. Words are about to come out, but then a spark of confusion flashes in his unfocused eyes. A look of realization follows promptly after. “Oh shit. You don’t—” He wags a finger at me. “You donotknow about the surgery.” Looking over his shoulder, he scans the crowd. “Uhhhh, Theo?”
“Sebastian!”
“THEO!”
He’s there, then—my dark prince, pushing his way toward us through the melee. His face is stormy, anger and concern warring for dominance over his features. He looks to me first, and then narrows his eyes, glaring at Seb. “What did you do?” he demands.
“He let slip about mysurgery,” I say stiffly. “A surgery I know nothing about.”
Theo’s shoulders sag. The anger that was visibly building in him falls away when he looks at me. “Oh,fuck.”
“Yeah. ‘Oh fuck,’sounds about right. Now would you care to explain what the hell he’s talking about before I lose my shit?”
25
SORRELL
“It isn’t safe.”
I clench my jaw so hard that I think my teeth might crack. I couldn’t give a shit about my teeth, though. I glower at Theo, hoping with every fiber of my being that my face accurately portrays just how furious I am right now.
The night air shivers with snow. Huge fat flakes eddy down from the heavy midnight sky, the largest I’ve ever seen. They catch in Theo’s disheveled black waves and across the tops of his shoulders as he paces up and down outside the entrance to the academy. Toussaint is deserted and dark as a tomb, all its students having all fled with their weekend passes in hand. Sitting on the bottom step of the stone stairs, I pull my Parka around me tighter, too mad to even think straight.
“It’s an unproven procedure. They’ve only attempted it a couple of times over the past few years and each experiment ended in disaster. Total loss of motor function. Speech centers destroyed.Extremeseizures,”he says, counting off a litany of side effects on his fingers. “Dizziness. Headaches. Pulmonary disfunction. Cranial nerve injuries—”
“Theo.”
“One girl wentblind—”
“Theo, stop.”
He stops and turns to face me. Tense as a bowstring, he drags his hands back through his hair, flaring his nostrils as he blasts a breath down his nose. “This isn’t one you’d walk away from. You’ve defied the odds so many times, Kid. Risking this would just be asking for trouble.”
I have to fight the urge to scream at him. Miraculously, I manage to hold myself in check until I’m calm enough to speak. “Don’t you think that this sounds like something I should decide? Did it ever occur to you that, I don’t know, maybe giving me all of the information and letting me come to my own conclusion would be the best way to handle this?”
“I was going to do all of that, Kid. I was. The right time just hasn’t presented itself to talk to you about it. And you’refineright now—”
“I AMNOTFINE!” My shout echoes across Toussaint’s snow-dusted lawns, echoing through the thickness of the night like a shotgun blast. I get to my feet, a ball of white-hot rage swelling behind my ribs. “I am about as far from fine as I could be, Theo. I have no idea who I am. I’m—I’m notpermanent!Anything could make me slip again.Anything! I feel like I’m barely here most of the time—”
“You’reyou, Sorrell. You’re doing great! You’re starting to remember little things all the time—”
“I am missing an entire lifetime, Theo! It’s mine and I fucking want it back! I want to remember our first kiss. I want to remember the first time you told me that you loved me. The first time we had sex. I want to remembermyparents, Theo.”
“You’ll get it all back. In time, there’s a decent chance—”
“What kind of chance? Exactly? I want a number.”
