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A ghostly smile passes over her face. “What the fuck are you talking about, Rome? There’s no train here.”
She’s barely whispering, half out of it. Good. Maybe she won’t have to feel this fear the way I feel it. Maybe it’s better that way.
“Remember our plan?”
Her smile gets bigger. “Yeah. Of course I do.” She opens her eyes. It looks like it takes a lot of effort. “Do you know how we leave? I know it’s not a real train. That would be convenient. One step.” Avery walks her fingers over the mattress, then lets them fall.
I take her hand in mine and brush her fingertips over the pills.
Avery’s eyes go wide. She’s got the most stunning eyes I’ve ever seen on a person. Whatever happens next, I’m going to close them. Nobody else is going to look into them. I’m the only one. The last one. A wild, possessive urge grips me.I should have been looking into those eyes for years now and years to come. She should have been mine.
She’ll be mine in this, at least. This is all we get.
“We’re going to have to push through.” I’ve been thinking about this for hours. “There’s no water, and your mouth is dry. But you have to keep swallowing, okay?”
Avery nods solemnly. For the first time in days, all the tension leaves her face.Okay,her lips say, but no sound comes out.
I sit up then, lifting her upright too. We can lie down again when we’re done swallowing. Twelve pills, six for each of us. One sweep of my hand to tip them into her palm. They’re so light, for all the work they’re going to do. A little bit of chemistry, pressed into a neat circle.Fucking crazy.I’ve held these pills a thousand different times, just like this. A sped-up montage of my buyers over the years flashes in front of my eyes. All those businessmen. Those three girls on their knees. So many glassy-eyed smiles. And now, the two of us.
Avery reaches forward and takes my hand. Hers doesn’t tremble at all. Is that because she’s relieved or because her body is out of energy, even for a shiver? Could be both. Could be anything. I can’t get a full breath. There are things I want to say, that Ineedto say to her, but we’ve said it all. We have said every possible fucking thing. And, even now, I can’t stamp out the hope that there might be something after. I want to crush that feeble hope under my foot like a cigarette butt. I can’t do it. So what? In a few minutes, I’ll know for sure. Consider this an experiment. Avery’s sister tried it first, when she drowned herself. Here we come, following in her footsteps.
Aves looks down into her palm, studying the pills there. All the years I’ve known her make me think she’s got questions. Any reasonable person would want to know.Is it enough? Will it hurt? How long will it take?
She looks back into my eyes. Christ, those eyes of hers. There are streaks inside them, almost like gold. You couldn’t dream those eyes up.
“Let’s go.”
Avery raises her hand without hesitation. She opens her mouth, and I’m her mirror. I follow her. No more discussion. We’re going. Train’s leaving the station.
The pills are dry and hard on my tongue, the edges warped from their time in my pocket. It doesn’t make a difference. What does make a difference is how dry my fucking mouth is. I told Avery she’d have to keep swallowing. I didn’t count on having trouble myself. But I do it, one by one, the jagged edges scraping on the way down. They remind me that I’m still alive, for the moment. Something in the back of my mind screams at me to stop this. That fucking thing called hope. You can’t kill the bitch, even at the bitter end.There’s nobody coming to save us. This is it.
“Done.” Avery’s beaming. How did that happen so fast? I expected more of a struggle, honestly. Fuck these people for making her so eager to die. Someone like Avery Capulet should never want to die. She should only want more, more of the world, more of life.
I put my hands on her face and ever-so-gently coax her mouth open. I check beneath her tongue and in her cheeks. She’s good. They’re gone. And so am I.
She leans into me, planting a chaste kiss on my lips. The gesture breaks me. I was composed until she did that. Now my eyes fill with tears that I didn’t know they could still produce, as she kisses me again on each stubbled cheek. She pulls away from me, a contented smile on her face. There’s a rock in my throat that I can’t swallow past, and it’s not because of the pills. It’s because my heart is breaking, shattering into a million jagged shards that shred me to pieces on the inside.
“Thank you,” I murmur, kissing her cheeks tenderly with my sandpaper lips.
Her eyes flutter closed, and I draw her back down to the mattress. Pull her in tight.Why the hell not?This is how we go out—together. I take a big breath of her in and then another one. Everything is limited now—we’re running out of breaths. How terrible and wonderful is that?
Avery’s lips part, her mouth working. I can’t take my eyes off her. There are worse sights than this to die to.
“Tell me you love me, Rome.” A light whisper, like a summer breeze. Nothing to it, but the words themselves are electric. A little smile, there and gone, in a second. “You don’t have to mean it. Just say it.”
Something breaks in my chest. It’s my heart shattering.
“I love you,” I say fiercely, and the thing is, I do mean it.
The truth of it, the terrible, wonderful truth, is thatI mean it. I’ve always fucking meant it. I’ve always loved Avery Capulet. Even when she sat there in that courtroom and ruined my life. Even when I fucking hated her.
Even then. Even now.
There are so many things we could have done. My life spools back up in my head, going to the moment my dad first told me that I was going to marry her.Why didn’t I fight for that?I could have fought for it, and maybe I could have had it, somehow. I could have done everything in my power to have her.
So many things. So many trips together, to far-flung islands and impossible deserts and opulent hotels that nobody in their right mind can afford. So many mornings I could have woken up with her. So many nights I could have made love to her. So many babies I could have made with her. So many years I could have existed in her presence. I could have done it all, but I didn’t; and now, I’m left with this. This one, fleeting moment, right now. If the drugs weren’t already starting to work, I’d think about crying because it’s such bullshit that we missed out on it all.
“I wish that I had let you visit me in prison,” I murmur. “I think if I hadn’t been so stubborn, things might have been different.”
