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“Always?”
“Always.” He sighed. “Can I tell you something?”
“Yes.”
“I really hope we fucking straight-up murder Gordo’s dad. I’m sick and tired of this Omega bullshit. I want my tether back.”
Kelly laughed, though it sounded closer to a sob. “I’m right here. I’m right here.”
Carter squeezed my hand. He knew I was awake. “I know you are. It’s just… I miss it. Having you always in my head. I didn’t realize just how much I’d miss it until it wasn’t there anymore. It’s like this… this vacuum, you know? I get it now. How you must have felt when Robbie was gone. I never want you to feel like that again, so we’re going to fucking destroy Robert Livingstone, and then we’ll come home, and it’ll be like it used to be.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah, Kelly. I promise.”
They slept soon after, curled together.
I stayed awake for a long time.
The sky had barely begun to lighten when I shook Kelly awake. His eyes opened slowly, unfocused and blinking. He saw me, and he smiled. I knew right then and there that I would do anything for him.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“I need your help,” I whispered.
He unwrapped himself from his brother, who smacked his lips and grunted in his sleep before turning over, burying his face in the timber wolf’s stomach. The wolf flicked its tail once before breathing deeply.
Elizabeth opened her eyes in the low light. She didn’t speak. She smiled before closing her eyes again.
I led Kelly by the hand up the stairs to the second floor. We passed by his room. He yawned, jaw cracking as he rubbed his eyes. “Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
I pushed open the door to the bathroom. I let go of his hand, and he stood in the doorway. I went to the sink and stared into the mirror. It was the face I’d seen for as long as I could remember, but it wasn’t the right one. Not yet. Parts of myself were still hidden away, lost in the grip of magic behind an unbreakable door.
I shrugged my shirt up and over my head, dropped it to the floor. I opened one of the drawers beneath the sink. The electric razor was still there, where I’d seen it a few weeks previous. I hadn’t been ready then.
I was now.
He took it from me wordlessly, looking down at it, then back at me. I closed the lid to the toilet and sat down on it. I reached back and grabbed a towel hanging from the wooden rack. I spread it over my shoulders. I took a deep breath.
He said, “You don’t remember. But sometimes you act like you do. It’s almost like muscle memory. A reflex.”
I blinked. “What?”
He closed the bathroom door. “Before. You didn’t like people you didn’t know touching you. That included getting a haircut. You weren’t mean about it, it was just….” He shook his head. “It was just one of your things. You said it made you nervous.”
“I’ve always been that way.”
He smiled, though it faded almost immediately. “I know. You did it, though, because none of us knew how to cut hair. When we were on the road going after Richard Collins, we shaved our own heads. I told you about that once and you all but demanded I do the same for you.” He laughed. “You told me later that you just used it as an excuse to get my hands on you.”
I groaned. “Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah, I pretty much saw right through you. Mom always used to do it for you, but then you asked me and I just….” He shrugged. “I couldn’t say no.”
I looked down at my hands. “Couldn’t?”
“Wouldn’t,” he said. “It was such a little thing, but it felt so big. I was pretty bad at it at first, but I got better at it. You trusted me, and so I made sure I knew what I was doing.”
