Burn (Pure #3)(97)

Iralene drank too much champagne, and he did too—more than he should have because he wanted to drown that guilt. But now he wishes he hadn’t. He’d like to be able to think. He’s got to get to Pressia and Lyda as soon as possible. How?

Iralene runs ahead of him and opens the door to the bedroom. She calls to him, “You have to see this! The bed is as big as a swimming pool!” She disappears into the room.

He walks to the hall but doesn’t go to the bedroom. This isn’t a real honeymoon.

She peeks her head out of the bedroom door and looks at him. “Let’s dive in!” She takes off her shoes.

“Iralene,” he says, “you know it’s all fake.”

“What?” she says. “I can’t hear you.”

He walks to the bedroom door and leans against the frame.

Iralene has climbed onto the canopy bed, its white blanket covered in petals. She turns and falls backward, arms spread wide, the petals bouncing around her. “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!” she sings.

Partridge walks up to the bed and holds on to one of its posts, like someone on a boat trying to steady himself.

It is, in fact, a huge canopy bed—with a shiny brass frame.

Like the ruined one on the third floor of the warden’s house where he and Lyda cocooned themselves and had sex—where he told her he loved her.

A brass bed.

“I can’t sleep here, Iralene.”

She lifts her head. “What?”

“You know I can’t. You know why.”

“I thought you meant it. What you said today. What you promised me. I felt it.”

“I think I did mean it.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know what I’m good at, Partridge? You know what my most perfected trait is?”

She props herself up on her elbows. She looks beautiful on the bed surrounded by flower petals. “I have no idea.”

“Patience.”

She’s right. She grew up in-waiting, suspended. She means that she’s going to wait for him to really fall in love with her—her and her alone.

“I’m going to get on the phone and talk to Weed,” Partridge says. “I want him to help Peekins with Pressia’s grandfather. I want him to try to help me break into the locked, unmarked chamber down there. I’ve got to—”

“Do what you have to do, but remember—you still owe me.”

“I know,” he says, but Iralene’s voice is charged in a way that’s unsettling. He heads for the door.

“Partridge,” she whispers.

He stops.

“You might not have meant what you said today, but I did,” Iralene says. “Just so you know. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I have to say what people want me to say or what I need to say to survive. Today, though, I meant it. Every word.”

Partridge nods. He closes the door gently and stands there for a moment. Why didn’t Lyda ever return his letters? How does she feel about him now? Does he really want to know the answer to that question?

He walks down the hall into the suite’s living room. He just got married, but for some reason, he feels incredibly lonely. Maybe it’s because he is alone. His mother, his brother, his father—they’re all gone.

Right now he misses Sedge most of all. Sedge would have been his best man. He would have maybe even had some advice for him. Partridge doesn’t even have a memento of his brother.

Then Partridge remembers the field trip that Glassings took his World History class to—the Personal Loss Archives. All of the academy boys walked the aisles lined with alphabetized boxes, each containing the personal effects of someone who’d died.

He opened his mother’s box, where he found some important clues to her existence—clues that had been planted for him. But he never opened his brother’s box. He hadn’t had the courage. He wishes now that he’d seen what was inside.

And then he realizes that he doesn’t need permission to go to the Personal Loss Archives. He’s in charge.

He wants to go. Now. He misses his brother and wants to see what’s in that box.

He realizes that he seems crazy and maybe drunk, but who cares?

He walks to the door of the suite and pulls it open. There, standing at attention, is a guard. Not Beckley. He’s still with Pressia and probably now Lyda. This is a guard he doesn’t know well at all—Albertson.

“Sir?” Albertson says.

“I want you to escort me somewhere.”

“I can’t just do that, sir. I’d have to get clearance. I’d have to make calls.”

“To Foresteed?”

Albertson looks away.

“It’s my wedding day, Albertson. How about as a wedding gift, you don’t make any calls. Okay?”

“I don’t know,” Albertson says. “I’m just not sure.”

“C’mon, Albertson. You know it’s the right thing to do. Just a little trip. You and me.”

“Now, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I want to visit my brother.”





EL CAPITAN





HELL YES