Only a Monster(Monsters #1)(102)

‘What are you doing, Nick?’ she said. Didn’t he know that drawing this out was torment?

Nick lowered his hands slowly. ‘I don’t know.’ He sounded as raw and lost as Joan felt. ‘I’ve always put the mission first. I never allowed myself anything more.’

It sounded like a lonely life. Joan remembered the kitchen where Nick had found his family dead. The fridge behind him had been covered with photos—Nick and his brothers and sisters blowing out birthday candles, laughing at the camera.

She remembered his spartan locker in the Holland House staff room.

Now, in the silence of the library, his breaths sounded unsteady. ‘I never allowed myself to feel anything,’ he said. ‘But then I walked into the library that day. And I saw you.’

Joan remembered how he’d walked through the door that day. And when he’d looked up, she’d known him.

‘Someone changed the timeline,’ he said. ‘But they couldn’t make me forget you. Not completely.’ His dark eyes were intent on her, as familiar as her own heartbeat. ‘I love you, Joan.’

Joan heard herself make a soft choked sound. How could something she’d wanted to hear so much hurt so much? No matter how much she wanted to travel in time, it was nothing to how she felt about Nick. From the moment they’d met, she’d only ever wanted to be near him.

‘Don’t,’ she whispered. It was too much to bear.

‘I know,’ he said. There was so much pain in his voice. ‘I know how much you hate me.’

Joan shook her head, even though it was true. She hated him. She loved him. There was a rift inside her, and she was being torn apart by it. She took a breath and barely controlled it. ‘It isn’t me you remember,’ she managed. ‘I’m not her—I’m not that other Joan.’ The Joan from the true timeline, who’d made the right choices, who’d probably never stolen time in her whole life.

‘I know who you are,’ he said.

‘You don’t.’ She suddenly couldn’t bear the way he was looking at her. ‘I’ve stolen so much time,’ she said hoarsely. She didn’t even know how many people she’d stolen from. Had to be hundreds. Maybe even a thousand. She and Aaron had been in the Pit for ages. And she’d used at least thirty years from the travel token to come here. For a second, her revulsion at herself choked her breath.

And then Nick did step closer, as though he couldn’t stop himself. Joan could almost feel the warmth of him in the cool air of the abandoned library. If she reached out, she’d be able to touch him.

She clenched her fists instead. ‘Whoever we used to be, we’re not those people anymore,’ she said. ‘If you feel anything for me . . . If—if I feel anything for you . . .’ She watched his eyes darken as he realised what she was saying. ‘It’s just a remnant of another timeline. We’re different people now.’

‘What they made me into?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘And what I made you into?’

Joan’s breath stopped in her throat. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, Joan.’

‘I did those things,’ Joan whispered back. He’d killed her family, but it had been her hand on the back of innocent people’s necks. It had been her choice.

‘I don’t even know how many people I’ve killed,’ Nick said, soft. A confession. She could hear it in his voice then too. He was as sick at himself as she was at herself.

‘I wish . . .’ Joan swallowed. ‘I wish we could be different.’

‘What if we were?’ Nick said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘We can’t change what we’ve done,’ Nick said, ‘but . . . we don’t have to be the people we were made into.’ He sounded shaky. ‘You told me once that you wanted peace between monsters and humans.’

Joan stared at him. The woman in the recording had said that she’d chosen Nick because his virtuousness could be twisted into righteous fury. The woman had thought she’d made Nick perfectly. But she’d been wrong. Joan understood that now. There was something incorruptible at the core of him. Something good that not even two thousand attempts at torturing and breaking him could erase.

‘Do you really think it’s possible?’ Joan said. She wanted peace more than anything. She was half-human, half-monster. She didn’t just want peace. She felt broken without it.

‘I can’t bring your family back,’ he said. ‘But if we can make this timeline better, I want to try.’

Joan knew then. She wasn’t in love with that other Nick—the Nick who’d never been the hero. She wasn’t that other

Joan. She was in love with this Nick—the Nick who’d suffered unimaginably, and turned that suffering into wanting to protect people. And who still, even now, could imagine a future that was different.

She took the last step and reached up to touch his face. He let her, unflinchingly. ‘Can I kiss you?’ she whispered.

He made a soft sound and reached for her with a kind of desperate relief that made Joan’s heart jump. He was bare-necked, she realised as he pulled her into his arms. All she’d have to do to was slide her hand to his neck, and he’d be dead. His trust almost undid her.