Rebel (Legend, #4)(49)

June Iparis. A girl I’d loved for a long time. Someone who, despite the flaws in my memory, I’d managed to hang on to all those years.

That night, we sat down in a restaurant at the top of a newly constructed Republic building. Tess and Eden sat across from us. I sat next to June, trying to figure out what to say to her.

I asked her how Anden was doing. Word was that June had been in a long relationship with the young Elector, that they had even moved in together.

“We’re not together anymore,” she told me. There was a small smile on her lips as she said it, as if she was embarrassed to tell me. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I knew to smile back.

“Ah,” I tried to say. “I just got out of a relationship myself.”

We spent the entire dinner stumbling through our words. Tess found it so entertaining that she kept throwing questions our way, forcing us to bring up specific memories from the past.

Afterward, we walked together in the late, quiet hours of the Ruby sector. The air had the clean chill that comes after a good rainstorm, and we steered carefully around the puddles that dotted the streets. June stayed a small distance away from me, and I did the same. We walked as if we’d just met each other. In a way, I guess we did.

When we finally reached her front door, I faced her with my hands in my pockets, trying to find a good way to say goodbye.

She gave me a small smile and tilted her head. “You’re not staying in the Republic, then,” she said. “You’re heading back to Antarctica soon.”

Everything in me wanted to ask her to come with me, so that I could show her the new city where I lived. But I held back because she held back. “Tomorrow morning,” I answered. “Eden needs to finish his degree before he comes back here for his internship.”

“Are you going to move back here with him?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know yet. My work is in Ross City. But I’ll come here, at least for a little while. I’d rather not leave Eden alone.”

She nodded. “Don’t worry. He’ll have friends in town.”

I smiled at her. “That’s a relief,” I replied, taking a step closer to her. She didn’t pull away. She leaned toward me too, with such an earnest expression that it took everything in me not to kiss her right there and then.

I looked down. “I was wondering…,” I started to say. “Tess told me that when you came to the hospital ten years ago, to see me off to Antarctica, you didn’t mention who you were. I didn’t recognize you, either. It was the worst of my memory loss, that year.”

June hesitated, her eyes far away for a moment, and then nodded. “That’s true,” she replied.

“Why’d you do that?” I shook my head. “Just thank me and walk away without telling me your real name? Why’d you let me go?”

June stayed quiet. Then she turned to me and said, “I once made a promise to myself that if it meant it would help you survive, I would never step back into your life.” She smiled faintly. “And you did survive. So I kept that promise.”

For me. She had done this, made this sacrifice, for her heart as well as mine. I closed my eyes for a second, overwhelmed by her gesture, and then looked at her again.

“Are you happy here, in the Republic?” I asked her.

She shrugged. A rare uncertainty came into her gaze. “Yes,” she said after a pause. “We’ve had such a time together, haven’t we? I still don’t know what it all means. But you have your life in Ross City now. And I have mine here in the Republic. We’re moving forward and leaving our past behind.”

Up until that moment, I would have broken down at her feet and pulled her in for a kiss. I would have wrapped my arms around her and let myself fall madly back in love with her.

But her words pulled me up short. You have your life in Ross City now. And I have mine here in the Republic.

It was true. We were completely different people now, living completely separate lives. We had just sat through an entire dinner and barely managed to exchange a handful of sentences with each other. My memories of her were still so fragmented, a million broken shards of a once-intact window.

She had been the one to let me go.

Did she ever love me as fiercely as I loved her? How fiercely had I loved her?

I didn’t know if she read the hesitation in my gaze first, or if she just reacted the same way I did. But she seemed to retreat from me then too. Her smile was guarded, as if she was also afraid of being hurt.

“Perhaps,” she said, “we can find a way back into each other’s lives. Perhaps we can be friends again.”

Friends. It would be a start, at least.

I pulled back my desire to kiss her, the way I wanted to obsess over every detail of her—the darkness of her eyes, the curve of her lips, the thick length of her hair that I remembered running my fingers through. I pulled it all back and let it close, safeguarding those emotions for another time.

“Friends again,” I said, nodding in agreement.

She smiled at me, genuinely smiled, and it brightened her face so much that I wanted to remember it forever. I stretched out a hand to her. She took it. We shook once before pulling each other into a farewell embrace.

“Travel safe tomorrow,” she murmured to me.

I let her go reluctantly. “Tell me if you’re ever in Ross City,” I replied.