In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(18)

Liam—and Chubs, and Vida, and all of them—hadn’t been able to understand how much work went into controlling what I could do, so it didn’t control me. Loosening my grip on the leash even for a second could mean hurting someone. Hurting myself.

“It feels like I’m always at the edge of it, and I can’t...I can’t step in, not without feeling so damn scared I’m going to ruin everything. I want to stop ruining every good thing that comes my way. I couldn’t control it for a really long time—”

“And you think I can? Jesus. Half the time I feel it boiling me alive under my skin. It simmers and simmers and simmers until I finally release the pressure. It was like that even when I was a kid.” Cole let out a faint, humorless laugh. “It wasn’t...it wasn’t like a voice or anything, not one that whispered to me. It was just this urge, I guess. It was like I was always standing too close to a fire and needed to just stick my hand in once, to see how hot it really was. I couldn’t sleep at night. I thought for sure it was because my dad was actually the devil. Really, truly, the Prince of Darkness himself.”

“Harry?” I asked, confused.

“No, bio dad. Harry’s—”

“Right, forgot,” I said.

“Lee talks about him a lot, then?” He didn’t wait for me to confirm before continuing. “Yeah, our real dad...that man...dumb as a bag of hammers, mean as a snake. Not a good combination. I still fantasize about looking him up, breaking into the old house, and setting his whole world on fire.”

“Liam only brought him up once,” I said, trying not to pry no matter how much I wanted to. This was the one part of his life Liam wasn’t willing to share, and as horrible as it was, it only made me want to pick at the scab more. “When he lost his temper.”

“Good, hopefully that means he doesn’t remember the half of it. The guy was—he was a monster. He was the devil himself when he got his temper up. Guess one of us was bound to be a chip off the old block. I used to wonder, you know, if the abilities we have are somehow dependent on something we already have inside us. I thought, this fire—this is his anger. This is my dad’s rage.”

I knew it wouldn’t do anything, or at least reassurance had never done much when it was delivered to me, but I had to say it. I had to tell him. “You’re not a monster.”

“Don’t monsters breathe fire? Don’t they burn down kingdoms and countries?” Cole sent me a wry smile. “You call yourself that, too, don’t you? No matter how many times others tell you it’s not true, you’ve seen the proof. You can’t trust yourself.”

I settled back against my seat, wondering, for the very first time, if he wasn’t just as desperate as the rest of us for a cure.

“This isn’t about the camps for you...is it?” I asked. “It’s about the cure.”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Got it on the first try. Feel free to think I’m an ass**le.”

“Why? Because you don’t want to suffer like this?” I asked sharply. “Because you want to be normal?”

“What’s ‘normal’?” Cole asked. “Pretty sure none of us remember what that feels like.”

“Fine,” I pressed, “then because you want a life where you’re free from all of this bullshit. I want the cure more than I want my next breath. I never used to. I never let myself think of the future, and now it’s like a compulsion. I want that freedom so badly, and it seems like the more I strain to try and reach it, the further away it gets.”

Cole rubbed his hand over his face, nodding. “I underestimate it sometimes...you forget, because you function, and each time you get kicked down you manage to pick yourself up. But now, it’s starting to get harder, right?”

“Yes.” It was the first time I’d admitted it. The word was as hollow as I felt.

“It’s not that I don’t think I won’t be able to get up. It’s that I’m afraid one day I’ll just...explode. Combust. Take out everyone I care about because I can’t stop myself from feeling so damn angry all the time.” He pulled up his hand, holding it in front of his face, waiting for it to spasm again. When it didn’t happen, his gaze shifted down to Clancy. “They keep them locked in these white rooms. Lights are on the whole time and there are voices. Voices that don’t stop, that are constantly telling them shit like, you’re wrong, admit you’re wrong so we can fix you. They hurt the kids—they really hurt them, over and over. It was...I could barely stand to see it, and I wasn’t the one getting beaten. Was that...real? Can he make stuff up?”

My hands tightened around the wheel. “He can plant any image he wants in your mind, but I think the truth is bad enough that he doesn’t have to embellish it.”

“I don’t know what pisses me off more—what they did to the kids, or that they figured out how to contain the fire in them. Shit, Gem. How the hell...” He shook his head as if to clear it. “If he tells any of the others, if he tells Liam, what am I supposed to do? None of the kids will come within a hundred feet of me.”

“He’s not going to,” I promised. “How much more of that stuff do you have?”

He unzipped the pouch. “Three more vials.”

“Then he’ll stay out until we get to the Ranch and we get him secured,” I said. “We’ll keep him separated at all times, and I’ll be the one he interacts with.”