In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(52)

Cole gave a friendly wave to one of the Green girls, Erica, who glanced over. She went bright pink and ducked back down, blocked from sight by Nico. The ghostly blue light from the computer screen gave him the look of a half-frozen corpse. The lines of his face seemed deeper, harsher, the longer he concentrated.

“I don’t think this is a good idea to have him access Clancy’s server,” I said quietly. “His judgment is impaired where Clancy’s concerned.”

“Your reservations have been noted, Gem. But he’s our man on this. I’m willing to bet on him—Nico has the most to prove. He won’t let you or Cate down again, not if he can help it.”

“The if he can help it part is the problem.”

“Hey now. You got to plead Lee’s case. I get to do the same for Nico, and it’s your turn to deal.”

“Liam didn’t give confidential information about the organization to the enemy’s son, the same person who then not only betrayed us and him, but also possibly destroyed our one shot at a cure.” I turned my back on the scene in front of me, leaning against the glass.

“Right, but if he hadn’t involved Clancy, if you hadn’t been tricked into coming back, we wouldn’t even know a cure existed.”

I stared at him, momentarily speechless.

“Didn’t think about it that way, did you?” Cole shrugged. “The loss...it opens a hole you in, a goddamn black hole at the center of your world. It sucks in your thoughts before you even have time to stop and examine them, and it’s always hungry for more. It doesn’t hurt any less to weigh what you lost against what you gained, does it?”

I shook my head. After a moment, I kicked myself off the wall, holding out the piece of paper I’d used to write down the server and password information I’d seen in Clancy’s mind. Cole took it wordlessly, glancing down at my scrawl.

“Hey, Ruby,” he said quietly. “The thing is...what they don’t tell you about forgiveness is this—you don’t give it for the other person’s sake, but your own.”

“Who’d you steal that one from?” I asked.

“That one’s courtesy of having lived and learned.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, I’m sure—”

My mind couldn’t finish the thought. It was there, then gone, just like the shadows that passed in his eyes. The recovery was just as quick—Cole’s eyes jumped from me to the floor, and then the smile he forced onto his face was actually painful to witness. After a moment, he shrugged, his arms coming up and crossing over his chest. He was daring me to say something about it, and the longer I didn’t, the harder it was for him to stand there, stand still. I saw the moment that vulnerability welled to the surface inside of him. The uncertainty of the moment made him look young, like a boy standing there waiting for some kind of punishment to be delivered.

“Who did you have to forgive?” I asked. It wasn’t my business, I knew that, but his reaction had left my chest hollow. I wanted to know; I wanted him to tell me, to ease some of the weight of whatever-it-was off him, just for a second.

“It’s not—listen, it doesn’t matter, just—just think about it?” He fumbled for the words, raking his hand back through his cropped hair. There were so many possible answers to my question: his parents for not seeing what he was, Liam for giving him a hard time, the remnants of the League for turning their backs on him. I knew about all of that, and the fact he wouldn’t say, wouldn’t so much as look at me, told me it had to be something and someone else. It had to be much worse than what I’d imagined.

Cole had become so good at slipping into the armor of charm he always wore that I’d let myself be distracted enough to miss the signs of real turmoil beneath. He didn’t trust anyone with the truth of exactly how deep the pain cut, did he? Maybe in time, he could confide in me, and I could be for him what Liam and the others had been to me. They hadn’t let the grip of Thurmond, of what I was, drag me back into a small, lonely existence.

“All right,” I said, taking the paper back from him and pushing him into the room. “Come on.”

Nico had to look up and then look again for his mind to accept that I was the one standing in front of him.

“Can you download the files from this server?” I asked.

He stared at me long enough that I felt an itch to fidget.

“Yeah, sure, no problem,” Nico mumbled, taking the paper.

The Greens had backed away from his chair to make room for us, but edged closer in curiosity as Nico brought up a series of screens. The strange code that formed the computer’s language began to scroll by.

“Hey, guys,” Cole said, in his best buddy-buddy voice. “Can one of you go grab the senator from her quarters and send her our way? The rest of you would absolutely be my heroes if you went and helped poor Lucy scrape together dinner.”

They were too smart not to figure out they were being dismissed, but none of them seemed to care. On the screen, a window popped up, and a half dozen folders appeared.

“What was that for?” I asked when the last Green had slipped out and shut the door behind him. Cole silently pointed down at Nico, who’d gone so still in his chair, it wasn’t clear if he was breathing. His shoulders sank, rolled down and forward, like he wanted nothing more than to curl his ends together like an old piece of paper and disappear.