In The Afterlight (The Darkest Minds #3)(96)

His eyes flashed, blue flames, as he pulled me to him.

He kissed me.

He kissed me the way I’d kissed him in the forest at the edge of the East River camp. In the darkness, the smell of damp earth and dust and leather wrapped around us. Hard—desperate—his hands fisted in my hair, mine in his jacket.

He kissed me, and I let him, because I knew it was the last time.

I pushed him away, feeling something in my chest tear wide open as the cold air filled the space between us. Liam braced himself against the wall, trying to catch his breath. I fought the stupidest urge to sit down on the stairs and cry.

He took a shaking breath. “Anna said...she said that Nico’s been working secretly on some kind of virus. She thinks it’s for the Thurmond hit. It’s the kind that someone will have to go in and install before any kind of attack can happen.” His voice sounded hollow. “Would you happen to know anything about that?”

I looked away.

“Jesus, Ruby,” he said quietly.

He was giving me the chance to come clean about the Thurmond hit, but nothing, least of all him, was going to prevent me from doing this. I didn’t need his approval.

“They will kill you,” he said, anger seeping into the words. “You know this. They know what you are and what you can do. Are you going to sway the whole camp? Get them under your control the way Clancy did at East River? They aren’t going to let you leave that camp alive, and you don’t even care, do you?”

He scrubbed at his face, letting out a sound of pure aggravation. “Do I even have to ask who put this idea in your head? He’s not one of us, Ruby! He’s not, and you still side with him, you tell him the things you used to tell me. Tell me what happened, tell me how to make this right between us again. I don’t understand how we broke down. I don’t understand why he has this hold on you!”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” I felt a cold drop of ice spread down my spine at my own words, no matter how true they were.

“You used to want to,” he said. “Do you want to know why I didn’t tell you about Alice and Amplify? I came close a hundred times. I almost told you that night we were in the garage, but I stopped myself because lately...lately it doesn’t matter what I say. You and Cole think it’s wrong, stupid, or naïve. Dammit, I am sick to death of that word. I’m not stupid, and I’m not blind either. I can keep us fed, I can fix every damn fixture that’s falling off, I can make sure all of the cars run, I can find us the one real shot we have doing some lasting good in a world that’s already too violent, but it’s not enough. I don’t even register, do I? Not to him. Not to you, not anymore.”

I said nothing. Felt nothing. Was nothing.

“I’m trying to think of what comes after—how we’ll move on with our lives when this is all over. It’s what we talked about before. I don’t want any of these kids to live their lives stained with pain and regret and blood. I don’t want that for you, either. We can do good work—we can make the whole damn world see that we’re good kids in a shitty situation. Please—Ruby, please. Cole is going to walk you right over a cliff, and he’s going to be holding your hand the entire time.”

I held his gaze a moment longer, letting the words expand, filling the parts of me that were crumbling. Think of the girls, I thought, Cabin 27. Sam. All of those thousands of kids who’d been left behind as I got out. Ashley’s face, the dead eyes staring up at me, the accusation I’d read in them. Where were you? Why didn’t you come sooner?

“If I’ve hurt you half as bad as you’re hurting me,” he said, his voice ragged, “then, God, just kill me. I can’t stand this. Say something. Say something!”

I could sacrifice this, the thing I wanted most, for them, and the trade would never balance out, not fully. I owed them more than my love. I owed each of those girls my life. They needed to know what I’d felt today as we pulled out of Oasis. We would find the cure, if it was the last thing I did on this earth, and it would be waiting for them when they got out. They would know true freedom—not because they’d be able to shed their terrible abilities, the thing that marked them as freak. Because they’d be able to make every choice that had been denied to them for years. They could go anywhere. Be with the people they loved.

In the end, it didn’t matter what happened to me—I understood what Nico had meant now, when he talked about making amends. I couldn’t go back and change the things that had happened to them, but I could sure as hell put them in charge of their own futures. It would be worth it. Losing this...it would feel worth it. One day.

But now, it only hurt. It felt like tearing myself into pieces. The end came with silence, and I knew Liam felt it, even if he was too stubborn to admit it to himself. There was nothing left to say. I turned and started back up the stairs.

“I’ll be around,” he called after me, “when you decide you want to find me.”

Swallowing the painful lump in my throat, I kept my back to him and said, “Don’t bother waiting.”

I was at the top of the stairs, pushing the door open, when he said, “Maybe I won’t.”

The door swung shut behind me, clicking quietly back into place. I let my body seize up, the pain tearing through me as I went into the nearest bunk room and collapsed down onto one of the beds. I clenched my fists, released them, clenched and released, trying to work out the unbearable tightness, to set some kind of rhythm for my breathing instead of the horrible, rough gasping. Laughing voices drifted down the hall from the big room, at odds with the screaming inside of my head.