The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds #1)(88)

Dangerous. This is dangerous. The warning was fleeting, banished to the back corners of my mind, where it wouldn’t interrupt how good it felt to touch him—how right.

“I’m going to need it back eventually,” I said, letting him run it along the stubble on his chin.

“Too bad.”

“…crackers…” a voice breathed out behind us, “yessss…”

Both of us turned, watching as Chubs twisted around in his seat and settled back down, still fast asleep.

I pressed a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing. Liam rolled his eyes, smiling.

“He dreams about food,” he said. “A lot.”

“At least they’re good dreams.”

“Yeah,” Liam agreed. “I guess he’s lucky.” I looked back at Chubs’s curled up form and, for the first time, realized just how cold it was without the heat from Betty’s vent.

Liam let his head slide down to rest against his other arm, threading his fingers through mine. He seemed to be studying the shape they made, the way my thumb appeared to rest naturally on top of his.

“If you wanted to,” he began, “could you see what he was dreaming about?”

I nodded. “But those things are private.”

“But you’ve done it before?”

“Not intentionally.”

“To me?”

“To the girls in my cabin at camp,” I said. “To Zu that night in the motel. I’ve been in your head—once. Just not in your dreams.”

“Two days ago,” he said, putting it together. “At the rest stop.”

It was instinct to pull back, to let go before I felt him let go first, but he didn’t allow me.

“Don’t,” he said. “I’m not mad.”

He brought our hands down against his forehead, not looking at me when he asked, “Does it make it worse? To be touching someone, I mean. Is it harder to control?”

“Sometimes,” I admitted. I didn’t know how to explain it, because I had never wanted to. “Sometimes, when I’m tired or upset, I’ll pick up on someone’s thoughts or a memory they’re thinking about, but I can avoid being pulled in if I don’t touch the person. Touching them when my head is like that…it’s an automatic connection.”

“I thought so.” Liam sighed, closing his eyes again. “You know, when we first met, you used to go out of your way to avoid touching us. I kept wondering if it was something you had been trained to do at your camp, because every time one of us would try to touch you or talk to you, you’d jump like we had shocked you.”

“I didn’t want to hurt any of you,” I whispered.

His eyes flashed open again, somehow brighter than before. He nodded to our linked fingers. “Is this okay?”

“Are you okay?” I countered. I recognized the look on his face—it was nearly identical to the grief he’d worn at the rest stop, talking about his own camp. “What are you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about how strange it is that we haven’t even known each other for two weeks, but it feels like I’ve known you for much longer than that,” he said. “And I’m thinking that it’s frustrating to feel like I know certain parts of you so well, but other parts of you…I don’t even know what your life was like before you went to camp.”

What could I tell him? What could I say about what I had done to my parents and to Sam that wouldn’t scare him into letting go?

“This is a place where we don’t have to lie,” he said, motioning between us. “Didn’t you tell me that?”

“You remember?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “Because I keep hoping that goes both ways. That if I ask you why you don’t want to go home to your parents, you’ll tell me the truth, or if I ask you what Thurmond was really like, you’ll stop lying. But then I realized that it’s not fair, because it’s not like I want to talk about my family. It’s like…those…”

I turned to look at him, waiting as he tried to piece together his thought. “I don’t know if I can explain it,” he said. “It’s hard to put into words. Those things—those memories—are mine, you know? They’re the things that the camp didn’t take away when I went in, and they’re the things I don’t have to share if I don’t want to. I guess that’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” I said. “That’s not stupid at all.”

“And I want to talk about everything with you. Everything. But I don’t know what to tell you about Caledonia,” he said. “I don’t know what I can tell you that won’t make you hate me. I was stupid, and I’m embarrassed and ashamed, and I know—I know—that Charles and Zu blame me for what happened. And I know that Cole has told Mom about it by now, and she’s told Harry, and the thought just makes me sick.”

“You did what you thought was right,” I said. “I’m sure they understand that.”

He shook his head, swallowing hard. I reached over with my other hand to brush the hair out of his eyes. The way he turned his face toward me again, closing his eyes and tilting his chin, made me brave enough to do it again. My fingers followed the natural wave of his hair, tracing the strands down around his ear.