Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(64)
She rubbed her temples, breathing deep. Trying to keep her temper in check. Trying to make the Ana in her see past the hurt of it all, see the truth buried underneath.
“You did the right thing,” she said. “But you should’ve told me about Hope first. You should’ve trusted me to put Lemon and Crick and Kaiser’s safety before my own pride.”
Ezekiel stared for a long, empty moment. Slowly nodded.
“I should have. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t hide things from me, Ezekiel,” she said. “People have been doing that for the past two years. I don’t know how much more I can take. So just be straight with me from now on, okay? That’s all I’m asking.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt you, Eve.”
“I want to believe that.”
“Believe it,” he breathed. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe.”
Eve shook her head. Feeling that hateful itch in her optic that meant she was starting to cry again. She forced the tears back, punching and kicking.
Sick of crying.
Sick of it all.
“Marie used to say the best romances were the forbidden ones,” she murmured. “I’ve been thinking really hard about that. Wondering if that’s the reason we did it. You and me. Maybe each of us was just rebelling in our own way. Any way we could.”
“It was more than that.”
“Was it?”
He walked across the deck, knelt in front of her. Took her hand gently in his. And looking into her eyes, he spoke as if she and he were the only two people in the world.
“Two years I searched for you,” he said. “Two years of empty wastes and endless roads. Of not knowing if I’d ever see you again. But when the ash rose up to choke me, it was thoughts of you that helped me breathe. When the night seemed never-ending, it was dreams of you that helped me sleep. You. And only you.”
“Ezekiel, I …”
“You don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to promise me a thing. I don’t know what it was for you, but for me, it was real. And you’re the girl who made me real.”
“That’s a hell of an ideal for one person to live up to, Ezekiel.”
The lifelike sighed, ran his hand through his dark hair. “I’m sorry. I know how it must feel to be looked at the way I look at you. But you’ve had seventeen years to learn to deal with all the emotions inside your head. I’ve had two. Imagine having all your capacity for love and hate and joy and rage and only a couple of years to learn to handle all of it. Sometimes it feels like a flood inside my mind, and it’s all I can do not to drown.”
Eve remembered Dresden’s warning to Silas and her father about that same thing.
Had that been what led Raphael to kill himself?
Is that what drove Ezekiel’s feelings for her? Taking a childish infatuation and turning it into the focus of his life? He’d been her first love, and she couldn’t deny what he’d meant to her, how seeing him again now was making her feel, but …
Does he even know what love is?
“I know what I sound like when I say this,” Ezekiel confessed. “But I can’t help it. You were my everything. You still are. And you always will be.”
The boy who wasn’t anything close to a boy brought her hand to his lips, kissed her bruised knuckles. Despite the storm in her head, his words were cool water, washing away the hurt in her heart. His words were fire, lighting a flame in her chest. He leaned close, kissed the tears from her eyes, first her real one, then the implant where her eye used to be. His lips were soft. His touch electric. As real as anything she’d ever known.
She opened her eyes and found him staring at her in the gloom.
She didn’t know what she wanted.
She knew exactly what she wanted.
She shouldn’t go there, and she knew it. It’d be a mistake to fall back now. It was all too real. Too raw. She needed to get her head straight. To sleep. To think. And even though she could feel part of herself being dragged back toward him, Eve resisted. She wouldn’t be doing it for the right reasons. She’d be doing it to drown the hurt. To fall into his arms and forget herself. And truth was, she’d done enough forgetting to last a lifetime.
But, god, it was hard to push herself away… .
“I should let you rest,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”
She was exhausted. Aching. Bones like lead. But the thought of sleep, of the dreams that might find her when she closed her eyes …
“Will you stay with me?” she asked. “I mean … just until I fall asleep?”
He smiled. Eyes shining.
“I can do that.”
Eve kicked off her boots, curled up under one of the blankets. She heard Ezekiel walk to the balcony, opened her eyes a crack and saw him standing there, silhouetted in the flickering light. A statue standing vigil. A watchman on the wall.
When the ash rose up to choke me, it was thoughts of you that helped me breathe.
When the night seemed never-ending, it was dreams of you that helped me sleep.
“Goodnight, Ezekiel.”
“Goodnight, Eve.”
She closed her eyes. Drifting into the dark. And when the dreams came, they weren’t of lifelikes marching into the cellblock in their perfect, pretty row. They weren’t of metal fingers curling closed or gunsmoke or blood or all she’d lost.