The Replaced(60)

“Hey,” Tyler said, and when he smiled, I forgot all about my hair and boogers, and almost even about my dad.

“Hey,” I said back.

And then I almost died anyway when I realized he wasn’t talking to me at all, but to Griffin, and all of a sudden I was back in junior high all over again as I had one of those awkward moments in the hallway when someone waves to you and you wave back, only you realize a second too late that they were never waving at you at all, but at the person standing behind you all along.

So. Embarrassing.

My cheeks blazed like someone had thrown a gallon of lighter fluid on them, and I lowered my gaze, unable to look at anyone. Humiliation brimmed in my eyes and I had to blink several times to keep them from spilling over, certain my charcoal cheeks would cause the tears to sizzle.

On the other side of me, I felt Simon’s fingertips brush over the back of my hand, but I curled my fingers until all that was left were white-boned knuckles. I didn’t want his pity. I never had.

But Tyler rescued me when he nudged me with his shoulder. “You guys almost done here?” And this time he was most definitely talking to me.

My breath caught as I glanced up again. He grinned at me with his way-too-alluring lips, and the butterflies beat rather than fluttered like a flock of spastic birds in the pit of my stomach. “I am.”

“You wanna get out of here? Maybe go someplace we can catch up?” He looked to Griffin for approval and the butterflies died a horrific death. I didn’t want him to seek her approval. I wanted it to be just us, him and me, so we didn’t have to do any of this in front of the rest of them—not her or Simon or Willow, who was giving me the eyebrow version of a thumbs-up. “Do you mind?”


Griffin took it all in, from Tyler’s far-too-eager-to-please expression to my less-than-thrilled, arms-crossed-over-my-chest stance. She was in her element, being in control like this. Having the final-ultimate-absolute say in whether we would be alone or not.

All I could do was wait, telling her with my own eyebrows to give it a rest. But all the while my lungs were paralyzed as I waited for that single, almost imperceptible nod. And when she gave it, I tried not to be too obvious. The last thing I wanted was to give her the satisfaction of knowing she had me all twisted up inside . . . even though she totally did.

I’d have done anything for her in that moment. Traded anything.

Given up everything.

“Have her back in her quarters by dawn,” Griffin told Tyler as he passed her. “She’s staying in Paradise. Sector nine.”

Tyler paused and shot her a puzzled look. “Paradise?”

She lifted a brow, letting him know the conversation was over, and Tyler just shook his head.

“Come on,” he said, reaching for my hand. When his fingers closed over mine, I didn’t shy away from him the way I had from Simon. I let our hands melt together, our fingers interlocking as if they’d been made for this—two halves of one whole that fit together, like jigsaws in a puzzle.

He dragged me enthusiastically, and I followed, just as eagerly, impatient to make him remember he loved me.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN


MEMORY WAS A TRICKY THING.

As much as I wanted to fix the gap in Tyler’s mind, the place where I should’ve been—where we’d spent our time together—it wasn’t that simple. I couldn’t just hand the missing chunk back to him.

I understood, of course; I’d lost time too. Five entire years. I mean, it wasn’t exactly the same since I’d really been gone that whole time and his was more of a glitch in his memory, but that didn’t mean I didn’t get how weird it would be if I were to just spring it on him, the news that we’d been a thing, he and I, something he had absolutely no clue about.

Instead, it was like a do-over, like I was meeting seventeen-year-old Tyler that first time. He was looking at me and thinking about me the same way he had been that first day I’d come back.

Except this time we had something new in common: we were both Returned.

We walked in silence past the training field, and for several long, almost too long, seconds I thought maybe we’d have nothing to say to each other. It was strange, seeing him and trying to put myself in his shoes. He’d been here at Blackwater ever since he’d been sent back, which, if everything I’d been told about the whole forty-eight-hour thing was right, must have been several weeks already.

That was a long time to be indoctrinated into Griffin’s way of thinking. To be training with her so-called army.

I understood how Tyler could end up in a place like this. I even understood why he’d want to stay.

It was terrifying being one of the Returned, finding out you’d been taken and experimented on, and you could never go back to your old life. It made it easier to know there was someplace you could go, someplace safe, with others who’d been through the same thing you had.

I wouldn’t want to go through it alone.

Heck, if Griffin had found me first, I couldn’t say I wouldn’t be one of her soldiers now too. Instead, I’d ended up with Simon.

But who’s to say that had been the right choice, that there weren’t other camps, with other leaders, and other causes that might have been better, safer . . . righter.

It seemed like a crapshoot if you asked me, and my dice had just so happened to land on Simon. Tyler, well, he’d gotten Griffin. And Natty, she’d rolled Thom.