figure out what else I can make. If she’s comfortable enough here to eat, maybe I can help put meat back on her bones. I take her plate back, stalling to read the screen of her tablet. She glances over at me, annoyed, when I sit down next to her.
“You mind?”
Just as I expected. She has over ten tabs open, all of them a headline of some sort. Jace’s name appears in over half of them. When I piece together the headlines, I can tell that they’re the ones from her original crime.
I’d done something similar at the start of the trial against the division. Not just Casey, but everyone in Compass Room C. I’d never gotten the chance to sift through all their histories before they died, and my own curiosity nagged me. But the itch to research died quickly when the criminals in the stories weren’t those I met. The depictions in the news articles weren’t even close.
I place my free hand on her knee and she stiffens. “You can talk to me, you know.”
She scoffs. “Get real, Evalyn.” Grabbing her plate back, she stands and marches over to the kitchen to dump it in the sink. I gaze over at the tablet she left behind, wondering how many of those articles she’s read more than once.
“What?”
She crosses her arms beneath the sad florescent light of the kitchen. “You want to say something to me?”
I stand. “Talk to me,
please
.”
She walks forward slowly, and it isn’t until now that I realize how damn tall she is. Why hadn’t I noticed before? Her eyes bore down on me with such intensity that I want to shrink into the corner, but I hold my ground.
“I’m really,
really
trying to understand your privilege, your choices. I
get
your fortune in Casey’s survival. You didn’t have to experience him dying so you don’t know what the grief of losing him—really losing him—feels like. And that’s why I’m trying to understand how, after everything, you could leave him. You want to protect him, so you think hiding—burrowing in this shit hole in the middle of nowhere—is the only way you can fix everything you think you fucked up.” I don’t think she can be any closer to me until she takes another step. “But don’t pretend you’re on my level. Don’t pretend that I can confide in you because you’re suffering the same, because you aren’t.” She turns from me, walking to the bed and falling onto it.
End of conversation, except I can’t let it be. “It isn’t fair that I’m not suffering as much as you.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“But it should.” I have the audacity to fall next to her on my back. We lie side by side for a while. “I don’t want you to grieve alone. I don’t want you to hold that burden. I wasn’t in love with her, but I miss her too.”
I roll my head over to watch her. Her eyes are glazed with tears. They ripple, desperate to tumble across her face, but she doesn’t let them.
“Let me in,” I whisper.
Her chest rises and falls. “The dreams are the worst, but I’m so happy I have them, you know? I can see her again.” She pauses for a long time, but I can’t think up a way to respond. The dreams are sick little moments of hell, and I can’t imagine the darkness she must feel every day to need them for relief.
“You’re an idiot for letting a little law and order get in the way of the two of you. I’d kill to have a forbidden romance right now. Literally. I’d kill.”
I wince. “You know I’d rather have died instead of her.”
“Stop it. That’s the other thing. No more of this ‘oh woe is me’ bullshit. You’re alive, goddamnit. And I think it’s time you finally realized that you’re a different person too.”
I shake my head, even though I know she’s staring at the ceiling.
“He knows the truth, you know. What you did and why you did it.”
“Casey?” I sit up, my insides clenching. Suddenly I need a drink, but I left my damn screwdriver on the kitchen counter. “You’ve spoken to him?”
“Of