Soulprint by Megan Miranda Read Free Book Online Page B

connected to it will be very busy this time of night. We’re going to walk in plain sight. We’re going to blend in, in plain sight. Got it?”
    â€œGot it,” I say, and I pull myself up the rungs of the ladder. It sounds like a horrible plan. I try to imagine eyes skimming over me, but I can’t picture it. I see the press, eyes fixed. I see the guards, who watch me without making eye contact. If they look away, it’s for a reason.
    And I feel Dominic Ellis’s eyes following me, rung by rung, as I climb.
    The walls around us narrow until I can’t see Dominic and he can’t see me, and our breathing and our steps echo off the brick walls. There’s a metal circle above me, and I hear the sound of muffled screaming—or maybe laughter—carrying through.
    Cameron touches my calf briefly before speaking. “They won’t know you,” he whispers. “They’re done with work or school, and they’re out—they aren’t watching the news.”
    The idea seems so foreign, that there’s this world that exists without me, and yet even as I think it, I know that it’s entirely egotistical and selfish of me. But in my world, on my island, there does not exist a time when I am not at the center, when I am not the axis.
    Cameron climbs up the other side of the ladder, his feet carefully avoiding my feet. His hands avoiding my hands. I have my elbows hooked over the final rung, but I’m frozen. “But look at us,” I say. Meaning our wet hair, our wrinkled fingers, our chattering teeth.
    â€œPeople only look,” he says, his hands flat against the metalcircle, twisting it gently, “if you give them a reason to.” He tests the lid, which gives easily, and a rush of fresh air flows in before he sets it back down again. “We’re going to be together. Just two people walking home.” Then he nods at me, gives my elbow a squeeze, and I flinch. “Ready?”
    But he doesn’t wait for me to answer, probably because he knows that I am not. Probably because he remembers how he had to push me over the edge of the cliff. Possibly, but I’m not sure how, he understands how overwhelming and terrifying that big expanse of freedom actually is when you get there.
    Cameron pushes the lid and lifts himself effortlessly out. He reaches his hand down for me—just one hand, one person, one step—and I take it.
YES
.
    And then, before I can process the magnitude of this moment, I am out. We’re in a narrow street and there are people walking, lots of people walking, by the entrance to this alley. Cameron kicks the lid back in place, and the sound of metal on metal makes someone pause. Makes someone look.
    His hands are on my waist, and every muscle in my body freezes. Then they twitch with adrenaline again, waiting for the signal to run, but instead he comes closer, and I feel the brick wall against my back, and his body pressed close to mine, and I’m trying to move because there’s too much all at once, but there’s nothing but an unforgiving wall. I feel his breath in my ear as he says, “It would help if you pretended to like this.”
    So I move my hands to his back, and I hear a giggle from the mouth of the alley, but the muscles in his back do not relax.
    â€œYou’re nervous,” I whisper back. He’s not supposed to be nervous. He made it seem like this was the easy part.
    â€œNot about this,” he says.
    I know he’s thinking of Casey, even as he runs his fingers down my arm and takes my hand as he backs away.
    â€œYou don’t like Dom,” I say, not as a question.
    He pauses. “I don’t trust him.” Neither do I.
    â€œThen let’s go back. I can help.”
    He looks at me quickly and then away again as he snakes an arm around my waist and pulls me even closer as we exit the alley. “I don’t trust you either.”
    It should hurt when he says