Читать книгу Earthquake - Aprilynne Pike - Страница 13

I’m so wrapped up in Logan I scarcely notice when the lights flicker and then die, plunging us into total darkness.

For a moment there’s silence, and then we both start to laugh. “Did we do that?” I ask, finally getting some control.

“I didn’t do it. Did you do it?”

“Bad timing, I guess.”

“Or extremely good timing,” Logan says, his lips brushing my neck.

A moment later there’s the glow of a candle that wasn’t there before.

“You made that!” I say with a gasp.

He raises one eyebrow, the expression somehow sultry in the dim light. “Of course I did,” he says, pressing a kiss against my brow. “I still want to look at you,” he says, a hint of a growl in his throat. “And kiss you, and touch you, and hold you.” I pull his face back down to mine, and it’s like the weird power outage never happened.

It’s only hours later, when exhaustion overtakes us both, that we slow down. Logan helps me into his discarded T-shirt and kisses my forehead one more time before blowing out the candle. Then he pulls me against him and breathes a long sigh, the kind that sounds like it’s been waiting two centuries to be released.

“We found each other,” I marvel, and even now I hardly believe it.

“You found me,” Logan whispers, kissing my forehead. “Fate needed a little help.”

It’s mere seconds before I hear Logan’s breathing slow, and he falls asleep, his arm draped over me. I’m near sleep myself, but I take a moment to revel in the last few hours in this silent, dark room. Every part of my body feels tender and new, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis for the first time. New, and perfect.

As perfect as I will ever be.

He’s looking at me when I wake up, and for half a second I wonder why his eyes aren’t blue.

Guilt stabs my chest as the memory of last night comes flooding back. I push visions of sky-blue eyes aside and smile at Logan.

My lover. My diligo.

“Good morning, I think. Lights finally came back on,” he whispers in his rough morning voice.

A voice I last heard over two hundred years ago. My mouth curls up at the thought.

“What?” he asks, running the tip of his nose up my cheek and making me feel very awake indeed.

“I haven’t seen you in a long time.”

He tosses his head back and laughs, and I realize I miss his long hair. It’s not a big deal. Hair grows. I, of all people, know that. He kisses me soundly and then leans on one elbow and looks down at me, my head still buried in the pillows. “So, Tavia? That’s a funny name.”

A giggle busts out in more of a snort. “My mom came up with it,” I say, a tiny pang making its way into my heart. “No one ever says it right.”

His eyes soften and he kisses me again, and we waste another half hour or so kissing and rolling about on the bed before Logan’s eyes grow serious. “We should probably talk,” he says.

I nod and sober up. I guess the honeymoon is over.

For a little while anyway.

Logan pulls the sheet off me, and I fight the urge to grab it back. Or at least cover the fact that all I’m wearing is underwear and his shirt. But he’s not looking at me that way. His eyes are serious—maybe even sad—as he pushes his T-shirt up around my ribs and looks at the scars from my surgeries. The huge staple-marked scar on my thigh is gone—compliments of the Curatoria med team—but there are plenty others to see. My trach scar, several small marks where ribs broke the skin, the remains of a lesion across my hips from the seat belt on the plane, that sort of thing. Enough that even in the darkness last night, he would have felt them.

“What happened to you?” he whispers, his voice so full of sympathy and anguish it makes tears of joy come to my eyes.

Joy that I found the person who feels this way about me. That we’re together now and can be forever.

Literally, forever.

I swallow hard and then take his hand and move it to my head. I angle my neck and sweep my hair away and let him see that scar too. Feel it. Other than doctors, nurses, people I had to let feel it, no one else has ever touched my scar.

Except Benson.

He doesn’t count anymore.

“Tavia,” he says, touching the scar very softly. He doesn’t say anything else, but after a few seconds he drops his hand and looks at me. Waiting.

It takes a long time, but I tell him everything that has happened in the last eight months: the plane wreck, the slow manifestation of my powers, Sammi and Mark, the Reduciates, Marie, the virus. Especially the virus since we couldn’t really talk about it in the prison.

I don’t mention Benson.

I should. But I can’t. He’s too raw a wound, and I don’t want Logan to know about him at all.

Maybe someday.

I get to the part of my story where I arrive in Phoenix, and we both laugh at how stupid we were.

“Mostly how stupid you were,” I say in mock defense.

“So stupid,” Logan agrees. “I could have been doing this days ago.”

I sober. “Maybe if I’d found a way your family wouldn’t have died,” I whisper, needing to get that out. To let him know he can talk about it with me. That, having lost my own parents, I’m especially suited to understand.

But he only shrugs. “Maybe. But that doesn’t matter anymore. You’re my family now.”

My eyebrows scrunch together as I stare at him and try to keep the horror out of my eyes as he—likely unknowingly—repeats the phrase the Reduciate woman used. His little siblings, his mother, his father; they just don’t matter anymore? I remember very distinctly the months of feeling as though part of my physical body had been cut away when my parents died. How can he act like I could replace his family?

Maybe he’s in denial. I can be patient. Especially with so much going on with us. Later. It takes time—I know that.

He stares off into space, and I take a moment to love the sight of him, the overhead lights reflecting off his tousled golden hair. Between it and his tan skin he looks just like a god should.

“We have to go soon, don’t we?” His voice is full of mourning.

“Yeah.” I choke out that tiny word.

“Meet Daniel. Find out what he wants with us.”

“From us.”

“No one ever lets us just be happy,” he says, turning to look at me again with those eyes that paralyze me with wanting. “At least we’ll get to see each other afterward.” He casts his eyes downward, and I understand what he’s not saying—that this time, it won’t be like the night the hooded horsemen came for us two hundred years ago. I nod and he rolls over onto his stomach. “Hungry?”

“Starving,” I admit. “We never did get food last night.”

“Probably because of that power outage. Here.” He snaps his fingers and a wooden breakfast tray appears on the bed between us with a hot French press full of coffee, croissants, steaming eggs perfectly over easy, crispy bacon, and two glasses of cold orange juice.

That’s right. We have powers.

And unlike me, he remembered that little fact.

But … have we actually resurged? I don’t know exactly what that means—what it requires. Just that it makes our creations permanent and gives us seven more reincarnations. I’m about to say something when I catch sight of the melted nub of candle on the bedside table.

Logan created that last night. It’s still here. Does that mean that we’ve done it, that the clock on our lifetimes has been reset?

A warmth of happiness and accomplishment starts to fill my chest, when I remember Sammi wondering if I was too damaged to resurge. Not Logan, me. All the permanence of Logan’s candle means is that he’s safe. And although that fact makes me gloriously happy, I can’t help but fear I’ve saved him only to damn him to seven lifetimes without me.

“Think that’s enough?” Logan asks, looking down at the heaping tray. “Do you want to add anything?”

I force a smile when what I really feel is a rush of fear. “It looks great,” I say. And no, I most certainly do not want to add anything. If it disappears—if I’m not good enough—I … I don’t want him to know.

As Logan is browsing the tray, I clench my fist, peer at my bedside table—just outside of Logan’s line of sight—and create the first thing I think of.

Now I just have to wait five minutes.

Trying to hide my nerves, I dig into a croissant, only now remembering how famished I am. I was a little … distracted before. As I chew, it occurs to me that, at least as long as I’m with Logan, I’m never going to have to worry about not getting enough to eat again. I’ll never wonder if I’m going to pass out before Benson can get me food.

I swallow that thought away along with the bread that suddenly feels dry and wash both down with a long sip of searing-hot coffee.

The pile of food is completely gone in five minutes. Logan pats his bare stomach. “I’m stuffed.”

“You’re a good cook,” I say with a laugh.

“It’s so weird that I could just forget that I literally can have anything I want with a simple thought,” Logan says, and I have to struggle to pay attention. “But boy am I glad I remembered! Serious perks.” He stands, stretching, and all my worries flee at the sight of his bare skin spread out before me with such casual confidence. I don’t think he had that yesterday.

I like it.

“I’m going to go shower,” he says with utter nonchalance. Then he raises one eyebrow. “Join me?”

“Soon as I’m done,” I say, gesturing to the nearly finished croissant in my hand. But it’s just an excuse. As soon as I hear the water turn on, I toss the croissant onto the tray, close my eyes, count to three, and turn and look at the bedside table.

At a tube of ChapStick.

I pick up the tube and rub it with my thumb, then sink back down onto the bed. My hands tremble so badly I can barely keep a hold of the ChapStick.

“I did it,” I whisper.

I’m not broken. I created something permanent.

A glow of victory accompanies that thought.

But how am I supposed to feel about the fact that, even after spending the night with Logan, the first thing I thought to make was a memento of Benson?