Crash (19 page)

I'm not sure where I end and he begins.

He tugs on the thread, winding it into himself, towing me along. I am gliding, the path sparkling in the sun. I slide
into a world I could never have imagined, a kaleidoscope of sensation. His world. His thoughts.

He isn't just talking to me inside my head anymore. He's invited me into his. He brought me in.

I'm a guest here. Jackson's guest. His thoughts and mine are one.

I see
him
, a dark silhouette against a gleaming gold background, hand reaching toward me, beckoning me closer, deeper. I feel the core of who he is. Loyalty. Love.

And the darkness inside him.

I see what he sees. I know what he knows, freeze-frame instances that play out, his knowledge through my eyes. Missions. Teammates. So many dead. I see the car accident that brought him into the game almost exactly as I saw it in my dream. I watch through his eyes as the Drau attack, shooting him, shooting Lizzie. I see him kill one. I see the pain and loss etched on another Drau's glowing, bright face. I see that Drau and Jackson locked in combat in this, the real world.

His hatred of the Drau is a vast, deep well. I drop a pebble and never hear a splash. Not just deep, then. Endless.

I inhabit that darkness, taste it, know it. Maybe it should frighten me more than it does, but there's something fascinating about it, something alluring. Something familiar. How many times did he tell me he isn't a good guy? He didn't lie. He isn't. He is what the game made him, a child soldier since he was twelve.

But he is so much more than that, and the light in him
is brighter than the darkness.

He is the boy who walks into a convenience store with a homeless woman who begged for money and buys her a sandwich.

He is the boy who shovels the neighbor's driveway in the predawn chill because her children and grandchildren live far away.

He is the boy who knows what candy bar is his mother's favorite, and leaves one for her on her pillow every once in a while.

He is the boy who would die for those he cares about.

And he is the boy whose hatred of the Drau is vicious and cold, a writhing, living thing.

My thoughts circle back to the Drau Kendra killed.

Jackson needs to know. He needs to understand. I live those moments again, live her fear, her panic, her pain.

He looks, but he refuses to see.

Please.
He hears her.

He hears me as I beg him to listen. But will he? Will he listen?

His world, his mind—beautiful and treacherous. Living sunlight. The dying embers of a fire. The deepest reaches of a cave, cold and dark. That is the place he buries what he learns from me, the images of the Drau as she died.

He does not let me linger there. He brings me back to blink against the light, to inhabit only my own thoughts.

And then gently, so gently, he closes the door behind me.

“So now you know,” he says, his tone flat.

“Now I know,” I say. I look down at my hands, completely out of my depth. There are demons riding Jackson's soul, the bleakest of darkness in his heart. But light, too. The things I thought I knew about him—his fierce loyalty, protectiveness, intelligence—he's all those things and more. I look up at him. “You're damaged, just like me. No surprise there, Jackson. Did you think I didn't know it already?”

“Hard to miss.”

“It is.”

“And I did warn you.”

“Again and again,” I agree.

We're awkward with each other. What do you say to someone when you've been inside their head?

There's one thing I know I'm
not
going to say now, even though surely he must know it. I made up my mind that we would have our moment, one just for us, and I'm going to stick to that. “Did you know you could do that? Let me . . . in like that?”

“It didn't seem fair for that whole exchange to be just one way. Figured it was worth a try.” He gets up from the cold bench and holds out his hand. I take it and we stand face to face. “I want you to try something,” he says.

I nod.

Talk to me. Not out loud. Talk to me the way I'm talking to you.

“How?”

Just do it. Just think it. We forged a connection. Let's see if it's still open.

I close my eyes and try. I do. I focus all my concentration on making him hear me inside his head.

Click. My lids flip open at the familiar sound.

“I don't think scrunching your face like that guarantees success.” He holds up his phone to show me the picture he just took. Not pretty. I slap his hand.

Doofus.

“Nicely done,” he murmurs, one brow arching.

“You heard that? It worked?”

It worked. I guess the trick is to not try so hard.

Okay. I'm not trying now.
I laugh.
Would have been nice if we'd been able to do this all along. Then the Committee—
I sober and say, “So now you know how to protect yourself, how to stop them if they try—”

Not out loud,
Jackson says.

—if they try and steal your thoughts again. You can block them, thanks to Lizzie telling us how. Do you still suspect her? Still think she's the enemy?

Let's just say I have a suspicious nature.

I hesitate, not sure if I should keep going. Then I just dive in and say,
I saw something just now. Something through your eyes. The day you—
I reach out and stroke his upper arm, the one with the scars. He holds very still, waiting.
I know what you told me about that day. I know what you remember. But it was like I was there but not there, seeing it all
through your eyes, watching it unfold without the emotions of the moment.

Eyewitnesses aren't always reliable,
he says.
Especially when they have so much to lose.

He lost so much that day. His sister. His last remnants of his childhood. His belief that the Drau were confined to the game.

I focus on what I saw in his thoughts, the minutia of the events as they unfolded. The Drau he killed just before one of them got Lizzie. The reaction of another Drau to the first one's death—pain, horror, grief. The way he brought that Drau back with him, the outpouring of his fury and rage, the way it struggled and fought to save its own life. Just as he struggled and fought to save his.

I will him to see it through my eyes. His nostrils flare and his grip on my hand tightens, but there's no other outward sign of what he's thinking. And when I'm done showing him all the things I saw, I stop, just stop.

All I feel for any of them is hate,
he says.
But you don't. You feel regret that Kendra killed it—

Her,
I correct him.
Killed her. Don't you see? That's what the Committee wants. For you to depersonalize them. For you to not care about killing them. You don't feel regret or empathy for them. And the Committee likes it that way. We need to figure out why.

Because the Drau are a threat to the world.

Are they?
I ask.
Are they really?
I can't explain my doubts.
I've been in a bunch of battles now, fought the Drau, watched my teammate and kids on other teams die at their hands. They invaded my real world, almost killed Carly. Jackson bears the marks of their savagery on his skin. So why does one Drau begging for mercy make me question everything? Why does that one event make me wonder how many Drau bear the marks of
our
savagery?

Jackson flips his glasses down.
I'm not saying the Committee's without its flaws, but you're asking me to turn my entire world view upside down. To believe that the Drau are the good guys? Seriously?

I shake my head. “I didn't say that. I'm not saying that. Not that they're the good guys. I just think we need a few more pieces of the puzzle to see the whole picture.”

He's quiet for a moment, then says, “We should go back upstairs now.” Last word.

I stand there for another second. “You don't get the last word this time, Jackson. You—”

He pulls me against him and kisses me, his lips firm, his tongue touching mine, then teasing, dancing away before touching mine once more. He bites gently on my lower lip. He licks the spot he nipped. My head spins. My fingers tangle in his hair. I kiss him back parting my lips beneath his. I love the taste of him, the feel of his thighs and abdomen and chest pressed against me, his fingers splayed across my lower back. I could spend hours just kissing him.

And when he pulls away, a satisfied smirk on his lips, I say, “Nice try, but you still don't get the last word.”

The smirk disappears. “It's a lot to throw at me, Miki. I just need some time to process it all.”

“Okay.” I pause. “Thank you.”

He kisses me again, gently, sweetly, like I'm made of spun sugar. “For what?” he asks against my lips.

For being so careful where you stepped, for not running through my mind like a train. For taking only what I tried to offer. I know you saw more than just the Drau and Lizzie and the Committee. And I know you tried not to.

“I kind of felt like I was sitting in your bedroom with my back to you while you stripped down and changed,” he says, “and I was doing everything humanly possible not to look.” He grins at me, that dark, sexy, sinful smile I know so well. “But man, the temptation . . .”

I blow out a breath and give a shaky laugh, wondering how long it's going to take me to get that too-tempting image out of my head.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

AS JACKSON AND I HEAD TO THE ELEVATORS, I CHECK MY phone. We've been gone for almost two hours. Hard to believe. It felt like we were in that courtyard for just a few minutes.

I reach for the elevator button and freeze; the back of my neck feels like a bucket of spiders has been dumped over my head. Jackson tenses at my side and I'm guessing he feels it, too.

“Someone's watching,” I say softly.

“Don't turn,” he murmurs, sliding his arm around my waist as he pivots so he's facing me, facing the open lobby behind me. He grins down at me like nothing's wrong, his fingers pressing a warning against my lower back. “Laugh.”

I can't. I'm not that good an actress. Instead, I punch him in the shoulder.

He laughs, and the desired effect is achieved. We look like a couple oblivious to the rest of the world.

Behind him, the elevator doors open and people get out. It's going to look weird if we don't get on. Whoever's watching is going to know something's off.

Jackson takes care of the problem, nudging my jacket out of my hands so it hits the floor. I bend to retrieve it. He bends at the same time, purposely bumping heads with me, then making a big show of rubbing my forehead as if he just hit me with a sledgehammer. The elevator doors slide shut. The people dissipate. Jackson snags my jacket and we do an impromptu tug of war, and that's all the cover I need to look around.

At first I see nothing that stands out. The lobby isn't exactly crowded. There are a few people lined up in front of the coffee stand. A couple of people in the gift shop. A volunteer at the information desk. A girl sitting in one of the chairs by the floor-to-ceiling windows, playing with her phone. My gaze slides past all of them, then stalls and backtracks.

The girl in the chair is—

“Kathy Wynn,” Jackson murmurs.

“Her mom works here. Maybe she's picking her up.” I say it, but I don't believe it. The dream I had, the one where Lizzie was trying to get in touch with me, the one where Marcy grew and grew and Kathy shrank to the size of a
thimble, plays through my thoughts at lightning speed. I focus and will Jackson to see what I see, know what I know.

But we must have lost the connection somewhere between the courtyard and here, because he doesn't give any indication that he's hearing what I'm broadcasting. I'm about to say something out loud when he surprises the heck out of me and goes on full-out frontal attack rather than opting for stealth mode. He snags my hand and stalks across the lobby, dragging me in his wake.

“Hey, Kathy,” Jackson says. “Picking up your mom?”

She tips her head back and looks up at us, expression completely blank, like there's no one home. Her gaze locks with mine. Her eyes are brown, not Drau gray. Does that mean she isn't a shell? I have no idea. She stares at me, her features cardboard-smooth.

Icy talons claw their way up my spine.

“Picking up my mom,” she says, her tone flat. She stares at me unblinking, and finally returns her attention to her phone.

“Hey,” Luka says.

I spin to find him standing directly behind me. “Hey, yourself.”

He and Jackson do the guy-nod thing.

“Visiting Carly?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He looks uncomfortable, like he doesn't know what to say or do. “Sarah asked me to bring her and Kelley. They, uh, needed a ride.”