Lost (12 page)

“Don't move,” Gaia said.

“Not likely,” Sam replied with a slow smile. He still had a sense of humor. Good sign.

Gaia cracked a grin, then jogged back to the kitchen and ransacked the cabinets. She had no idea what Sam would want to eat, so she just grabbed things at random. She pulled out a loaf of bread, a sleeve of Ritz crackers, a can of macadamia nuts, a big bar of Toblerone chocolate, and two oranges. Cradling everything in her arms and holding the chocolate bar against her chest with her chin, she turned to the refrigerator and used her index finger to yank open the door. On the top shelf sat a six-pack of Coke with one can missing. Gaia hooked her finger through the empty plastic loop and pulled the cans out with a series of resounding, reverberating clangs.

She felt like such the little hostess. All she needed was an apron and a Martha Stewart haircut.

Sam couldn't even seem to focus on her when she hustled back into the room. Gaia's heart turned in her chest. He was fading fast. She couldn't believe he'd
lasted as long as he had. How had he survived all this time by himself? Unlike her, he hadn't been brought up on loneliness and torture.

“Here you go,” she said, going for chipper. She let everything tumble out of her arms onto the floor. “You even get room service.”

Sam slid off the boxes, sank to the floor, and tore open the loaf of bread. He pulled out the first slice and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, jamming it in with his fingertips. The crusts, folded and torn, protruded from his lips and moved up and down as he chewed.

“Fank oo,” he said through his bulging mouth.

“Uh . . . you might want to slow down,” Gaia said, raising her eyebrows. “You're gonna puke if you do it that way.”

Sam chewed slowly and swallowed, then reached for a can of Coke. “Good call,” he said with his lopsided smile. He took a deep breath and let it out, then took a long swallow of soda. “Damn, that felt good,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Okay, I'll be right back . . . again,” Gaia said.

She ran across the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom she shared with Tatiana, dropping to her knees in the center of the hardwood floor. She ducked under the bed, shoving aside sneakers, candy bar wrappers, and an old, torn backpack to uncover
the rolled-up sleeping bag she was looking for. Shimmying back out into the room, she flung out the bag and it slid across the floor, taking a few tumbling dust bunnies with it.

Gaia slapped the army green bag until her bedroom was thick with dust. The inside lining, a tan flannel material decorated with cowboys on bucking horses, was sticking out a bit at the end of the roll. Gaia ran her fingertip along it and briefly let her mind travel back to her childhood, when she and her parents used to camp out in her backyard, pointing out constellations and making up scary stories. This sleeping bag was one of her only keepsakes from that time. Gaia sighed and looked down at her own finger, still moving along the fabric.

Now she knew that it was all a lie, that feeling of security she'd had as a child. Loki had been there even then. He'd been there, just waiting for his moment to tear her life apart. Gaia felt a wave of sorrow well up inside her and fought it back.

What a loser,
she thought, rolling her eyes. She grabbed an extra pillow from her bed and headed for the living room, shaking away her nostalgic thoughts. Her present bitterness. There was no point in going there. It was past, and there was nothing she could do about it. And Loki was paying for it now.

Natasha's bookshelves lined one wall of the living
room, bulging with hardcover classics, novels, and huge nonfiction tomes. Gaia reached up and slid a few titles from the shelves—
Moby Dick, Journey to the Center of the Earth,
and some random Tom Clancy novels just in case he went in for that kind of thing.

She walked back to Sam's new room and found him with his legs spread-eagled, all the food piled in front of him and an orange wedge suspended halfway to his mouth. His eyes were at half-mast, and his cheeks bulged like a chipmunk's.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Ate too fast,” he said. “Taking a breather.”

Gaia dropped her stuff and carefully removed the orange wedge from his hand. “Chew and swallow,” she said slowly. “Chew . . . aaaaand . . . swaaaaallooooow.”

Sam followed her instructions, and eventually the chipmunk cheeks went away. She pulled all the food away from him in case he got any stupid ideas about eating more, then untied her sleeping bag and snapped it open. She laid it down against the wall and tossed the pillow into the corner.

“It isn't pretty, but it's home,” Sam said, lifting one side of his mouth.

Gaia smirked. “I'll get you one of those blow-up mattresses when I go out later,” she said. “Of course, I don't know who's going to blow it up. . . . ”

“This is fine,” Sam said, crawling over to the
sleeping bag. “I had one just like this when I was a kid.”

Gaia smiled at his butt, which was sticking straight up in the air as he buried his face in her pillow. This guy was clearly delirious. Not that she blamed him. He'd been on the lam for two days with no food or sleep after months of incarceration. She was lucky he wasn't licking the walls and speaking backward at this point.

Sam started to tip to the side to lie down, and Gaia dropped to the floor.

“Don't!” she said. “If you lie down right after eating all that, you'll
definitely
puke.”

Sam glanced over his shoulder at her, his butt still in the air. “You know a lot about the rules of puking,” he said.

Gaia shrugged, and Sam managed to turn himself around and sit down with his back up against the wall and his legs splayed out over the sleeping bag. Gaia got up on her knees, reached over and closed the door, just in case, then sat down next to him.

There was so much she wanted to say to him, so much she wanted to ask him, so much she wanted to apologize for, that the words suddenly seemed to get jammed up in her chest. The one thing that kept repeating itself in her mind was the one thing she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to bring herself to say.

Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.

“Thank you for all this,” Sam said, reaching forward and dragging one of the books across the floor toward him. “I don't want to put you out.”

Gaia snorted a laugh and felt herself flush with about a million emotions. “Please,” she said. “It's the least I can do after everything I put you through.”

“You put me through?” Sam asked, turning his hazel eyes on her.

“Yeah,” Gaia said, staring in the direction of her knees. “None of this would have happened to you if it wasn't for me. You lost all that time. . . . You were in prison, basically. I can't even imagine what they did to you.”

But she could. She could imagine a lot. And everything her brain came up with made her a little more sick to her stomach.

Sam's hand covered her own on top of the army green softness between them. “Gaia, I don't blame you for anything,” he said, squeezing her palm and the back of her hand between his fingers. “I would never blame you.”

“You're just saying that,” Gaia said, pulling her hand away. She couldn't conceive of it. If she were in his place, she'd be out for blood. Revenge. She'd want to pummel anyone remotely connected with what she'd been through. In fact, she was practically seething on his behalf right now. If she could beat the crap out of herself, she would.

“I'm not just saying it, really,” Sam replied earnestly. “I know you would never hurt me. The guys that held me were sick, and that's not your fault.”

Gaia turned her head and looked at him. At the tiny lines around his eyes that shouldn't have been there for another twenty years. At the little scar along his hairline that advertised the position of former stitches. Something he'd probably gotten after one of his attempted escapes. She couldn't believe he didn't hold her responsible. But when she looked into his eyes, she knew. She knew he was telling the truth.

That was the difference between her and Sam. One of the differences, anyway. Sam had a forgiving side.

“Hey, c'mere,” Sam said, his brow creasing.

He held out his arms, and Gaia leaned into him, draping one arm clumsily over his chest. It was still so unreal, the fact that she could hug Sam. That he was here.

“Everything's going to be okay now,” Sam said. “I know it is.”

Gaia felt a tear prickle at the corner of her eye but refused to let it fall. She wasn't going to get all weak and weepy right now. Now was not the time. And she wasn't going to let
Sam
comfort
her.
Whether or not he'd forgiven her for what had happened, she wasn't ready to forgive herself.

She pulled away from him, but Sam stopped her,
cupping the back of her neck with his hand. Gaia's heart caught in her chest.
He wants to kiss me,
she realized. Just what she needed right now. Another totally uncomfortable moment. How was she supposed to tell Sam that while he'd been imprisoned on her behalf, she'd been falling in love with someone else?

But she knew the answer to that question. She wasn't.

“I have to go,” Gaia said, standing quickly and breaking the tension in the air. “My dad's in the hospital, and I have to . . . go.”

She wiped her palms on the back of her cords and looked around to see if there was anything in the room that she needed.

“I hope he's okay,” Sam said earnestly.

“He will be,” Gaia lied. She had to. She didn't want to stay here any longer than she had to, and she would have to if she opted to explain. Explain why her father would never be okay. “So . . . if anyone comes home, just stay in here. I don't want to tell them about you until I know what's going on.”

“Got it,” Sam said with a nod. “I'm probably just gonna sleep, anyway.”

“Good,” Gaia said. She turned to go, pulling the door behind her, but before she let it shut, she stuck her head back into the room. “Sam,” she said. “I'm glad you're back.”

Sam smiled the smile that used to stop her heart. “Me too.”

There's
almost nothing Ed doesn't know about me.

He knows that when I wake up in the morning, my hair looks like a bird's nest. He knows that when I pass out after a fight, I drool like a slobbering infant. He knows that although it's incredibly difficult for me to tell him so, I love him. And he knows that until he was taken away from me, I also loved Sam Moon.

What Ed doesn't know is how I feel about Sam now.

And neither do I.

There was a point not that long ago when all I thought about was Sam Moon. He came along at the perfect time to be my obsession. My father was gone to who knows where. I was living with people I barely knew—a woman I couldn't stand—in a city about as familiar to me as Budapest. I was at a new school where everyone was predisposed to hate me. (At least it felt that way.) And I was a freak of nature.

And then there was Sam.

He was beautiful. And kind. And so smart and sure of himself and unsure of himself. He was the first person who ever caused the air around me to sizzle. To crackle with some kind of weird, bizarro electricity. He was Sam. He was everything I wanted. Or so I thought.

All along, all that time, Ed was there. He listened to everything, suffered through everything. He was my friend in a way no one had ever been before. He saw me. He saw right through me. And I didn't care.

It feels wrong to keep the truth about Sam's return from Ed. He deserves to know. I just don't know when would be the best time to tell him.

Telling him now would be the safer route. Because if he finds out a few weeks from now or even a few days from now, it'll be like I was keeping something huge from him. No, it won't be
like
that, it'll
be
that. And Ed hates that. He loathes secrets.

But if I tell him now, there will be so many questions that I'm not ready to answer yet. Questions like, how is it possible for someone to come back from the dead? Did he, like Elvis before him, fake his own death? And when will he follow in Elvis's footsteps and leave the building? (Or, more accurately, leave
my
building?)

And other, more difficult questions, like, do I still have feelings for him?

Actually, there's nothing difficult about that question. Because the answer doesn't even matter. It makes no difference whether I have feelings for Sam, because I love Ed and he's who I'm with now. And as far as telling him about Sam goes, I think it's best to wait. The fewer people who know that Sam is alive and that he's here, the better. Secrecy is the best way to keep him safe. For now.

Even if it's not the best way to keep my relationship safe.

Tangible Sense of Peace

HEATHER GANNIS LOOKED LIKE A
different person. She was as poised as ever. As self-aware. As impeccably put together. But she was also entirely different. Her thick brown hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail, exposing more of her face than Ed had ever seen in all the years he'd known her. Her skin was perfect—not a blemish in sight—and she was wearing no makeup. She smiled easily. And when she laughed, her eyes seemed more alive than they ever had when they had sight.

There was an almost tangible sense of peace around her.

Ed sat on the couch across the table from her, and when he spoke, she lifted her eyes in his direction, but they didn't fall on him. Her gaze seemed to be aimed somewhere just up and to the right of his shoulder. As if she gave him credit for more height than he deserved. Instead of making Ed feel like Heather could see nothing, it made him feel like she was talking not to him, but to someone behind him. Someone who he couldn't see himself. The effect of this new Heather and this invisible person was more than a little disconcerting. He had no idea how to talk to her, and he had to concentrate to keep from looking over his shoulder.