Unravel (9 page)

“I know.”

“And what if she does it again? If I can't trust her, if she—” She broke off. She dropped her hands to her lap, fingers winding tight around one another. “I don't want to be scared of her, Cadan. I was, to begin with, but I haven't been for ages. I got so I was sure I could trust her—I knew she wouldn't hurt me on purpose. But this time . . . she did hurt me. On purpose. And I . . .” This time her voice trailed off before she got herself together and carried on.

“I went through everything to keep her as my sister. When I thought she was going to die, when she was going to put the
Phoenix
into hyperspeed by herself—I knew what it would be like to lose her, I knew if she died it would . . . like, leave me hollow. I knew I wouldn't be a whole person ever again.
But, oh God, if this is the sort of thing she's going to do . . . how can I live with it?”

She ran out of words, finally, and as if it had been just their energy holding her up, she felt herself fold, her head dropping so her ponytail flopped forward, brushing past the side of her face to hang into her lap.

Cadan didn't speak.

After a minute Elissa slanted a look up at him. “Say something helpful.”

A smile touched his mouth. “Lis . . . God, like I have a clue how to manage this kind of thing? She . . . Lin doesn't react like ordinary people, you know that.”

“Yeah. But this—it's so beyond the usual ‘not ordinary' you have to get used to with her. This is
my mind
, and she just . . .”

“Reached into it. I get you.” Cadan laid the fork carefully along the middle of the scraped-clean plate, then began to roll the plate up around it, activating the process that made the cellular structure of both plate and fork collapse, pushing the air out from between each cell so that it became a pencilslim cylinder, ready for disposal.

“Do you think she sees it like that, though? Like your mind and hers, totally separate?” He glanced down at the quill of compressed material in his hand. “I mean, if she sees it as one structure, and you see it as still a plate and a fork, all separate . . .”

His eyes met hers, and a trace of self-consciousness slid over his expression. “Okay, so that's not the neatest analogy.”

“It makes sense, though. Kind of. But she
did
know it was wrong—she said
sorry
.”

“Well, it's not like I think she didn't
know
it would piss you off. But, you know, if you and I were living in a halfway normal
world, if we were dating like normal people, I'd say
sorry
if I knew I was going to break a date. But it wouldn't be the same sort of sorry I'd say if I was—” He broke off. “Okay, this is definitely not a good analogy. I was going to say if I was going to cheat on you, but I wouldn't cheat on you, so I wouldn't need to say sorry in the first place.” A flush spread across his face. “Yeah, I'm saying this all wrong. I think I'll stop.”

Elissa's stomach did a little flip. It wasn't often that Cadan looked vulnerable—he was pretty good at being Mr. Calm-and-in-Charge whatever the situation. “I get your point,” she said, the corners of her mouth curling upward as her eyes met his.

“Jeez, well, I'm glad
you
do.”

The sand was becoming cold as the heat of the day withdrew from it. Elissa shifted position, moving to her knees, pulling her hoodie around her so she could zip it up. “So, to Lin, doing that might have been breaking-a-date sorry, but to
me
it was saying sorry and then . . .”

She dragged the hoodie closer still, tugged the zipper right up to her neck. “And all the same . . . Cadan, it's still kind of terrifying. If she really thinks of us—me and her—as, like, one mind that's just sort of split into two halves . . . it gives her the right to do
anything
—”

“She's like a child, though, isn't she? In some ways, at least. She has to be taught things. I mean”—he laughed—“don't think I haven't noticed you teaching her just plain good manners.”

Elissa found herself laughing too, leaning against him as he moved so he could put his arm around her again. Whereas her skin was cold, his was still warm, and under his sleeve his arm was warm too.

She's like a child. . . .
If all Lin's abilities had made Cadan value her more than he did Elissa, he wouldn't talk about her like that, would he?
Okay
, so it was petty to even be thinking about that now, with so many bigger issues to worry about, but all the same . . .

“Yeah, I
do
do that,” she said. “I mean, I feel like I'm nagging her or something, but I just think, if you're going to live on this planet—or on any planet where that kind of thing matters—you have to
learn
, right? Otherwise you're always going to stand out as the weird one. And if some people struggle with even seeing you as
human
 . . .”

“No, I'm with you. I get it.”

The crook of his neck, where his collar ended, before the roughness of evening stubble began, was warm and smooth—and
didn't
smell of burned fuel. Elissa turned her face into it, breathing him in. “You think it's just another thing she needs to learn—another thing she
will
learn, if I explain it to her?”

“I do. You're too important to her for her
not
to learn.”

“Okay.” For the first time in hours her chest relaxed, her hands naturally unclenched themselves. Thinking of it as Lin deliberately stamping all over Elissa's rights and feelings was so much worse than thinking of it as Lin genuinely not getting why it mattered.

“I guess we should go back,” she said. “You said thirty minutes. . . .”

“And they're not up yet.” She felt his cheek move as he smiled. “And see how romantic it is out here with the carcasses of flyers lying all over the place.”

“Oh, completely romantic.” She thought back to what he'd said, his messed-up analogy of a few minutes ago. “Cadan, if we
had
started dating when everything was normal, where
would we have gone out to? Like, for our first date?”

“Hm.” He shifted, his arm loosening where he held her, then tightening again. “On the base, the guys with girlfriends . . . well, the ones without inherited membership of the Skyline Club, 'cause obviously if they had that, they went
there
 . . . there was an entertainment complex a few minutes away. Cinemas . . . that underwater restaurant . . . oh, and those gardens that only open at night, the Starlit Park?”

“Oh, I've heard of it.” She leaned against him, shutting her eyes, enjoying the idea of what they could have had, if they hadn't gotten their wires crossed a million times, if he hadn't thought she was spoiled and she hadn't thought he was arrogant. . . .

She hadn't really dated at school. The pain and visions had taken over her life, making her popularity dwindle, marking her as weird. But if Cadan had known what was going on,
he
would have understood. She'd been a whole lot weirder when she'd come on board the
Phoenix
, after all—running from the police, desperate to rescue the Spare sister neither of them had known she had. And if that hadn't put him off . . .

“Would you have taken me on your skybike?” she asked. “Or would we have borrowed one of our parents' beetle-cars?”

Cadan laughed. “Would you have
gone
on my skybike?”

“I might have.”

“Oh, come on.” He was still laughing, bending his head to drop a kiss on her hair. “I just can't stretch that far. Your mother would
never
have let you.”

The alternate world taking shape in her mind fell apart, too insubstantial to cope with the touch of reality.

She felt her shoulders hunch, drawing her into herself,
away from him. Had he really needed to say that? Couldn't he have let them spin out the fantasy a little longer?

“Hey,” he said. “I'm sorry. The thing is . . . I can't even really imagine us starting to date back then. And trying to picture the specifics . . . my brain just won't let me leap that far.”

Something tightened inside Elissa. She swallowed. “You're saying . . . if it wasn't for everything that's happened, we'd never have—never gotten together at all?”

“No. I guess . . . I'm just saying I don't know. It's difficult to imagine how we would, don't you think?”

“No,” she said, hearing a mulish note in the word that reminded her suddenly of Lin. “When we spent any real time together, when we got to know each other, it took hardly
any
time—why couldn't it have done the same back then?”

Reticence threaded through Cadan's voice. “Well, that's why, isn't it? We
weren't
spending any real time together. It wasn't until we saw each other out of context that we were able to get to know each other. How would we have done that with me training and you dealing with—with everything you were dealing with?”

“Okay, what if I
hadn't
been dealing with that? What if I'd never got the visions and stuff?”

“Lis . . .” He pulled her around enough so he could look into her face. “Come on. That's a whole alternate universe you're asking about. How do I know? And why does it matter? Like you said, the minute I did get to know you, I fell.” A little smile curled the corner of his mouth, crept into his eyes. “So hard it took my breath away. Isn't that enough?”

Elissa flushed all over, a sudden shiver like electricity dissolving the tightness within her. “Yes,” she said.

Cadan bent his head to hers, that little smile still warming
his eyes. When he kissed her, she lost her own breath. And it didn't matter what would have happened in an alternate universe, or even in a universe with a slightly different order to events. What mattered was that he'd fallen for her now.

But when their thirty minutes were up, and Cadan pulled her to her feet, tucking the hair that had come loose when he ran his hand into it back behind her ears, when they went back toward the building, still the question nagged at the back of Elissa's mind.

If her life hadn't changed so catastrophically, if she and Cadan hadn't been basically forced to work together, would they have just continued as they always had, their paths only crossing enough to annoy each other?

As far as I was concerned, I was in love with him when I was thirteen. Okay, it wasn't the same as it is now, but it was still something. For him, it never happened till we were thrown together. If it hadn't been for that, would he ever have looked at me and seen what he does now? Ever? Ever?

By the door to the building, Cadan paused to look down at Elissa. “You don't have to come see everyone again. We'll be sleeping back on the ship anyway. If you want to just go there now, not deal with anything else tonight . . . ?”

The suggestion brought a wave of relief so intense she felt her shoulders slump. It wasn't kind, leaving Lin hanging on longer, wretched because Elissa was angry with her, but . . .
ugh, I just can't do any more big conversations. If I can just go get some time by myself, maybe go to bed without having to see her again tonight, I'll wake up with more patience—I'll be able to explain it properly.

It was an excuse. She knew it really, at the back of her mind. It wasn't about explaining it properly—it was about not having to explain it
now
.

She didn't care. She shut off the thought of Lin's face the way it had looked when Elissa walked past her at the dining table, the confusion and distress in her twin's eyes, the knowledge that—as Cadan had said—Lin was in some ways like a child, and a child needed teaching.

She glanced up at Cadan. “I
could
do without Ivan's comments.”

He gave a wry smile. “Yeah, I'm sorry about that.” A spark of amusement lit his eyes. “Hey, we should be glad we
didn't
start dating back when life was normal. If Ivan is bad, can you imagine what Bruce would have been like?”

She managed a smile. “Oh please, I don't
want
to imagine.” As he turned to walk over to where the
Phoenix
lay, she was glad he wasn't watching her expression, glad he didn't see the hastily manufactured smile fade. It was stupid to feel the words like a careless touch on sore skin, stupid to let them wake the shrill insecurity she'd managed to suppress.
He loves me
now.
What does it
matter
what would have happened if everything were different?

She took a step after him, and again the guilt came, the drag back toward where she knew Lin waited, confused and hurt. She pushed it away.
It's not like I'm never going to deal with it. I'm just going to deal with it later.

Behind her, metal rasped on metal as the door slid open. Lin's voice sounded from inside the corridor, shaky with tears. “Lissa?”

Oh.
So, after all, she was going to have to deal with it now.