Never Fade

There was a tingling sensation at my back that I recognized a second too late. A burst of pressure slammed into me, throwing me forward as if someone had tackled me from behind. My forehead cracked against the door frame. My eyes flashed black, white, black as I crumpled. The gun clattered away, skimming across the cement, out of reach.

Then, a warm, familiar voice, pitched with fear: “Oh my God! Sorry, I thought—” Liam’s pale form burst out behind the hollowed-out car frame in the middle of the garage. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” I demanded, looking around for the gun under the workbenches and tables. There were tools and parts scattered everywhere, collecting dust and even more grime. “You came out here alone, without any kind of way to protect yourself—”

“No way to protect myself?” he repeated, raising a brow.

“You know what I mean!” I crouched down, blinking back the dark spots in my vision, and felt under the metal table until my fingers closed around the barrel. I waved it toward him for emphasis. “What were you going to do against one of these?”

He turned back to the car, his mouth pressed tightly into a line of disgust. “I disarmed you pretty easily. What would the instructors say about that?”

It stung more than I expected it to. I watched in silence as he flipped the hood of the skeletal car back open, the tool flashing silver in his hand. But he wasn’t working; instead, his hands were braced against the green frame. The leather jacket clung to his shoulders as he leaned forward, hanging his head. I kept my back flat against the door, a silent guard against anything that might come in.

“So you found me,” he muttered, his voice strained. “I suppose I have Chubs to thank for that?”

His mind was turning through a wild range of emotions, flipping between what felt like hot anger and murky guilt and crushing hopelessness in a matter of seconds. It felt like his mind was calling to mine, like it was screaming for me.

I pressed the back of my hand against my forehead. Ever since I’d given in and stopped trying to fold them away, my abilities had been quieter. Settled, even. Now was not the moment to lose that bit of calm.

“I know—” I began, licking my dry lips. “I know you can take care of yourself. But we don’t know anything about this town. We don’t know who could come by, and the thought of you out here alone…”

“I wanted to be alone,” he said, his voice gruff. “I just wanted…I just needed to clear my head. Away from them. Away from you.”

I stared at him, trying to take what he had just said and align it with the look of all-out desperation on his face.

“Look,” I began, “I get it. You don’t like me, but—”

“I don’t like you?”

He let out a low, flat laugh. One fell into the next, and it was awful—not at all him. He was half choking on them as he turned around, shaking his head. It almost sounded like a sob, the way his breath burst out of him.

“I don’t like you,” he repeated, his face bleak. “I don’t like you?”

“Liam—” I started, alarmed.

“I can’t—I can’t think about anything or anyone else,” he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. “I can’t think straight when you’re around. I can’t sleep. It feels like I can’t breathe—I just—”

“Liam, please,” I begged. “You’re tired. You’re barely over being sick. Let’s just… Can we just go back to the others?”

“I love you.” He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. “I love you every second of every day, and I don’t understand why, or how to make it stop—”

He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind.

“I know it’s wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I’m sick. I’m trying to be a good person, but I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.”

What is this? The look of open pain on his face was too much to process. My mind couldn’t work fast enough.

My hands fisted in the pockets of my coat. I felt myself backing away toward the door, trying to escape that look, trying to stop my heart from tearing out of my chest. He’s confused. Explain it to him. He’s only confused.

“Look at me.”

I couldn’t move; there was nowhere to go. He wasn’t hiding from me anymore. I felt his feelings unravel around him, a flood of warmth and a piercing pain that cut through the daze I felt when he stepped in close to me.

My hands stayed in my pockets; his were at his sides. We weren’t touching, not really. I had the sudden, sharp memory of the way his fingers had brushed against mine a few hours before. He bent his face down to my shoulder, his breath slipping through three layers of cloth to warm the skin there. One of his fingers hooked a belt loop on my jeans and inched me just that tiny bit closer. His nose skimmed up my throat, along my cheek, and I saw none of it. I squeezed my eyes shut as his forehead finally came to rest against mine.

“Look at me.”

“Don’t do this,” I whispered.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he breathed out. “I feel like…I feel like I’m losing my damn mind, like your face has been carved into my heart, and I don’t remember when, and I don’t understand why, but the scar is there, and I can’t get it to heal. It won’t go. I can’t make it fade. And you won’t even look at me.”

My hands slipped out of the safety of my coat and gripped his jacket’s soft leather. He was still wearing Cole’s beneath it. “It’s okay,” I choked out. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I swear,” he whispered, his mouth hovering over mine. “I swear, I swear…I swear we were on that beach, and I saw you wearing this light green dress, and we talked for hours. I had a life, and so did you, and we lived them together. It doesn’t fit. That piece doesn’t fit. Claire was there, and Cole promised we’d never been. But then…I see your face in the firelight, and I remember different fires, different smiles, different everything. I remember you in the green dress, and then it becomes a green uniform, and it doesn’t make sense!”

Green dress—the beach? Virginia Beach?