Timepiece

Brake lights.

A woman who looked like Lily, but rounder, with brown eyes instead of hazel. Whispers. Love, forgiveness.

Words. I knew they were said in Spanish.

The pain of the memory was jagged around the edges, grief like broken glass, and I was dragging Lily through it, slicing open fresh wounds. I heard her sobbing, felt her cries in my chest, in my bones.

The sharp focus faded and everything began to move quickly again.

Then there was only emptiness.

I knew I was falling backward, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Blackness.

Silence.

Chapter 43

“Please, please wake up.” Lily was shaking me. I wanted to open my eyes. I tried, but all I got was a flutter. Her fear was fresh, and it was already too much for me to manage.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “I’m going to get help.”

“No. Stay.” I tried to wrap my arms around her, but I couldn’t lift them any higher than half an inch.

“Kaleb?” She threw her body across mine and curled around me like a cat. “One second, you were fine, the next, you went pale and fell back on the headboard. You have a huge knot on the back of your head. I should call someone.”

“No.” The pain in my body was way worse than my head, and different from any I’d ever experienced. My joints ached, and I thought I could feel my blood moving through my body. Too slow. “Just … stay.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Intense. It’ll pass.” My voice was ragged, like it had been run through a thresher.

I hoped it would pass.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Calm down. You’re freaking me out.” Her emotions were everywhere, and they were making the pain worse. “I think I got a triple whammy. Your emotions, my reaction to them. Your fear now. You don’t need to be afraid; I’m fine.”

I opened my eyes. The afternoon daylight was gone, and her room was almost dark. “You’re not calming down.”

Panic. Loss. Emptiness.

She took my hands in hers. They were freezing. “I can’t remember. I know what you took, but I remember even less now. I just know it came out of my mind going backward. It was hard to make sense of it all.”

I cursed. I hadn’t prepared her for the blackness. I struggled to sit but could only manage to prop myself up on my elbows. “I’ll fix it.”

“You don’t need to fix anything right now. You can’t even sit.”

“No.” I gave up and stayed on my back. “Part of you is missing. I didn’t even think about the way it would make you feel.”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I hurt you. When Jack takes things, he leaves empty space. Pain. That wasn’t my intention, but that’s what you feel, right?”

She nodded and rubbed her chest with her hand, as if her heart ached.

“I’m afraid if I don’t give it back now, it’ll … I don’t know, dilute or something. I didn’t see what I took that clearly, but when I give it back, you should. I think.” I hoped. I rolled over to my side, facing her, and put my hand on her waist. “Come here.”

She scooted closer. A lot closer. Toe to toe, hip to hip, chest to chest. I had almost half a foot on her heightwise, so I had to lean my head down to touch my forehead to hers, but otherwise we fit together perfectly.

“After I do this, there’s a really good chance I’ll pass out again.”

“I’ll stay with you.” She lifted her chin and pressed her lips to mine. “Until I know you’re okay. Right here.”

“Hold on to me.” I tightened my grip on her waist. “Focus on what you see, and I’ll try to go slowly. Lily, this isn’t going to be easy. I think you’re going to feel it … like it’s fresh. Like it just happened.”

“I’m ready.”

I focused on the emotion and the memories. When I pushed them through my mental space into hers, they went backward for me, like a movie on rewind. Giving them back made me feel as if someone were scraping the inside of my soul away, leaving an open wound.

When I finished, she was crying as if she’d never stop.

I held her as close as I could and concentrated on not passing out. She needed me, and I wanted to be there. “Tell me what to do.”

“What you’re doing right now.” She shuddered. “It didn’t go backward that time. It was like I was watching it happen, like I was right there. I haven’t seen my parents that clearly in … well, in nine years. I look like my mom.”

“You’re both beautiful.” I tucked her head under my chin.

“And my dad …” Her voice caught. She turned her face into my chest. Sobs shook her body, but she didn’t make a sound. Tears soaked the front of my shirt.

After a few minutes, she stopped. “The emotions are so much clearer … the things I saw, I remember so many more details.”

“Like what?”

She lifted her head. “Feet. Shiny black shoes. Three men, and their faces. And my mom. She was trying to protect me.”

I nodded and waited for her to absorb the next memory in the chain, the one I didn’t understand.

“They came for me that day, Kaleb.”

I stayed silent.

Confusion, shame, sorrow.

“That’s why we left Cuba when we did, and so quickly. Because the men had already come to take me away.”

Chapter 44

I held her until nightfall, watching the darkness weave a cocoon around us.

“What are you going to tell your grandmother?” I asked, stroking her hair.

“Nothing.” Lily stared at the ceiling. “How do I explain what you showed me?”

“Tell her the truth.”

“I don’t think I can. I don’t know how she’d react, or if she’d be angry.” She rolled over to face me and I brushed her hair away from her face. “I’d like to keep you on her good side.”

“I thought she’d already made up her mind about boys like me. I’m a bad influence. A temptation,” I teased. “The apple, I believe you said?”

“You know … I never did get a bite.” She put her hands on my cheeks and gently grazed my bottom lip with her teeth.

I kissed her without thought or hesitation, tasting her without caution. Slipping my hand under the hem of her sweater, brushing the skin of her stomach with the back of my hand. Her breath caught.

“Too much?” I asked, watching her.

“Not enough.”

I missed her lips, so I went after them, sliding my hands around to her back, the curve of her waist, the flare of her hips.

I wanted to be skin to skin with her, so much more than I’d ever wanted it with anyone else.

I wanted all of her.

Lily touched me greedily, as if she were afraid one of us might disappear. Her palms found their way under my shirt, and she pulled it over my head. Her lips were everywhere—my neck, my chest, the fading bruise on my ribs from the night of the masquerade. The night I’d met her.

“You’re beautiful.” I brushed her hair over her shoulder, away from her face, watching her kiss her way back to my mouth. “Every single bit of you.”