I turned to look at him. He was as close to the edge as he could get without toppling over. Part of me wanted to just give him a shove and listen to him crash to the floor. The other part of me wanted to grab him and pull him to me. I did neither. Instead, I closed my eyes and rolled away from him.
I wasn’t certain how I managed to sleep. For a while I drifted in a strange, half-conscious state, imagining that shapes in the darkness were creeping toward me. Sometimes they were shadows, peeling off the walls and leaving thick black footprints wherever they stepped. I watched them move about the room, rearranging themselves and standing frozen against the furniture whenever I looked directly at them, like some ghostly game of Red Light/Green Light. But when I turned on my phone, beaming light about the room, I found everything in its proper place. No shadows shuffling along the floor, no twisting shapes. Once, I reached over to touch Leon’s shoulder, to make certain he hadn’t somehow disappeared. He was asleep, his breathing even, rising and falling beneath my hand. I considered turning and curling against him, but I knew he didn’t want me there. Eventually, my eyes closed and stayed closed, and when I woke again I was alone in the bed, and sunlight was streaming into the cabin. I grabbed my phone and checked my messages. Mom had texted two hours earlier to say she was fine, but not to come home yet.
“What are we even supposed to do here?” I asked, roaming restlessly about the cabin, which made the toad in the bathroom croak in alarm. “We shouldn’t have left. We should be fighting.”
Sitting at the table, Leon shot me a sour look. “Why are you yelling at me? You think it was my idea to run and hide?”
“You agreed to it.”
“You’ll notice I’m not here alone.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“Neither did I. Lucy said she was sending you away from the Circle. You’re my charge. I go where you go.”
And then he got up and left the cabin, because apparently going where I went didn’t involve remaining in my direct vicinity.
The rest of the day was miserable. The weather was beautiful—the air warm but not sweltering, the sun undisturbed by even the smallest wisps of clouds. Down at the lake, the water shimmered so bright it was blinding, and even though I’d forgotten bug spray, most of the mosquitoes left me alone. But I was in turmoil. The world was falling apart all around me, the ground giving way with each step. I shouldn’t be there.
Something was happening in the Cities, even now—I felt it, in that quiet, hidden space at the rim of my senses, that slight tingle that made goose bumps rise along my arms. There was a charge in the air all around me, waiting, like an indrawn breath. Almost-Knowings, Gram had called them—those moments when the universe begins to shift. I’d felt it before, the day we had met Drew, the day he’d told us of Val’s visions. I felt it now. Something unseen had slipped into my thoughts as we left the Cities. It had been with us on the road, in each bend of the highway, with every mile that fell away behind us. It had followed us here. It whispered that this was not where I needed to be. It urged me to go back.
And then there was Leon. After driving into town that afternoon to pick up more supplies, he spent the rest of the day wandering about outside the cabin and brooding. I tried to explain to him why I couldn’t tell him about Gideon, why I couldn’t tell anyone, but whenever I brought up the subject, he just got that closed-off look in his eyes, and told me we had other things to worry about.
“Can we please talk about this for a minute?” I asked, standing just outside the cabin while the last of the sunset flared on the horizon. He’d been heading inside, but I stepped in front of him, closing the door before he could escape me. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m really sorry.”
He folded his arms in front of him. “You’re not, though. If you had to do it again, you’d do the same damn thing.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry.”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
“Then what else do you want me to say? How are we supposed to get past this?” As soon as the words left my mouth, a horrible thought struck me—maybe he didn’t want to get past this. Maybe that was the entire point. He’d basically said that already. He was only there with me because I was his charge. Because he had to be. My chest tightened. I sucked in breaths, but somehow I couldn’t get enough oxygen. “I need you to forgive me,” I said.
“Audrey…”
“I need you to forgive me. I can’t stand this. I can’t have you hating me.” I didn’t even care that I was begging. My entire body had gone cold; I couldn’t stop shivering. I just stood there staring up at him, clutching my arms against me.
His gaze flicked away. “I don’t hate you.”
“Thanks,” I choked out.
“Look,” he said, retreating a step and running a hand through his hair. “Me being pissed at you doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it just means that I’m pissed.”
My heart came to a stop. I knew he’d spoken other words. I’d seen his mouth moving, but all I heard was—“You love me?”
He scowled. I had no idea how he could say something like that while looking as irritated as he did. “You know how I feel about you.”
“Um, no, actually.”
Now his gaze turned wary. “How do you not know that?”
“Maybe because you’ve never said it? Maybe because you are the king of mixed signals?”
Suddenly, I was crying. And suddenly I was the one who was angry. Something inside me had snapped. I spun around, so fast I almost slipped and fell on my face—because that would have been the perfect dignified exit. Since I didn’t fall, I marched away as fast as my feet would take me—which wasn’t nearly fast enough, given that not only did Leon have longer legs, he could also teleport. I quickened my pace, until I was nearly running. I heard him calling my name, but I ignored it. Let him know what that felt like. I raced all the way to the lake, to the end of the dock, and decided that if he followed me there I would dive in and swim and keep swimming until I was too tired to care anymore.
Instead, when I heard him come up behind me a second later, I whirled around and gave him a hard shove, right in the chest, sending him backward into the water.
He rose up sputtering. “What the hell?”
Fuming, I stalked back and forth on the dock in front of him. “I have had enough of this, okay? I made a mistake!”
“I tell you I love you and you push me into a lake, and I’m the one sending mixed signals?” His gaze was pinned on me, and the way his eyes narrowed told me that I should flee if I didn’t want to be submerged.
But if I fled, he’d just follow and catch me and toss me in, so I decided to deprive him of the satisfaction. Giving him a defiant glare, I folded my arms, then stepped off the dock and plunged into the lake.
The water was cold, much colder than I’d anticipated. I broke the surface with a gasp, remembering belatedly that these were the only pair of shorts I had with me, and now they were going to smell like algae and weeds and whatever else was growing at the bottom of the lake. I’d also lost one of my sandals. It floated to the surface, bobbing on the water beside me. I grabbed it and shoved it into my back pocket.
Leon paddled toward me. We weren’t deep enough in that his feet couldn’t touch the bottom, but he must have decided it would be faster to swim than to wade. I considered retreat, but while I hesitated, he reached me.
“If you’re planning to dunk me,” he said, “I’d advise against it. Can we continue this conversation on dry land?”
“So you can just ignore me again?” My teeth were chattering, but I gave him another mutinous look. “I made a mistake. And I lied to you. I knew who he was, and I knew what he did, and I lied to you. And I can’t take it back, so what do you want me to do? I’ve said I was sorry. How many times do you want me to say it? Do you want me to grovel? Beg?”