“Actually,” Dad said, “there’s a set of antique champagne flutes in the store downstairs. I’ll get them.” Dad shuffled past Lilah’s empty chair and behind Malachi and made his way downstairs, leaving Ridley lost for words. If anyone in the room was going to disapprove of opening an astronomically expensive drink that several of the room’s occupants technically weren’t even old enough to consume, it was going to be Dad.
“He continues to surprise me,” she said with a laugh, lacing her fingers between Archer’s and then lifting his hand to give it a quick kiss.
Lilah returned with two Champagne bottles, which she clutched possessively to her chest when Archer stood and offered to open them. “I don’t think so,” she told him. Ridley’s mind flashed back to Lilah holding a shotgun while telling her brother not to patronize her. With considerable effort, she managed to keep her snort of laughter inside.
The takeout containers were moved aside, the antique glasses lined up, and Lilah popped the Champagne bottles without injuring anyone or losing a drop of the valuable contents. Then, on a cheap crate in a shabby living room on very much the wrong side of the city, one of the world’s most expensive drinks was poured. They toasted—“To a new world!”—and Ridley had her first taste of real deal, capital-C Champagne. She savored every sweet, sparkling sip.
Later, when she stood and took the glasses to the kitchen, Archer gathered up the empty takeout containers and followed her. She placed the glasses carefully beside the sink before facing him. Nerves fluttered in her chest. “Do you want to get out of here? Just for a few minutes?”
“Anywhere,” he answered, taking her hand.
They vanished and escaped the apartment within seconds, but Ridley didn’t take them far. They reappeared on the roof of her building. She looked up at his warm eyes and that beautiful smile she’d missed so much over the past few days—and then turned away. She’d wanted to be alone with him but suddenly she felt … awkward. She moved to the edge of the roof and looked out over the neighboring buildings. Sirens wailed in the distance. “What do you think is going to happen now? What kind of world are we going to wake up to tomorrow?”
“Honestly? Absolutely no idea.” Archer took her hand and pulled her around to face him again. “Though I think you can safely assume you don’t have school tomorrow.”
“Probably not. And if I do, I might just have to take a mental health day instead.”
“Or several,” Archer said, one side of his mouth curving up.
Ridley smiled, hesitated, bit her lip. Then she finally said, “I got your message.”
Confusion crossed his face. “My message?”
“The one you sent out to your bazillions of followers.”
“Oh, right. The video message. Yeah, a lot of that was for you.”
“I know. I …” Ridley took a breath and let it out in a rush. “I’m sorry I reacted the way I did when you told me everything.”
“I don’t think there’s any other way you could have reacted.”
Ridley nodded. “I guess. I think I just needed … time? To process it all. I think I’m still processing everything. There’s … a lot.”
“Like … the news about your dad?”
“About him not being my dad? Yes. Definitely still processing that one. At the end of the day, it doesn’t change anything important. He loves me and I love him and he’ll always be my father. But I guess it takes a while to properly see yourself in a new light, you know?”
Archer nodded. “I do know.”
Ridley bit her lip again. “Your dad was arrested tonight.”
Archer nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“We all kind of just stepped over that moment when Nathan mentioned it and moved onto the next takeout container, but … it’s kind of a big deal.”
“It is,” Archer agreed. “It’s a good big deal. He can’t get away with all the terrible things he’s done.”
“I know. I guess I just wanted to acknowledge it.”
“Acknowledgment noted.”
They stared at one another for a moment or two, and then Ridley started laughing. “Why is this weird?”
Archer’s laughter joined hers for a moment, but then he sighed. “It’s weird because I screwed everything up between us. I’m sorry, Rid. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
At some point he had reached for her other hand, and now she slid her fingers between his, gripping both hands tighter. “I think I do. When I saw you in that Shadow Society meeting … when I thought that everything that had happened between us was one big lie … it felt like it broke everything inside me.”
“Ridley …” Archer’s expression was pained. “I am so, so—”
“And I’m not saying this to make you feel worse. I’m saying this because the fact that it hurt so, so much made me realize how much you mean to me. So I do know how sorry you are, because that’s how sorry—how utterly, distressingly sorry—I feel when I think about not being with you.” She looked down at their joined hands, then up again. “You mean a lot to me. Like … a lot, a lot. A huge amount of a lot, a lot. And it’s kind of scary to say that out loud because what if—”
“I love you,”Archer said simply.
Ridley’s stomach dipped. Her pulse rushed and her breath seemed to keep catching in her throat. There were others words that had been cued up, ready to leave her mouth, but she couldn’t remember what they were.
“I’m sorry, that wasn’t supposed to freak you out, and it’s not like I’m expecting you to say the same thing back to me. I just wanted you to know. I wanted to tell you before, when the truth about everything else was spilling out of me, but it seemed selfish—manipulative—to throw it out there when everything else I was saying was breaking your heart, so I—”
Ridley stood on tiptoe and touched her lips to Archer’s. The first kiss was soft, chaste. Then she untangled her hands from his and wove her arms around his neck, pulling herself tighter against him. His hands trailed down her spine and pressed against the small of her back as his tongue slid across hers. She kissed him harder, shivers dancing up her neck and into her hair when his fingers found their way beneath the edge of her jacket and T-shirt and skimmed across her bare skin.
She rocked back down onto her heels, breathless, happy, exhilarated. “I love you too,” she said. Archer’s smile stretched wider. Ridley tried to keep hers a respectable size, but she felt like a grinning maniac so she was probably failing. “I very definitely love you too.”
He kissed her again. She kissed him back. They remained entwined until Ridley could barely breathe and her skin was flushed and her heart was racing out of control. Laughing, she finally forced herself to step back. She sucked in a deep breath of cool night air and released a happy sigh, turning her face toward the sky. The stars weren’t nearly as bright here as they were over the reserve, but the fact that she could see them at all was incredible. Lumina City had been covered in near-constant cloud for so long.
Her eyes lowered to Archer’s again. “The stars feel close enough to touch.” They didn’t—not the way they did out in the wastelands—but it had been far too many days since she’d spoken those words, and it felt like they needed to be said again.