I look at Snow’s face, cut and swollen from my fists.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“Don’t be sorry,” Snow says. “Be better.”
Come As You Are — Imaginary Future
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I wait outside Cat’s Security Systems class for a period of time that feels equally like minutes and hours.
I keep thinking of my father’s house, burned to the ground.
It was the only address my mother knew. The only place we lived in Moscow.
If she’s still alive, if she ever tries to send another postcard . . . it will have nowhere to go.
Of course, I don’t really believe any postcard is coming.
It’s been far too long for that.
Why did my father choose to die by fire? After all the pain he suffered, I can’t imagine that anything terrified him more. Was he trying to prove to himself at the end that he wasn’t a coward?
How could he destroy the only home I’ve ever known—the only reminders I had of our old life, the few good memories.
The one blow we struck against the Gallos was to burn their ancestral home.
Now he burned ours too, as if to wreak revenge upon ourselves.
I don’t understand him. I never did.
I hear the scraping of chairs and shuffle of feet as class dismisses.
I step to the side to let the exiting students pass, watching for Cat.
When she spots me, her eyes get bigger than ever, and her mouth opens in shock. I really must look like shit.
“Dean!” she gasps. “What happened?”
For me, the opposite effect occurs.
The moment I lay eyes on Cat, the maelstrom of sorrow, anger, and resentment swirling inside of me finally eases. I throw my arms around her and hug her hard against me, pressing my face into her thick black curls smelling my favorite scent in the world—the scent of this girl.
“What’s going on?” she says, pulling back just a little to look up into my face.
“Something happened today. I had to come tell you.”
“Tell me what?” She says.
“That I love you, Cat. I fucking love you.”
“What!” Cat squeaks, sounding as terrified as the very first time we spoke.
I laugh and then I kiss her, harder than I ever have before.
18
Cat
Dean and I skip the rest of the afternoon of classes. We go up to the Bell Tower and Dean spends two hours exercising his aggression on my body, before we lay under a pile of blankets just holding each other.
It’s freezing in the drafty tower, but Dean’s body heat is always more than enough for both of us.
He tells me everything, from the moment he stepped foot in the Chancellor’s office, to his encounter with Snow, to his relief at seeing me afterward.
I barely recognize this man who speaks to me with such raw honesty. Just last year Dean wanted to kill me for witnessing him in an emotional moment. Now he tells me all his darkest fears and deepest regrets.
“He died alone,” Dean says, his deep voice vibrating against my ear as I lay my head on his chest. “I can’t help but feel I’m bound to do the same. Everyone leaves me, Cat. They always have.”
“I don’t think your father wanted to die,” I murmur. “I just don’t think he knew how to live.”
“I don’t want to be like him,” Dean says. “A prisoner to the past.”
“You’re already letting go of it.”
“Only sometimes.”
I wish I knew how to help him better.
I can hear his heart beating against my ear. A strong heart. A steady one. Not shrunken and twisted by time, despite all that’s happened to him.
“You’re wearing the necklace,” Dean says, pleased.
“It’s my favorite gift I’ve ever received,” I tell him.
The necklace is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever held in my hands. I like it all the more for what it symbolizes between Dean and me: erotic connection, and the violent secret that brought us together.
I don’t feel the same guilt about Rocco Prince anymore.
It ebbed away, bit by bit, with every day I spent with Dean.
“I think our sex has been therapeutic,” I say to Dean.
He chuckles. “For you or for me?”
“Maybe both.”
He sits up on his elbow so he can look at me, his violet eyes keen and curious.
“Why do you like it?” he says. “The rough sex . . . the domination.”
“At first I liked it because I felt guilty. I felt like I deserved to be punished for what I did. At the same time, it felt so good. It heightened every sensation—I’d never experienced anything so intense. The stronger you were, and the more aggressive, the more it made you seem god-like, superhuman. And that made me want to please you . . .”
“Go on . . .” Dean grins.
I can feel his cock stiffening again against my hip, though we only just finished fucking.
“There’s this other part of it, too,” I say. “It’s the way you focus on me, when we’re doing kinky shit. It’s like I’m the only thing in the world. You’ll spend hours touching and manipulating me. I love the attention.”
“You are the only thing in the world,” Dean says seriously. “You’re all I have now, Cat.”
I can’t believe he’s looking at me with that expression of utter focus. I can’t believe he’s saying those words to me.
For all the time I’ve spent with Dean, I still find it baffling that someone as ferocious as him could fall in love with someone like me. Some days I think I’ve grown so much. But others, I still feel terrified inside.
Like right now.
I want this to be real.
I don’t know what I’ll do if it isn’t.
I touch the pendant laying in the divot of my collarbones.
“I never got you a Christmas gift,” I say.
“I didn’t expect you to,” Dean says. “The only thing I want is exactly what I’m getting. You, naked, obeying my every command . . .”
He kisses the side of my throat, then slowly works his way down my body.
Before I lose myself in the sensation, I think to myself that there must be something I can do for him . . .
Saturday morning, I walk down to the village with Dean.
The village clusters in a half-moon around the harbor, the buildings green and mossy, the street unpaved, because there’s no cars on the island. The students like to walk down here in good weather to pick up letters at the post office, eat the fresh-caught cod at the fish and chips shop, or visit the tiny cafe for tea, biscuits, and hand-made caramels.
Today is not particularly good weather, so Dean and I are two of the only people willing to brave the wind.
We stop in briefly at the second-hand bookstore where Dean has been trading in his well-read novels for any he can’t find at the school library.
Upon better acquaintance with Dean, one of the many things that surprised me is that he reads at least one novel every week, in addition to all his schoolwork. Or at least, he used to before he started spending so much time with me.