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Several hours later, James sits up in the bed, a huge smile on his face. Most of the soldiers have left and only the members of our original cell are still here. I press through the door timidly, afraid to start crying again. He shakes his head and opens his arms invitingly.
“Come here,” he says.
Kristen gives me a little shove toward the bed. James seizes me and wraps me in a tight hug. I bite my trembling lower lip, turning into nothing but a little girl in the embrace of a steadfast man. An IV line still runs from his arm. He’s getting medication to control the high blood pressure and muscle spasms the venom cause.
“I heard you saved my life,” he says in a thick, low murmur. “Again.”
“You offered me something I sorely need.” A family. “I intend to make that a reality.”
“Damn right.” He holds me at arm’s length. There are tears in his eyes that he doesn’t bother to hide. He puts a hand on my cheek and looks at me with pride. My cheeks turn hot.
For the first time, I wonder how Kristen feels about this whole family thing. My eyes cut to her, then to the floor.
“You have nothing to worry about, kiddo,” James says as if reading my mind.
Kristen smiles reassuringly as if all our differences never existed.
My cheeks are now on fire. I clear my throat. “Kristen said you wanted to talk to me.” I continue to stare at the floor. “Um, shouldn’t you be resting?”
“Nah, I feel ready to get back out there. We have so much to do.”
Kristen shakes her head disapprovingly. “You’re not invincible. No matter how many times you manage to come back from the dead.”
“I don’t know, with my team by my side, it seems I may be.” He laughs, but in a lighthearted way, making it clear he will be following doctor’s directions.
“Actually,” James says, “both Kristen and I wanted to talk to you.”
There is an ominous ring to his tone that I don’t like at all.
“Why don’t you sit?”
I shake my head and hug myself. This is about Aydan and they want me to sit. I won’t sit. I will face this standing, even as I fight the urge to plug my ears and chant la la la like a child.
“We know you and Aydan have grown close to each other.” James gives me a knowing smile. “We’ve known for a while that he loves you.”
I inhale, look at a spot in the ceiling.
“And I think maybe this is a reciprocal feeling?” James cocks his head to one side, as if trying to get a better angle, one that will let him see me more clearly.
Maybe Aydan was easy for them to read. Me? Not so much. I don’t even know what I feel. I’ve been too busy deciding whether loving people is a blessing or a curse.
“Am I right?” he prods when I don’t answer.
Hiding, concealing who I am and how I feel has been a necessity my entire life, not to mention lately. But here and now, there’s no reason for me to disguise who I am or how I feel. And even if an obstacle arose, I have to make a choice to come out of the darkness and the shadows that have haunted me for so long.
It’s time for me to shine. It’s time to be whole, to feel fully, to live without fear.
So I answer, my voice strong and clear. “Yes, you’re right. I care about him. A lot.”
As the words leave my lips, a warm feeling slowly fills my chest. It’s the best thing I’ve felt in a very long time.
James nods with a smile that’s sweet and mellow at first but then turns sad.
“He’s gonna be okay,” I say. It should be a question. It almost sounds like one, but I refuse to think he won’t be.
On the other side of the bed, Kristen takes a step closer to James’s bed and reaches for his hand. “He’s in there, as we well know. But . . .”
I shake my head, take a step back. “But” is the type of word I don’t want to hear.
“Marci,” Kristen inhales as if to gather courage from the air, “if we give him the cure—”
“He’ll be gone,” I finish for her. I knew this. The knowledge has been there, nagging me, wanting to get noticed, but I’ve ignored it.
“We think he would still be Aydan. Human, but different,” James says. “He wouldn’t be a Symbiot. He . . . would be whoever he was before he was infected, before his mind learned to take advantage of the agent.”
In other words, he wouldn’t be the Aydan I admire and fell in love with. He would be average, unremarkable. And it sounds terrible to think I couldn’t love an Aydan who is less bright, less strong. It makes me seem shallow, but it isn’t, because love is strange and set in its ways, because we can’t tell our hearts who to love when its mind is already made up.
“We thought we should tell you before we tried to . . .” Kristen can’t finish.
James continues, “You came back from it. Maybe he can too.” There’s a spark in his eye and I seize it like a lifeline.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, nodding my head over and over. “He can fight his way out and maybe . . .” I take a deep breath and let the realization sink in. “Maybe I can help him.”