BEFORE I LEAVE BURNHAM, he buys me half a dozen recyclable phones. He also uses the Tor network to set up a private website where we can connect. This seems like overkill to me, but he says if our phones get tapped or our emails get hacked, it’s good to have a backup. We agree on code word Waffles67. Then Burnham loans me a blue Honda Fit and stocks it with snacks and spare outfits from his sister, including a visor hat and sunglasses so I’m not so easily recognizable.
“Remember. You promised to pay me back,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. Leaving him is hard. We have an awkward hug, and I promise to call him once I’m in Forgetown. He’s working on a way to get me past the cameras so I can get to Berg’s computer in the dean’s tower.
It’s a long drive from Atlanta to Forgetown, seventeen hours by holomap and twice as long with bad luck. I’m not the best driver, and I can’t risk getting pulled over, so I keep under the speed limit. I hit traffic around Nashville, and torrential rain in the Tennessee Valley. I spend my first night in the car getting wind-swiped at an abandoned drive-in. Nightmares haunt me, and I don’t sleep soundly until day comes. I wake groggy around noon, and by the next evening, when I arrive outside St. Louis, I’m beat. The temptation to call Linus and maybe get an offer of a decent place to sleep is strong, but then again, I’m not even sure he lives there. He might be living back with Otis and Parker when he’s not traveling for his job.
It’s raining again when I pull off the highway and stop in a park, and the raindrops make a gentle drumming on the roof of the car. In the distance, I can see the Gateway Arch dark against the clouds, and I can’t get over how big it is. Linus must see it every day that he’s here. He and I haven’t spoken since I was at Jenny and Portia’s—a conversation that still troubles me—and I’m nervous about calling him now. The truth is, I’m not over Linus, but what that means exactly, I don’t know.
I turn off my car. Then I take out one of my spare phones and dial Linus’s number. When he picks up, I release my seat backward so I can stretch my legs, but I’m more tense than ever.
“Hey. It’s me, Rosie,” I say.
A shuffling comes from his end.
“Finally,” Linus says. “You are one difficult person to track down.”
“Not for Berg. You said your line wasn’t bugged last time, but he called me right after I talked to you.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “This line’s encrypted, so he couldn’t have heard what we said, but if he’s tracing all my calls, he could have found your number that way. I’m really sorry.”
I think back and wonder if checking my Forge email alerted Berg that I might call Linus. Hard to know. I decide to assume Berg can eavesdrop in, despite what Linus says.
“Are you in St. Louis?” I ask.
“I’m working in Stillwater, Minnesota,” he says. “I can be in St. Louis tomorrow.”
I gaze out again at the arch. “I’ll be gone by then,” I say.
“I can meet you in Forgetown, at Otis and Parker’s place. Would that be better? I was planning to go there for the weekend.”
This is what I want, I realize. It feels huge to admit it, like I’m letting a hammer break out of a block of ice. “Okay,” I say. Take that, Berg. I’m coming to town.
Linus laughs. “Really? Good. I’m so glad. You sound a little tired. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. “Berg said something strange to me, like he let me out of the vault on purpose.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know, but there hasn’t been any news about me,” I say. “I don’t think he wants anything contradicting his story that he’s taking care of me.”
“I know what you mean,” Linus says. “I went to see Portia and Jenny. They wouldn’t say anything about you. I think they were bought off. I think Berg doesn’t want the public to know that you’re missing.”
So Linus tracked down Portia and Jenny. I wonder if he’s trying to get me to confirm I was with them. What else does he know?
“Rosie?” he asks.
“I’m here.”
“Have you talked to your parents?”
I get the sense he thinks I should. I don’t want to. I frown as a drop on the windshield merges with another. “No.”
“That girl Althea called me again,” he says. “She wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t give a crap about that girl,” I say, annoyed. “She’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Okay. I’m sorry,” Linus says.
Confusion is churning in me, and I flip on the windshield wipers so they cut through the raindrops.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “It’ll be better when we can talk in person.”
“Will it?” I ask.
His voice is slow in coming. “What’s wrong?”
I don’t know. Except that it has to do with before. “You made me doubt myself, that last time we talked at Forge. You left for St. Louis like you didn’t care, but then you came back to look for me. Why?”
“Because I did care about you, obviously,” he says. “I watched you sign that contract with Berg, and I knew that wasn’t good. It was my fault for making you admit what you thought to the cameras on the show. That’s what got you in so much trouble.”
“Then did you believe me about the mining or not? I still don’t understand.”
“I believed you enough to go down the clock tower pit and look for the vault of dreamers,” he says. “Give me credit for that, at least.”
I can’t quite voice the next question, the obvious one: do you believe me now? That’s the question that leads back to why he still hasn’t done anything to expose Berg.
My throat feels achy. “How well did we ever really know each other?”
“I can only speak for myself,” he says quietly. “I used to talk to you more honestly than I have ever talked to anybody else. I miss that. Don’t you?”
I hold my phone tightly and nod out at the rain. He doesn’t sound like a TV star tonight. He sounds real. “Yes,” I say finally. “See you soon.”
We say goodbye. Before Berg can call me, I drive to the nearest recycling bin and chuck my phone out the window.
* * *
Late the next evening, near nightfall, I drive into Forgetown, Kansas, and unroll my window an inch. I’ve left the rain far behind, and the familiar smell of dry prairie blows into the Fit. The towers and buildings of the Forge School loom darkly on the slope to the west. It’s after hours. The students sleep. A light shines from a top window of the dean’s tower, where Berg lives in his penthouse like an evil lord who controls all he surveys.
I turn away from campus, driving slowly along the shadowed streets of Forgetown. Even though it’s Saturday, it’s quiet. Most of the people who live here work at the school, and their schedules revolve around the daily timing of the show, which knows no weekends. I forgot to ask Linus for an address. In theory, I know where he stays because he pointed out the little gray house once when we were up in the lookout tower with Otis, but the angle is different from street level, and even though it’s a small town, it takes me a few passes to find the right house.
I check for Ian’s Jeep, just in case. It isn’t there, and I don’t see any other suspicious cars, either. Berg might have cameras aimed at Linus’s house, but I’m hoping they won’t pick up much in the dark. I park near the end of the block, take my jacket and a bag with a few of Sammi’s clothes, and walk up the dark alley behind his place. An old golden retriever wags her tail and pants at me through a metal fence as I approach.
“Hey, girl,” I say, keeping my voice low. I open the latch on the gate and go in, crouching down to pet her head and shoulders. “Good dog. Good Molly.”
She sniffs my pocket where I have the vials and syringes.
“Nothing for you in there,” I say.
I stay low, peering up at the house. I could call Linus, but I don’t want to clue in Berg that Linus is getting a call from another new number. A bank of lit windows reveals a kitchen at the back of the house. I can’t see anyone inside, so I wait, studying the place. This is Otis and Parker’s home, where Linus started living when he was fourteen, after his time on the streets of St. Louis. He must have played catch with Molly in this very backyard. My stomach growls with hunger. Molly gets bored with me and wanders away.
In time, a light goes on upstairs, and Linus reaches up for a window shade. My stupid, hammering heart charges around like wild. He’s right there. In the house. Right now. I see his dark hair, straight nose, and brown shirt. Then the shade comes down. I grin in the darkness, shocked by how powerful my reaction is. Clearly coming here was the right thing to do.
I scratch around in the grass for a pebble to throw. This gets Molly interested. She comes back to me and barks.
“Shh!” I say.
She barks again.
Above, the shade rolls back up, and the window opens.
“Molly!” Linus calls. “Keep it down out there!”
Molly wags her tail. She barks once more, proudly.
I push back my hood and lift a hand in a silent wave. Linus ducks to put his head out. He squints a moment, and then he smiles. I’m shredded. He lifts a finger to his lips. Then he goes back in, and the window closes. I stay where I am, with a hand on Molly’s warm head. My heart lifts with anticipation. Soon the lights in the kitchen go off. Another minute later, he opens the back door and beckons us in.
Molly darts up the steps and wedges past his knees. I come a little more slowly into the dim kitchen, happy and shy, and a bit thrown by my reaction to him. Linus closes the door behind me with a soft click. Chili is simmering nearby, emitting a savory fragrance. Molly laps water noisily in the corner. I clutch my bag in both hands. For a moment, Linus silently looks at me. Then he shakes his head with a smile.
“Come with me. Be quiet,” he says.
He leads me to a hallway and gestures for me to wait there while he goes back and turns on the lights in the kitchen again, like they were before I came in. The indignant voices of a political talk show yap from the front room, around the corner. The hallway has gray wallpaper and a smattering of family pictures in dusty frames.
“Did you let Molly in?” Otis calls from out of sight.
“Yes,” Linus says loudly.
“How’s the basement?” he calls.
“It’s done. Give me ten minutes to take a shower and we’ll eat,” Linus says.
He gestures to me again, and I follow him softly up the stairs. At the top, he pulls me into a bathroom and pulls down the shade, the same one I saw from the outside. He leans past me and turns on the shower so the rushing noise fills the little space. As I get my first decent look at Linus, I find him covered with dust and webs, like he’s been cleaning out a tomb. He’s taller and his dark hair’s short and his earrings are gone, but he’s not the stiff, slick TV show host that I feared. He’s still himself. I forgot how expressive his eyes and dark eyebrows could be, even when he’s simply watching me back. Steam starts to fog the glass of the window and the mirror.
“Welcome,” he says solemnly.
I burst out laughing and quickly cover my mouth with both hands.
He smiles in his grim, quirky way. “I cannot believe you’re actually here. In my bathroom no less.”
“Me, neither.”
“Want to get naked?”
“Linus!”
“Worth a try.”
It’s a cozy bathroom, so when Linus stands with arms akimbo, one of his elbows is over the sink and the other bumps the shower curtain. Color rides high along his cheekbones, and his dark eyes gleam. He needs a shave. He looks wonderful, actually. He’s looking me over, too, and I’m highly conscious of my pickings from Sammi’s wardrobe: a gray jacket, a brown shirt, and skinny jeans.
He points to me. “Coat.”
I shrug out of my jacket, and he hangs it on the back of the door. The drain makes a gurgling noise, and the shower keeps hissing into the tub.
“I have to get back down there. We’ll have to talk later,” he says, his voice low, and his gaze shifts to the shower. “You don’t mind if I jump in, do you? Don’t look. Or actually, look all you like.”
I laugh again, but then I put down the toilet lid, sit on it, and gaze pointedly at the floor. Beige tile. He shucks off his sneakers. I hear him disrobe, and his dirty jeans and shirt hit the rug an inch from my shoe. Boxers in the jeans. The rungs screech as he adjusts the curtain, and I peek up to see if anything shows. It doesn’t.
This is truly the last place I expected to find myself. Naturally, I want to giggle. Most uncool. I try to get a grip. Yes, he’s Linus, and yes, he’s in the shower, but I have to calm down. Tangy shampoo laces the moist air, and not seven minutes later, the water goes off. His hand reaches out for a towel, and I zero in on the floor again.
“How’s that? Better?” he asks, stroking his jaw and looking for my approval.
He shaved in the shower. I didn’t know guys could do that.
“Yes,” I say.
Linus scoops up his clothes and passes me my coat. “Okay,” he says. “Come quietly.”
A brown towel hugs his hips, and drops glint on his skin. His bare feet leave wet tracks on the wooden floor as I follow him down the hall to a bedroom. He brings me in, closes the door, and points to his bed.
Am I really going to get on his bed? I am. I do. I sit on his blue quilt and try not to look, but I’m fully aware that he’s jimmying into fresh jeans. Then I hear his zipper. I glance up as he towels his head savagely and then he chucks the towel in a laundry basket. He shoots me a smile, eyebrows up. Then he pulls a gray, long-sleeved shirt out of a drawer and pulls it over his head, covering his chest and lean belly.
I let out a breath.
“You look very sweet there,” he says. “Stay put. Don’t make a sound. Don’t get off the bed.” He dances his fingers downward. “The floor squeaks.”
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“I’m on it.”
For a second, he hovers, considering me as if he’s going to lean over for a kiss. The next moment, he rifles through his dirty jeans, digs out a phone, and slides it in his pocket.
“I won’t be long,” he says, and steps out of the room.
As he closes the door, I feel like a whirling tornado of energy has left the room. I silently set my shoes on the floor with my bag, pull my feet up, and try to get my heart to quit pounding.
I check around for cameras, just in case. Linus’s bedroom is a small, corner room with an angled ceiling and two windows. On his desk, a box of Magic cards, in slipping stacks, rests beside a Swiss Army knife and a bucket full of pencils. Tinfoil gum wrappers litter the bedside table. Stacked wooden crates, filled with aging, fusty paperbacks, line one wall. A dartboard hangs on the back of the door, and extra holes pepper the wood. He has no photos of his parents. What I like most is a big Lego model of the Death Star that hangs from the ceiling. I suspect it was glued together, and I wonder if he did it alone or with Otis and Parker.
Distant clinks and voices come from below me, and my mouth salivates as I think of them eating. The last time I ate a proper meal was days ago, at Burnham’s. I consider texting him to tell him I made it to Forgetown, but then I don’t.
A faint static noise draws my attention to the bedside table; I’m surprised to find a walkie-ham, the twin of the one I had at Forge. It’s connected to a small recording tablet. Impressed, I realize Linus has rigged a way to listen to the channels even when he isn’t here. It takes me a bit to figure out how it works, but then I find two files marked Emma and Woman 1. Gently, I disconnect the tablet from the walkie-ham so I can’t possibly send out an accidental signal. Then I turn the volume down, one notch above mute, and click the first file.
On comes a young female voice that I’ve never heard before.
“But you promised. You said you’d be here,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry. I feel terrible about it. Things just came up here, and I couldn’t get away.”
My skin shivers as I recognize Dean Berg.
“It was the one thing I asked you to show up for,” she says. “The one thing. I even told my friends you were coming!”
“I tried to call you,” Berg says.
“After the dance,” she says. “I don’t know why I bother anymore. Mom told me you wouldn’t come. She warned me. I should have asked Darren like she said.”
“Who’s Darren?”
“Her latest. Don’t you know anything?” she says.
I like this girl. Give it to him, I think.
“What can I do to make it up to you?” Berg asks. “Would you like a trip? I could take you to Paris. Brian, too, if you like. Let’s make a memory.”
“I already have enough memories of promises you don’t keep,” she says. “You can stuff your Huntington’s crap. I don’t care about it anymore. I don’t care at all.”
“Don’t say that, Emma.”
“No,” she says, and she sounds a little choked up despite her words. “Go ahead and rot. You won’t find me crying at your funeral.”
“I’ll find an answer for you in time,” Berg says. “I promise.”
“Fifty-fifty, Dad,” she says. “You don’t even know if I have it.”
“Please, get tested. I’m begging you.”
She laughs. “Why? Because you care? You couldn’t show up for one night.” Her voice goes hard. “You know what? Don’t call me again. You’re worse than no father.”
The recording ends abruptly, but her words leave a sizzle behind them. Emma has my complete sympathy. Berg sounds like a horrible father, and I’m glad she blasted him. Then I wonder what Huntington’s is. I’m not familiar with it at all.
I puzzle over the device in my hand. I once overheard a rogue conversation between the dean and Dr. Fallon on my walkie-ham. The signal must sometimes, if rarely, cross over from Berg’s phone to the walkie-ham frequency, and Linus must have been scanning for those crossovers. I try the next clip. This one is scratchy, but I recognize both voices.
“I suppose I could send some back,” Dr. Huma Fallon says. “But why? You didn’t lose a source, did you?”
“It’s just a glitch,” Dean Berg says. “We’re letting the source recover, but in the meantime, we have another client who needs a supply.”
“Which one, then? I’ll talk to my staff.”
“Sinclair Fifteen.”
A faint crackle comes over the line. “Okay, what’s going on, Sandy? What have you done?” Dr. Fallon asks.
“It’s nothing,” he says. “I simply want to help out this other client if I can. You do have the raw astrocytes, don’t you? Not a cultured seed. I need the dream pure.”
“It’ll take me a minute to find out.”
“I’ll wait, then,” he says.
“You owe me, Sandy. I’ll call you back.”
The recording stops, and there isn’t another one.
I lean back, pensive. I wish I had a date for this one. Berg has been sending my dreams to Fallon all along, but is this call old, or does he need a dream returned now that I’ve escaped? I can’t think why he would need one back.
It’s frustrating. Plus I’m hungrier than ever.
I reach over to snag one of the gum wrappers off the bedside table, and I lick the lining for the film of sugar. As I reach for another, I bump a white plastic spoon that topples to the floor. Retrieving it, I find a bit of red yarn tied around the handle, like it’s special. That’s quirky. I run my thumb over the concave surface. I envy how the casual castoffs of Linus’s life lie around here, undisturbed.
I miss having things of my own. I used to have a necklace with a New York City subway token that I wore all the time. Dubbs and I found the token on the train tracks near our boxcar, and it felt almost magical, a tiny portal to another time and place. I don’t know what happened to it. Berg probably threw my token away, like he threw away the rest of my life. I run my fingers idly down my neck. Unbidden, that old, lonesome feeling I used to have, the one that yearns and can’t be satisfied, twines its way into my hunger until I don’t know where one begins and the other leaves off.
I blink slowly out at the stars, framed by Linus’s window, until I don’t even notice them anymore.
* * *
When the mattress dips, I jolt awake. Linus is sitting at the edge of the bed. A small, shaded lamp glows on the bedside table, and outside the windows, full night has gathered near. In his hands, he holds a big bowl of chili with a bagel resting on the rim.
“I wasn’t sure if you like cheddar and sour cream on your chili,” he says quietly.
I sit up. I rub my eyes. My nerves jolt on again. The clump of grated cheese has melted on top of the brown chili, and I take my first bite with a taste of the sour cream, too. I half swoon.
“Who made this?” I ask.
“I did.”
“It’s amazing,” I say, scooping up more. Then I take a thick bite of bagel. It’s delicious, too. I go back to the chili. So good.
Linus reaches over to a computer on the desk and touches a button to make an indie playlist come on, just audible enough to cover our voices. Then he drops off his shoes and lounges on the bed, one elbow deep in the quilt. He brushes his bangs off his forehead. They fall back on.
“Tell me all about your famous life,” I say. “Do they cut your hair for the show?”
“Every time we film a new segment. Makes for consistency. It’s obnoxious,” he says.
“I’m sure.”
He smiles at me. “We were able to track down my Aunt Trudi. Contrary to our coverage of the reunion, she hadn’t been looking for me,” he says. “In fact, she didn’t care one bit what had happened to me. We had to pay her ten thousand pounds to pose with me.”
“Real nice,” I say.
He shakes his head briefly. “I did like seeing Swansea again, though, and the whole thing reminded me how lucky I am to have Otis and Parker.”
“How are they doing?”
“Good. They like when I visit. They put me right to work.” His nods his chin toward me. “How about you? Where’ve you been?”
I’m not ready to talk about the vault. “Places. Denver. Atlanta.”
“Really? With Burnham?”
“Yeah,” I say, still eating. “He loaned me a car and everything. He was really helpful.”
“How is he?”
I try to describe how Burnham is okay and how he’s not. Then I remember my awkward encounter with him in the night and run out of things to say.
“Interesting,” Linus says.
“Yes.”
“And then you decided to come here.”
It’s a leading sort of observation. I’m not sure it’s smart to tell him about my mission to kill Berg yet, if ever, but I nod at the walkie-ham. “You’ve been listening in on Berg,” I say.
“Did you hear the clip with his daughter?” Linus asks. “I think he could have Huntington’s.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a disease where you start to lose your mind early, like in your thirties or forties,” he says. “It keeps getting worse until you can’t think right or control your body, and then you die. It’s genetic. It’s horrible. His kids have a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting it, too.”
“He’s looking for a cure,” I say, thinking it over. “That’s why he’s involved with this dream mining research. He wants to save himself and his kids. It makes so much more sense now.”
“I think you’re right. That’s why he’s collaborating with the people at Chimera.”
“That’s the clinic in Iceland, right?” I read about it. I watch Linus carefully, curious to find out how much he knows.
His eyebrows lift slightly. “Okay,” he says slowly. “I know you don’t want to talk about this girl Althea, but she matters. She’s been to Chimera. She woke up from a coma there, and she says she has your mind. I’m not saying I believe her entirely, but she’s pretty convincing.”
“Come on,” I say.
“She knows everything about you up to the point you were in Berg’s vault,” Linus says, and he’s serious. “She says that’s where she left you.”
A shiver creeps over my skin. I look out the window toward Forge. I can just make out a few lights through the budding trees. I wouldn’t put anything past Berg, but if a second version of me is walking around on Earth, I’m not sure what to think.
“Is she like my mental twin, then?” I ask.
“It’s hard to say. Her voice is different, but she sounds a lot like you. She says she thinks like you. She predicted you’d come here. To see me.”
I frown at him, considering. He’s blushing faintly.
“How often do you talk to her?” I ask.
“We’ve talked twice. Last time, a few days ago. Tuesday, I guess. She was in Texas. She has family there.”
“Texas.” I nod, like this makes sense. This makes no sense. Neither does Linus’s blush. “I wonder if Berg knows about her,” I say.
“I don’t know if he does,” Linus says.
“But you know something else,” I say.
He glances uneasily at me and then sits up straighter on the bed. “I’m not sure how much this matters, but Berg asked to meet up with me once in St. Louis. He knows the producers of Found Missing, and he offered to drop by the studio and take me out to lunch. I didn’t want to, but I thought I might learn something from him about where you were, so I went.” He runs a hand back through his hair. “He spent the whole lunch reminiscing about your time as a student at Forge, Rosie. You were all he could talk about. It was bizarre.”
“He had me asleep in the Onar Clinic all that time, but he wanted to talk to you about me?”
Linus nods. “I think he’s obsessed with you. And that’s not all. He wanted to hook me up and track my reactions to some footage of you. He offered to pay me a lot. I said no, of course.”
“That is way too creepy,” I say. “Why would he want to do that?”
“I don’t know.” He wedges a hand under of one of his feet. “I know you blame me for not doing more to shut Berg down, but I’ve still never had any good evidence for what he’s done. The police have been all over him, and they’ve never found anything. He’s incredibly sneaky and careful. What do you think he’s up to?”
Berg is playing a deeper, bigger game than I’ve ever imagined. I recall the way Ian talked about another lab in California. I wonder if Althea has any information about that. Someone has to stop Berg. Soon.
Linus reaches for my dirty bowl, and as I shift my legs, the plastic spoon with the red yarn falls on the quilt. He picks it up and puts it in a drawer.
“You keep spoons?” I ask.
He looks at me sideways and smiles faintly. “You ate ice cream with that one,” he says. “I didn’t have anything else of yours, so I saved it.”
“Seriously?” I think back. “Was it that afternoon in the quad? With the chocolate chunk coffee cinnamon swirl ice cream?”
“Your favorite. Yes. So?”
I smile at him, then laugh. “That’s pretty pathetic.”
“Thank you. I’m well aware.”
I chuckle again, and then I stifle a yawn.
“When’s the last time you had a proper night’s sleep?” he asks.
The last two nights were on the road. Before that, nightmares at Burnham’s. I guess my first night in Atlanta wasn’t too bad. “Four nights ago?”
He shifts on the bed. “Time to fix that. Pass me a pillow.”
“Are you going to sleep with me here?” I ask.
“No, I’m going to eat the pillow. Shift over.”
I crowd toward the side with my back to the window, and though I tell myself that sharing a bed with Linus doesn’t mean anything, my heart won’t listen. He tugs the quilt a little, and I move so he can pull it free from underneath me. Then he settles onto the bed beside me, lying on his back, and he gently pulls the quilt over us both. It smells of cotton. He turns out the light and switches off the music. A faint hum of wind becomes audible outside the window.
“Is this okay?” he asks. “Warm enough?”
I nod.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
I don’t move. I can hardly breathe. My eyes are adjusting, and he’s just inches from me. His eyebrows are very black, and when he turns his face in my direction, the depths of his eyes are dimly visible. I didn’t brush my teeth, and I hope my breath isn’t too spicy. His isn’t. He still smells clean from his shower.
“What are you looking at?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he says.
Inside my clothes, my skin turns on and my sleepiness vanishes. I wrap my arms around myself and shove my hands up my opposite sleeves.
“This is a good bed,” I say.
“I know,” he says softly.
He still hasn’t touched me, not once. We used to kiss and make out on The Forge Show with a thousand cameras around us all the time. Now we’re alone. The house is very still. I didn’t hear Parker or Otis come up, but I can’t hear the TV from downstairs, either.
“Let me have your hand,” he says.
I rustle it out of my sleeve and feel him wrap my fingers in both of his warm hands.
“So little,” he says.
It’s a sweet thing to say, and I don’t want to argue with him, but my hand is not small. It’s just smaller than his.
“What’s the matter?” he asks.
“What if I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?” I ask.
“Wake me up. I’ll make sure the coast is clear.”
“Do Otis and Parker ever check on you?” I ask.
“Sometimes. Not often. I locked the door.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Anything else?”
I shake my head. But I keep watching him.
“What are you afraid of?” he whispers.
Nightmares. Ian. Berg. Linus himself. Myself with Linus. It’s not a short list.
“What if I wake up back in the vault?” I ask.
“You won’t,” he says. “You’ll be here.”
But logic doesn’t work. It feels like I could go back in the vault, like I’m teetering on the same vulnerability and helplessness. I’ll never really feel safe. That’s the problem. My breath catches, but I don’t want to cry. This is so much harder than being close to Burnham, and he had no shirt on. Why is everything so mixed up?
“Rosie, shh,” he says quietly. “It’s okay.”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I gulp in a breath. “Can you just hold me?”
“Of course,” he says.
He knocks an arm awkwardly around my neck and then pulls me closer against his shirt. I readjust a couple of times until I land in a better place, with my cheek on his shoulder and my eyebrows near his jaw. He adjusts the quilt around us more carefully, and I curl my hand on his chest, right below my chin.
“Better?” he whispers.
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
As if I’ll be here regularly. I could laugh, except it hurts. His chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm beneath my hand. The wind blows again outside. Linus is holding me closely, easily, with no pressure. But even still, I can’t let down my guard. I feel like someone’s been watching me even at the most intimate, personal moment of my life so far.
What did Berg say once? They’re always watching.
He was wrong, though. It’s worse than that. I’ve internalized the cameras. I’ll never feel private again.