*JACK
We left at dusk.
From the front steps of the building, Imogen watched us go.
I flipped down the visor of my helmet.
Too many questions, too many doubts rolled around in my head about our entire time at this building in Kansas City. I only felt assurance in knowing we’d be back in a few days to get Finn and Imogen, and then we could leave.
For now, I was ready to get lost in the rumble of the bike on the road.
*
After four hours of hard driving, we pulled over at an obscure old gas station on the side of the highway in Missouri for a pit stop.
Beckett didn’t take off his helmet. Probably good idea. No one needed to recognize him, not after all that had happened back on that farm, even if there was just the old man at the register and a lone loitering patron—the likely owner of the old Buick out front.
We bought some waters, stretched out our legs. It wasn’t until we were outside on the gravel, about ready to head out, that I heard Beckett’s voice.
“This is gonna be a long trip if we don’t say a word to each other the entire time.”
I didn’t reply. We’d barely spoken directly to each other since our brawl in Kansas City. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’d spoken congenially to Beckett since he arrived on the island at the very start of this mess.
I was just about to mount my bike again when Beckett sighed and put his hand on my arm.
“Jack, come on.”
I stared at his hand.
Beckett hesitated.
“Remember that night in Dad’s office? After they kept you in the lab for twenty-eight hours? You looked god-awful. I thought you might die that night, the way you looked. And as we were falling asleep on the couch, you said, ‘They broke me tonight, Beck. They got to me.’”
I swallowed but didn’t answer. I’d tried to forget those twenty-eight hours every day since. It was the greatest physical pain I’d ever experienced in my life.
Even here, in this deserted parking lot years later, my body tensed at the thought of it.
I pulled my arm away from Beckett and swung my leg over my motorcycle. I didn’t want to hear whatever he was about to say next, I knew that much.
“Do you remember what I told you that night?” Beckett pressed.
Yes, I remembered what he’d said. It was the only thing that kept me sane in the emptiness that filled the days that followed.
“Do you remember?” he said again.
I wasn’t going to repeat those words he’d said to me then. I refused to even nod at Beckett, and vaguely, I wondered why. It was just me and my brother, sitting here in the middle of nowhere in the darkness of a gravel parking lot.
Aside from Caesar, Beckett was the closest thing to a best friend I’d ever had. Why couldn’t I just show him that what he’d said to me that night had actually been meaningful? That his words had, in some way, saved me in that moment?
Beckett squinted at me, not surrendering to me and my blank, unchanged face.
Instead, he pressed his fist on my leather biker jacket, right over my heart, just like he’d done that night in Dad’s office.
“I told you, ‘They can never get you here.’”
I shoved on my helmet, blinking away the wetness in my eyes only after my black visor was down.
Beckett gripped my arm.
“How do you think we’ve kept from killing each other all these years? After all the things Dad has done to try to make us hate each other? You, of all people, Jack, should recognize it. You’ve had more horrible things done to you in your lifetime than some people ever experience. And you’ve become calloused. But the essence of who we are doesn’t go away when bad things happen to us. The heart of us doesn’t change. We’re still who we are. You try and push people away, but why do you think I never give up?”
“Because you’re a sucker,” I said.
“Because I know who you are, you idiot. I knew you before all this crap.” He waved his hand vaguely, out across the expanse of gravel, the dilapidated gas station building, the treeless rolling hills.
“I remember the Jack who talked to me about Mom. I know you’re still there. Because it’s the part of you no one can take away. The Corporation, Dad, evil, darkness, call it whatever you want. None of them can take it away from you. And they can’t take it away from Sage, either. She’s still who she’s always been. And I won’t let her go. I won’t let her get lost, just like I won’t let you get lost.”
I started my motorcycle and revved the engine.
Beckett’s shoulders dropped.
He climbed onto his bike seat. He didn’t seem surprised or even agitated at my lack of my response. He seemed more resigned than anything else.
This was the same old story. He talks, I push him away by saying nothing.
Beckett was so damn nice. How is it possible for someone to get treated the way I treated him and still be such a good person? Was I trying to break him so I wouldn’t have to feel so crappy about myself every time I hung around him? Is that why I did it?
I shoved my kickstand up, peeled out of the gravel drive, and took off down the highway.
And then, it hit me.
I knew why I was so angry. I knew why I pushed Beckett away.
Of course.
Now that the last twenty-four hours had played out, I saw the truth again. It only took being around Beckett for a little while to realize it.
He’s the more decent human being.
And Sage deserved the more decent human being.
I wasn’t thinking clearly when I fell from the helicopter yesterday. Adrenaline had been flooding my system in that moment.
Even if I do live—and can live now thanks to the code in Sage—I still don’t deserve to be with her. Not in the scenario where I stay with her for life, like I was thinking in those brief moments of suspended reality while floating down to the ocean.
Oh yes, I knew why I was angry.
Because the more Beckett talked, the more it proved that he deserved Sage, and that I did not.
And I hated myself for it.