The Survivors: Point of Origin (book 2)

Duel, pt. 3

I KNEW THIS DAY WOULD COME. A TOWN CAR MET US AT THE EDGE OF THE PARK. He drove us out of the city and into New Jersey, to Teterboro, an airport I’d never been to, and right onto the runway where a Citation X jet was waiting.

I didn’t ask any questions.

The ride was smoother and significantly faster than a commercial jet. Ginny and Mark bantered back and forth, and Everett and I talked quietly. We weren’t affectionate yet. I was still upset that he had behaved as he had the night before, and he was more hurt than he admitted to that I had not only run from him but also to Cole. But the animosity between us had drained.

As we flew, I let my mind wander, which was dangerous. Except for panicked moments — like the one I’d had when I went off the grid and got on a plane to New York — I had gotten very good at not looking at the big picture in my life. I just handled each day, one by one, and, until recently, slept each night next to Everett, like wiping my slate clean. And every morning, I determined what I needed to work on, how much time I could spend pretending I was someone or somewhere else, and what it would take to get my family — the Survivors, the Winters — through another day. It was when I thought of the big picture that it became too overwhelming.

The visions had been the thing to tip the scale over to overwhelming. They drained me. I’d had only those two, but they were powerful enough to keep me awake, to jar my insides, to break my heart. And here and there, I’d been able to spend time with the Winters as a family, or with Ginny pretending to be a normal girl, with Mark pretending to be a normal little sister, or with Lizzie pretending to be a student or even a daughter. But with Everett, I was just myself. I could be afraid, or I could be strong. I could cry, or I could be stoic. I could act like a normal young human, spend my energy testing the limits of our relationship. Or, I could be a war strategist who needed an adviser, a friend who needed another friend, or a girlfriend who needed her boyfriend. He could be what I needed, and, in turn, I could be what he needed in these scary times, too. So when I sat across the plane from him, our interactions still strained, I put my feet in his lap and laid back my head, I whispered that I loved him — because I did love him — and knew that, without a doubt, my life was better since the moment I met Everett Winter.

“You love me how much?” he asked. A slight smile broke across his face. “More than life?” he asked.

“More than death,” I whispered, knowing that’s the answer he was looking for.

He removed my shoes and rubbed my feet. “And how long will you love me this way?” he asked, his old charm back.

I held up the key from around my neck. “You know how long,” I smiled.

“Say it.”

“Everett...”

“Come on, say it!” he said.

I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t the Maserati or the Ray-Bans or the ocean-front house or the hand-through-his-hair I fell in love with the absolute moment I met him. It was that smile — and that Victorian gentleman underneath. He really was a hopeless romantic. He tried to hide it under all that West-Coast edge and pretty-boy charm, but I could see through it.

Because I loved that gentleman and some tiny part of my cynical soul believed in our beach vision, I said, “Forever.”

The co-pilot got up to stretch his legs, and Everett asked him how much farther we had. “Not far. We should be on the ground in half an hour,” he said. He’d just walked back into the cockpit and closed the door when I began to feel woozy.

It happened just the way it had before. For a moment, I heard Ginny and Mark teasing each other, mixed with sounds foreign to the plane. Then my vision went. Noah’s thoughts were again inside my head.