Part One
Numb
Can't you see that you're smothering me?
Holding too tightly, afraid to lose control
‘Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
- Linkin Park
Chapter 1
One year, seven months, three weeks and five days. That’s how long he’d been gone. Even though it seemed like a long time ago, it was still front and center in my mind like it happened yesterday. And every time I thought about it, which seemed to be like a lot, I would go numb. No one would be able to get be out of my trance that it would put me in.
I seemed to block almost everything that was happening around me out of my head. I didn’t talk to anyone and I hardly even stayed in a room where they were. For the first few months after his death, everyone put up with my not talking to anyone. I didn’t speak to Rowan, only in our dreams and with Reagan. But when it started toward a year, they got worried. Everyone tried to get me into their conversations, but I never wanted in. It wasn’t until Lyric had come into our room one night after I’d gone to bed early without having dinner that I started talking again.
“Rayney?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. I just turned over on my side and looked at her.
“Rayney, Grandma wanted me to come get you so you could come have dinner,” she said.
All I did was stare at her. But when tears formed in her eyes and started running down her cheeks. I sat up and opened my arms for her. She ran toward me and jumped into them, crying harder on my shoulder.
“I don’t like you like this,” she said. “You don’t talk to me. You don’t tell me stories about Mommy and Daddy anymore.”
I sighed and spoke for the first time in forever. “I’m so sorry, Lyric,” I whispered since that’s all that seemed to want to come out.
“Can you please come out for dinner?” she asked. “Everyone would be so happy if you did.”
“Would it make you happy?” I asked.
She nodded fiercely. “Yes, it would,” she said.
I smiled sadly. “Okay, Lyric, I will,” I said.
She hopped off my lap and I stood up beside her. She’d grown a few inches, but she was still tiny to me. And I also forgot about something that had happened a few months before.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ‘happy birthday’,” I told her.
She smiled and took my hand. “It’s okay. I told you ‘happy birthday’, though,” she said. “Rowan, too.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“Seven months ago,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“It’s okay,” she said again. She looked up at me after a few moments. “Can you carry me?”
“I don’t know. You’re getting pretty big,” I said.
“Not too big yet,” she said.
“No, I guess you’re not,” I said, and leaned down to pick her up. She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck.
“I love you, Rayney,” she whispered close to my ear.
I had to look up so my tears wouldn’t run down my face. “I love you, too, Lyric,” I said, and headed out the door.
After that day, I did try to talk more to everyone. But some days I just couldn’t and would go into my room or go into the weapons room to practice.
When I could go into the weapons room, I seemed to be getting better than I ever was. Nash was still my loyal practice partner when it came to it. He didn’t even complain when I’d cut him like I usually did. He just went on fighting me until I said it was enough and for him to go to Kate to get patched up.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”
“No,” I said, putting my knives back in their sheaths on my boots and waist. “In case you haven’t notice, I got you pretty good on your arm. You need to go have it cleaned.”
“I don’t care,” he said, and started to circle me again. “Come on. Are you afraid I’ll actually get you this time?”
“I’ve fought with you hundreds of times and you’ve only gotten me three times,” I said, but started circling him. “I highly doubt that you’ll be able to get me.”
He’d rushed toward me then, but I caught him and clamped my hand around his throat. Adrenaline coursed through me as I threw him to the ground.
“I told you,” I said. “You can’t get me.”
Before he could say a word, I turned and walked out of the weapons room, heading back to my room.
That’s how our fights usually went now. He’d always be worn out and tired, but would always want to keep going. I think he was like that because he knew that it kept my mind off of certain things – and a certain person – and it helped me keep focused on others.
Raids kept my mind off of things also. We hadn’t been on that many, maybe four or five, but they still kept me occupied for however long that we were gone. Some were quiet with no interceptions with Guards, but some did have some action. And when they did, I got to take my anger out on them.
But there was one place that I couldn’t keep his face out of my mind: my dreams. It seemed like every time I’d finished talking with Rowan, Reagan, Harper, Slade and Tyler, my dreams would take me to a place where it was constantly showing his face. And when that happened, I usually woke up with tears streaming down my face.
Most nights after the first time it happened, I tried to stay awake, but the next thing I knew I was waking up with his image still fresh in my mind from my dreams, either with him lying on the ground with the bullet hole going through his head or one where he’s smiling at me as we were lying in the bed together that one night that seemed like forever ago. I didn’t know which one was worse. Seeing him alive or seeing him dead. Both of them seemed to be about the same, though.
But there was one that I was having right now, one that I hadn’t had before. It was him, but he looked very different from the last time I’d seen him. His face looked the same, though, but not the expression on it. And his body. He seemed to be even bigger than he was, more muscular.
It was really weird because as he walked toward me, I could see something in his hand. It was my blue sapphire necklace. I didn’t know why he’d had it in his hand, but he did. He’d walk toward me and then put it back around my neck. And then everything disappeared and I woke up.
I sat up and looked around the room. Peyton and Lyric weren’t there. Rowan was, though, putting on her jacket. She knew something was up when she saw that I didn’t have tears streaming down my face like usual. She looked at me funny, and then walked toward me.
“Rayney, what’s wrong with you?” she asked, sitting down beside me.
“Nothing.” I looked over at her. “It’s the first time that I haven’t had tears in my eyes when I woke up and you’re asking me what’s wrong?” I asked.
“Yeah, because you don’t have tears in your eyes. What happened in your dream?”
“I saw him,” I whispered to her. “I was walking toward me and he had my necklace in his hand.”
She sighed and took my hand in hers. “Rayney, you’ve got to stop dreaming about…”
“Don’t say his name,” I said quickly, before she could. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“You need to stop dreaming about him,” she said. “You’ve got to realize that he’s gone. Not coming back.”
“What about you, huh?” I said angrily. “Don’t tell me that you don’t dream about Roth and him coming back.”
“Yes, I do, but I know that he’s probably never coming back,” she said quietly. “He made me promise him not to be upset if something ever happened to him. And look, something did. I intend to keep my promise to him until the day I die.”
“But I know you were – still are – upset,” I said. “You cried for an entire month after everything happened.”
“Yeah, but that’s better than what you did,” she said. “You shut everyone out, including me. Well, at least in the real world. But then you barely talked to me when we were in the dream with the others also.”
“I’m better now,” I said.
“Better how?” she asked. “Yeah, you talk now after almost not talking for a year. But what good is that? You’re not yourself anymore.”
“I can’t be myself without him!” I yelled.
“Well,” she said angrily. “You need to learn. Because I don’t like you like this. No one does. Grandma says that you’re worse now than after you lost him the first time.”
“Yeah, because he’s actually dead this time,” I said. “I saw it happen with my own eyes.”
“Exactly, so you need to stop making yourself dream about him coming back,” she said.
“Where you this way after they caught Roth, or are you just like this now?” I asked.
“What, I’ve actually grown some backbone and am telling you like it is? I’m not the weak, helpless twin who was locked up for almost eight and a half years? You really need to get over this, Rayney,” she said angrily, and then stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
I just sat there looking at the door for a few minutes. She was right…in some ways. She’d become the stronger of the two of us. Going through her loss made her that way. It was the complete opposite for me, though. And I wasn’t going to stop dreaming about him, even if I did wake up with tears in my eyes every morning.
It did hurt me to know that Grandma had said that about me, even if it was true. She’d had to put up with my attitude for seven years, now she’d had to put up with this me for a year and a half. But I couldn’t change any of this. This was who I was now.
I got up and put on my boots and jacket, trying not to have a rerun of what Rowan said to me even if she was right.
Once I got out of the room and started walking down the hallway, I turned quiet. Today was going to be one of those days that I didn’t want anyone to talk to me. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. Not with Nash walking toward me with a smile on his face.
“Hey,” he said. “You just wake up?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Is there something you wanted?”
“No,” he said. “I was just coming to say good morning.”
Nash, out of everyone else, was the one person who really stuck beside me through everything. He always treated me the same, even though I didn’t speak to him. He’s still talk to me as if I would talk back. He was the second person that I’d actually talked to – after Lyric. He’d been telling me about the raid that he, Dane, Adem and Luke had gone on the week before and was shocked into silence when I’d actually commented on what he’d said about them almost getting caught by Guards. I’d given him a small smile when he turned quiet, eyes wide, and said, “What, is it your turn not to talk?”
“You know,” Nash said now. “You haven’t been on a raid since…”
“Since I freaked out on the one a few months ago,” I finished for him. “I know. I just haven’t wanted to go.”
The raid that we’d gone on after was probably the fifth I’d gone on since everything had happened. We had been gone about a week on that raid, and every night I’d still had the dreams. And every morning Nash would worry about me. On the last raid that I’d been on, I’d been dreaming about what had happened and sleep-walked – actually more like ran – out of the tent. Nash had followed me out and tracked me down before I could run farther away. When he’d tackled me to the ground, I thought he was a Guard and started slicing at him with my knife. He’d finally gotten me to my senses, but not before he’d been cut up pretty badly.
“Luke said that we might be going on another one soon,” he said now as we walked down the hallway. “Do you think you’d want to go?”
I sighed. “I might. I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, I’d want you to go,” he said. “They always seem to be more interesting when you come along.”
“And how’s that?” I asked. “I seem to always bring more trouble to us.”
“Well, yeah, but not always,” he said. “And now that everything with Slayter and…well, now that’s blown over with him.”
“It hasn’t blown over with me,” I said, my eyes narrowing at him.
“So do you have a vendetta against him now?” he asked.
“He killed his own son,” I said. “Of course I do.”
“It’s not like you’re going to find him walking around in the woods. The only way you’re ever going to be able to get even close enough to kill him…”
“Okay, let’s not talk about killing right now, even if that’s what I want to do to the man,” I said. “I just want to eat breakfast in peace.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. He reached over and, before I could protest, took my hand in his and squeezed it. “I’m sorry. About everything.”
“Nothing’s your fault,” I said. “You don’t need to be sorry.”
“I know you wanted me to let you stay with him after…but I just couldn’t do it. There are too many people who love and need you. Me included.”
“He said the same thing to me,” I whispered. “I…”
“Again, sorry,” he said.
I stopped and let go of his hand. I looked up into his brown eyes, but then they blurred as tears started to for in mine. I reached up and quickly wiped them away. Once they were gone, more formed and I wasn’t quick enough to wipe them away before he saw them.
“Rayney…” he started when he turned around and saw what I was trying to hide.
“No, I’m okay,” I said, close to breaking down right there in front of him. I usually only did when I was alone in my room now, where no one would be able to see. But for some reason, that wasn’t going to happen at this moment. “I just…this happens sometimes.”
“It’s okay,” he said, moving beside me.
“No, don’t come any closer. I just…need to breath…and then it’ll all pass.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, eyeing me with a worried expression on his face.
“Yes…no,” I said, and took a staggered breath. But when I tried to breathe again, it felt like I was choking on air. I gasped, and then burst into tears.
Nash just stood there for a second, like he didn’t know what to do or how to comfort me. I only need one kind of comfort, and that was to be held next to someone. Someone who could make me feel safe. And at that moment it was Nash. I rushed toward him and wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my face against his chest. His arms wrapped around me and held me tight against him.
“Shh,” he said, his hands running up and down my back. “Everything’s going to get better. I promise. You just feel this way right now. You just need some more time to heal…”
“I’m not going to!” I cried. “I can’t…”
“Yes, you can,” he said as he put his hands on my shoulders so he could push me back and look at me. “Even though it’s been over a year and a half, you’re still grieving. You loved Kade, and he loved you.”
“Please don’t say his name,” I whispered. “I don’t want to hear it. Because if I do, I see his face in my head and I don’t want to.”
“Okay, sorry. Well, he still loved you. He wanted you to go on with your life after he was gone. If he looked down at you right now, what do you think he’d see?” he asked.
“A pathetic girl who can stop crying for him,” I said.
“You’re not pathetic…”
I looked up at him with one eyebrow raised.
“Maybe you are a little,” he said.
“A little?” I asked, raising both eyebrows.
“Okay, a lot,” he said, laughing. He pulled me back toward him and wrapped his arms around me. “You need to be the person that he knew that you would be. Be the person that everyone knows you can be.”
“I can’t be the person I want to be, though,” I said.
“You think that he was everything that you are, but that’s not the case. He was a part of you, a big part actually. But you’re made up of other things,” he said.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like your personality.”
“Depressed?”
“No,” he said, his laugh reverberating through his chest. “The way you were before everything happened. You were so happy and fun. I think that’s what made me like you so much when we first met.”
I sighed. “What else?” I asked.
“You’re beautiful, that’s for sure,” he said.
“If I didn’t have this stupid scar covering half my face,” I mumbled into his shirt.
“No, I disagree,” he said. “It makes you who you are. And it makes you even more beautiful.”
“At least you know how to make me stop crying,” I said, wiping away the tears that had stopped.
He laughed. “Well, I guess that’s good,” he said.
I sighed again and leaned away from him. “I guess we should get going to the common room,” I said. “Everyone’s probably wondering where we are.”
“About Rowan,” he said as we started walking down the hallway. “What happened between the two of you to make her stalk out of your room like that?”
“She was telling me that I needed to stop being like this. She’s tired of me being like this and apparently so is everyone else,” I said.
“They are,” he said.
“Way to be short and to the point,” I mumbled.
“It’s true,” he said. “Everyone wants you back to the way you were.”
“No one’s had to go through what I’ve been through,” I said.
“You need to think again,” he said. “Everyone in this country has been through what you have. Everyone here has lost all they knew and everyone they loved. But we’re making a new life, one that we enjoy living. Everyone’s learned to live with what they’ve been given and it just so happens that we’ve been given Division Sixteen and all its glory.”
“Most everyone here had come with who they loved,” I said.
“Yeah, but that’s only a few of us,” he said. “Take Adem and McKenna for example. Both of them came from different parts of the country, but they both ended up here after everything happened. Adem was twenty and McKenna was seventeen. But now look at them. Totally safe, in love with each other and they have one of the cutest little boys on the planet now.”
I laughed. “You’re right,” I said. He stopped and I turned around to face him. “What?”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh in a long time,” he said, smiling.
I shrugged. “Remind me when I’m doing it again and I’ll stop,” I said.
“No, I’m not going to,” he said. “I like it when you laugh. You almost sound like…your normal self.”
“I don’t know if I’ll ever really be my normal self, but I’ll probably get close to it,” I said, sighing.
“Something’s always going to be missing from your life. But you know what? You don’t need to remember those last few moments with him. You need to remember all the good times, all the times he’d made you laugh or smile. Everything,” he said.
“Good advice,” I said. “But it’s kind of hard to think about all of those times when I wake up from seeing what happened in my dreams.”
“Isn’t there a way you can stop it?” he asked. “Surely there is.”
“Yeah, but every time I try, it doesn’t work. It just comes back.”
“Is that another reason Rowan stalked out of your room this morning?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Do you…do you want to tell me about it?” he asked. “I mean, you don’t have to…”
“I’m seeing him,” I said quietly, looking up at him. “He looks so different, though. I know it’s a dream since he was different. There’s no way that he’d look like that now.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was just walking toward me,” I said. “But he had my necklace in his hand.” I reached up and grabbed it, pressing the stone into my palm. “This morning was the first morning that I haven’t woken up with tears in my eyes and Rowan gets mad at me for it.”
“I’m sure she’s not really mad at you,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’s never been mad at me before, so I don’t really know what to compare it to.”
“I guess that’s a good thing,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “I don’t like her being mad at me. I’m supposed to tell her everything and she’ll be there for me. But with this, it’s the total opposite.”
“Give her some time to cool down,” he said as we walked into the common area.
Everyone was there, plates of fruit and other food in front of them. Nash and I walked toward where we regularly sat, with Rowan, Peyton, Xander, Harper, Slade, Blair and Frey. Slade and Blair, despite what everyone had said about their on-again-off-again relationship, were still together. So were Xander and Peyton, but then they probably wouldn’t leave each other’s side for anything.
Right when I sat down and Nash sat in the chair beside me, Rowan got up and walked toward where Grandma and Auden were sitting at their regular table. Everyone watched as she left and then looked at me when she’d sat down beside Auden.
“What’s up with you two?” Peyton asked. “You two never fight.”
“Yeah, well, she’s mad at me for the first time ever this morning,” I said, taking a slice of bread in my hand and tearing off a piece.
“And why is that?” Blair asked.
“Because of what I dreamed about,” I said quietly.
“More like who,” Nash said, taking a bite of the apple he’d grabbed.
“Oh,” Harper said, a sad expression on her face. “Him again?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But this is the first time that I haven’t woken up with tears in my eyes. And what do I get? Rowan pissed off at me.”
Peyton reached over and grabbed my hand. “I know it’s been hard without him,” she said.
I just stared down at my lap, put the piece of bread on the table and sat back in my seat. Everyone was quiet, just looking at me. But then I felt someone come up behind me.
“Rayney, I didn’t know you were up,” Grandma said.
“Yeah,” I said, turning to look at her. “I’m sorry I didn’t come say good morning. I was really hungry and wanted to get something in my stomach.”
“Oh, it’s okay,” she said, smiling.
She looked at me the same she had for the past year and a half, an expression filled with sadness. She tried to treat me the same as she’d always had, though, but we both know it wasn’t ever going to be the same.
We all heard laughter and looked behind us at Lyric, Lilah, McKenna and little Jack coming toward us. Jack was a year and a half now and had been walking for a few months. He did wobble a few times, but then would recover himself. Lyric and Lilah had spent almost all day with him when he was just learning – a straight month – trying to teach him. It all paid off, though, because he did.
There was a bark then, and Maxi came running past everyone until his got up to Jack, knocking him to the ground. But instead of starting to cry, Jack just giggled and clapped his hands. Maxi ran over to him and licked his face, causing another round of giggles, before he came over to me.
“Hey, boy,” I said, rubbing the top of his hand.
“He’s been knocking Jack down all morning,” Lyric said, smiling.
“He cried for the first few times, but then he just started laughing,” Lilah said.
McKenna picked Jack up then and smiled at me. “How are you doing this morning?” she asked.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“Rowan’s not too happy with you, I see,” Grandma said.
“No, she’s not,” I said. When she was about to ask what was wrong, I quickly stopped her. “Don’t ask. It’s not a long story. I just don’t feel like telling it again.”
“Well, I don’t think you two should be mad at each other,” she said. “No matter what the problem is.”
“Try telling her that,” I said.
“Why don’t you ask her about herself instead of telling her all about you?” she asked. “You never know what might happen.”
“She’s apparently over everything,” I said, picking up my piece of bread again.
“No, she’s not, Rayney. She didn’t look too good when I found her crying in the hallway going to the infirmary a little while ago,” she said, and then turned to walk back to their table.