(Sorry for the long and sucky wait and thanks for reading! I'm really grateful to those who stuck around as we wind down to the final showdown.)
Our van breaks down just before Wichita Falls, Texas, in the middle of what seems like the countryside. In other words, in the middle of nowhere. I haven't seen another car for at least the past three miles, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not in our case. With everything we've faced lately, the thought of potential killers who prey on hitchhikers isn't quite as frightening as it normally would be.
Marcus tries turning the key in the ignition several times, but all he gets for his efforts is a clicking sound.
"I told you we should have taken the Ford," Janie huffs.
He levels a death glare at her and gets out of the vehicle, slamming his door so hard the windows protest. No one says anything else. We feel his fury like a venomous viper sitting in the van with us and the first idiot who moves will be its first victim.
I glance down at my phone when it buzzes.
Do you think this will work?
It's a question from Davey that I can't answer, just like I couldn't answer the last five he asked. I already filled him in on what we learned about the Shroud agent. The startling discovery that if we kill it, we might be able to free the Blanks.
Now I'm starting to regret telling him, because I feel like I built his hope so high I'm not sure he'll survive a drop from that height.
My own hope is tempered by the brutal disappointments so far. How can anything be that easy when reality has taught me the opposite time and again? Not that I would ever dare to give up on Carson. I miss him terribly. His naïve exuberance, his unconditional support, his unending determination in the face of any adversary. He's pure and untainted and so refreshing that I can't help feeling like the world has lost something wholly good. Like I've lost that.
And it's not the only thing I've lost. I watch Marcus fiddle with the hood of the car. It's been a couple of hours since the incident on the roadside, when I treated him no better than a would-be-rapist. Things haven't improved between us. And why should they? I've done nothing except let him think that I undervalue him. Worse, that I absolutely abhor him.
At least, now I know. I know why I pushed him away. I might not remember the full picture, I might not remember each and every incident and how things played out from the beginning to the end, but I have enough parts to piece together an image I can understand.
I make a move to disembark the van, but Janie's hand on my arm stops me. "Now might not be the best time to talk to him," she says with a meaningful look that tells me she knows I have something to do with his mood.
As if to illustrate this, there's a loud bang outside and the hood jostles in place. Marcus reappears as he moves away from the van, more pissed off than before. He strides toward us and yanks the passenger door open. "Get out."
We don't have to be told twice. We scramble out onto the side of the road, huddled against the night cold and Marcus's wrath.
"What's the problem?" Pablo asks as he dares to approach him.
"It's dead." He takes a deep breath and blows it out. "Could be a broken starter or something wrong with the ignition for all I know. It's not the battery. The headlights work, so it's got juice."
"Can't you fix it?" Jones asks.
I wince, knowing that Jones' naïve question is going to set him off.
He spins around to face the other boy and thrusts out his hands. "What do you want me to do, Jones? You want me to take out my magical toolbox and make everything better? I spent seventeen years in that hole while you were living out here, getting jerked by cheerleaders in your F-150 and whining because your dad made you take chemistry instead of getting to screw around in shop with your buddies. Why didn't you learn how to fix a goddamn car?"
Silence. Then Jones mumbles something.
"What?" Marcus snaps, his chest rising and falling even more rapidly.
"It wasn't chemistry. It was physics."
Marcus's features contort with rage. I watch, mesmerized, as he spins toward the van and thrusts out the palm of his right hand. A rush of violent energy slams into the side of the van, rocking it and then upturning it. The open hood goes flying off as the vehicle skids off the road and lands in a ditch.
Marcus turns to Jones and holds out his hand again.
"Whoa, dude," Jones says, stumbling back. His legs are quaking and he huddles into himself like he's trying to brace himself against Marcus's power.
"Marcus!" Willow shouts.
His eyes are dark and full of volatile emotions that, with one miscalculated step, will be completely unleashed. In what seems like a herculean effort to prevent that from happening, he veers away from us and stumbles into the smattering of hedges, descending a slope that leads to a barren field with clumps of grass.
"Asshole," Jones mutters, straightening his jacket as he stares after him. "I hope when I get my power, it makes me stronger than him. Then we'll see how he likes being pushed around."
"Jones, it doesn't matter if you get your hands on a nuclear warhead," Pablo responds jovially as he strolls over to the overturned van, like what just happened is barely shocking enough to warrant a reaction. "You're going to be a little bitch no matter what."
Marcus is a human-shaped speck in the distance before he disappears into a cluster of trees. I watch the spot as the others wriggle their belongings out of the van, waiting for him to reappear. There's a tremendous weight sitting on my chest. I should be getting more confidence with each memory, but instead I feel more ineffectual than I did the moment I opened my eyes.
Now I know I didn't push Marcus away for his own good. Not even my own.
I don't notice I've started moving until Janie calls to me.
"April, don't."
Her words draw the others to us. They circle us as Janie intercepts my path and lays a gentle hand on my shoulder to stop me. I can't help but notice how quick they were to block me from getting to Marcus, even Jones. They're protecting Marcus from me.
"Grab your pack," Janie adds, dropping her restraining hand. "There's a town up ahead. We'll have an early breakfast, get a motel room for the day while we figure out a new ride. Marcus will join up with us once he cools off. He just needs some time to himself."
Marcus threatens to erupt and we avoid him until he's back to normal? I push him away and hurt him viciously in the process and no one bats an eyelash? Is this so normal for us that there's a plan in place for it?
"I need to go to him."
The surprise on her face tells me she didn't expect me to say that. Her expression quickly hardens into resolve. "No. Not like this."
"You don't have the power to tell me no," I lash out, starting to breath way harder than I should. I close my eyes for a moment and try to clear my lightheadedness away without them sensing that I'm still unstable and completely unfit to face Marcus head-on in this condition.
I have to try. I may have acted like I didn't care before, hence Janie's surprise over my insistence now, but I'm not that person anymore. Marcus deserves better than this.
She quirks an eyebrow, a glint in her amber eyes. "You sure about that?"
"Get out of my way, Janie."
"April, stop," Willow calls from behind Janie, her backpack slung over both shoulders. "You can't go to him like this. This isn't going to make things better."
"I don't care. I have to try."
"What if you end up remembering everything? With every detail that comes back to you, you're unraveling more and more. You're going back to the way you were before." She frowns. "Maybe I should compel you again."
"No!" Panicked, I thrust a finger at her. "Don't touch me. I'm fine!"
They both give me disbelieving looks, and I pretend I don't feel the cold sweat trickling down my forehead. "You guys go ahead," I say in a calmer voice. "I'll call you when I'm done."
I'm surprised and relieved when they move aside. My relief turns to dread as I head in the direction Marcus went. For all of my bravado, I'm starting to realize I don't have a single idea how to fix this.
I find him sitting with his back against a tree. I don't miss the slight tightening of his hand around his gun when I stumble across his path, but thankfully he doesn't swing the weapon in my direction. It's good to know that, even at his worst, Marcus can resist the urge to shoot me.
My self-deprecating humor fades as I stop a few feet away. "I didn't mean what I did before," I begin fumblingly.
"Which part?" he scoffs.
"When I . . . pushed you away."
"You sure as hell never had a problem doing it before. Why bother apologizing now?"
His angry, hurt tone makes it hard to formalize a convincing defense. I'm still struggling for words when he continues in a hard voice, "This is why I liked Saige. She kept it simple. None of this mixed signals bullshit you keep throwing my way."
"I can't help who I am."
Why the hell did I say it like that? I flinch back when he shoots to his feet and stalks over to me, the murder in his eyes as frightening as the gun in his hand. "No. Don't make excuses. You like to jerk people around. That's why you do it. It's why, when I'm finally moving on, you decide you still love me. You get off on hurting me? Is that it?"
A breeze wraps us in a cold embrace, and I let the unpleasant sensation keep me grounded in this moment. He's wrong about why I pushed him away. He's dead-wrong, but is the truth any better? "Janie can't help stringing Pablo along."
He blinks. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"She doesn't want him," I add quickly, "but something intrinsic inside of her craves attention and that's why she's having these sleepovers with him where nothing happens and that's also why she hated me back at the facility. Because even though she aligned herself with the most popular kids, the ones who can't help but draw attention wherever they go, I took center stage because people looked to me for answers."
I start pacing in front of him as more things fall into place. "Maybe she's fighting that possessive streak in her by becoming friends with me. She's not a bad person, but she can't change completely. Her ability is tied to her personality, and vice versa. It's her nature. Just like it's Willow's nature to manipulate people."
"Willow's ability comes from the way Sam treated her," Marcus says, and I'm glad to see he's not holding his gun in a deathgrip anymore. "It gives her power."
"I thought so, too, but think about it. Why that particular ability? Why can she only compel people when they're unconscious and sedated? Because it allows her to work in the shadows. They'll most likely never know what she did to them. She can't help all of the lying and the secrets.
"Pablo will always look out for himself, which is what his prediction ability helps him do, and Jones--even though he doesn't have an ability yet, I'm betting it's tied to his natural instinct to run from danger. And the thing is, he'll probably never learn to be brave. He can't."
"And me?" Marcus asks.
I stop and turn to him. "Your anger. It controls you, doesn't it? That's why you ran out here. You were afraid of what you might do if you stayed."
His eyes are going wide with shock. And also recognition. It's his turn to move now: he paces a few steps, running a hand over his head as he reflects on my words. In the distance, the sun is slowly creeping along the horizon, and in spite of myself, I stare at its beautiful hues and revel at the fact that this phenomenon will never change no matter how horrible our world gets.
"I've learned to deal with it," he finally grits out. "And what's your problem?"
"Sam drilled a hard lesson into my head for most of my life," I say. "Control yourself. I can't control what I feel for you, around you, and pushing you out was the only way I could regain my equilibrium."
"Is that why you dumped me?" he asks flatly.
I shake my head and step closer to him. "No, at least, it's not the only reason. I think, like everyone else, I found a way to cope with that part of me. My need for stability and control. But when things went south, when I couldn't deal with the stress anymore and all I had to look forward to was blanking constantly, it became hard to be vulnerable with you. I pulled up my walls and shut my doors because that's my nature, too."
He gives me a brisk nod, his eyes black despite the burgeoning light. "So you're saying we're messed up and doomed to keep repeating our mistakes forever."
"I don't know," I admit, taking another step. I start to lift a hand to touch him and stop when he inches away from me. The rejection cuts deeply, but it's well deserved. "I didn't just figure all of this out. It's something I've probably known for a while, but I kept it from you because I didn't want to justify why I hurt you. I didn't want you to forgive me."
"And now?"
"I don't want to be this person." I touch him in spite of my promise to let him keep his space. His sleeve is warm beneath my freezing hand as I squeeze his arm. "It allowed me to put things into perspective, and the biggest takeaway from all of this is that I don't want to lose you. I never meant to lose you, and I'm willing to fight my demons to make sure it never happens again."
He's not saying anything, but I feel a change in him, the slightest shift toward me that feels like a bridge traversing the worlds separating us. But it feels too good to be true, and my fear manifests into reality when he says, "I have a girlfriend. You remember her? The girl you kept throwing at me because you didn't want to be with me?"
His words are a bucket of ice water to the face. I step back, embarrassed and blinking rapidly to keep back the stinging tears. Did I think that it would be this easy? That a few sincere words would undo months of the rejection and humiliation I've inflicted? What a joke.
"April," he says when I turn to walk away.
It's not the sound of my name that stops me. It's his tone. Rough and inflamed by something that makes me spin around instinctively. His hand is around my waist almost immediately, pulling me into his chest. The kiss is hard and impassioned, and the taste of him brings back a flood of memories I can't filter through. I let myself drown in them, in him, my throat choked with emotion.
Marcus was contentious when we first met. He pushed people around, not because he wanted to keep them beneath the heel of his boot, but because conflict was his drug of choice. He lived off of those sparks of tension-wrought energy when he batted heads with people. He still does, whether he can help it or not, but for a few blissful months, I learned that he approached our relationship with the same intensity, the same consuming fire, that he does everything else.
And my weakness, my selfishness, snuffed that fire out.
No. The fire hasn't burned out completely. It's roaring between us now, and I wrap my arms around his neck and do everything I can to keep the flames going. As though realizing I'm not going anywhere, his lips and tongue begin a slow dance that intoxicates me, his hand moving gently across my jaw to cup my cheek.
"I love you," I gasp when we break for a quick breath. I need him to understand that I feel those words more than ever. That they're a culmination of everything I feel for him, every regret and need and hope wrapped into three little words.
He doesn't say it back. Instead he pulls back and whispers near my ear, "You have to fight who you are to be with me, but for me, you tamed my demons. That's the difference between us."
My eyes are closed as his footsteps fade.