A siren split the air. I jumped out of sleep as if from a nightmare—except this nightmare was my reality. I blinked frantically until my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the living room. Noah's living room. I may have run from him before, but in the end, there was nowhere to run. We were stuck in his childhood home until the sun rose. And while I had slept, Noah had been waiting for trouble. He crouched by the window, peering out of the split blinds. He was perfectly still, his chest barely moving, and his eyes moved from side to side, searching the blackness.
"What was that?" I whispered, pulling the thick comforter up to my neck.
Noah didn't respond. Distant red and blue lights splattered through the glass against his paled skin. He released the blinds slowly. "A cop pulled someone over on the main street." His voice shook as badly as it had when Phelps had shown up at my father's house. "But I don't like how close they are."
I buried myself in the blue comforter that had once been on Noah's childhood bed. He had brought it to the living room earlier, setting up the long couch for me to sleep on. He had promised to fall asleep on the smaller couch, but the sheet he was supposed to use as a blanket wasn't wrinkled. Instead of sleeping, he had been keeping guard. Now stress shadows clung to his eyes. The red police lights, even bleeding through the blinds, made it bright enough to see.
We waited like that for a moment, agonizingly still, completely silent. I could hear my heart pounding, my breath quieting. I was tired of running, and my ankle still throbbed. Lyn had diagnosed it as a bad sprain. She had wrapped it, and some of the pain had gone away, but I knew I wouldn't be fast enough to escape. I also knew Noah wouldn't leave me behind.
Outside, car tires squeaked against the pavement, and then the red light disappeared into the night.
Noah, carefully, peeked outside. "They'gone," he confirmed.
I sighed, relieved. He stood up and walked over to the small couch to sit down. Once seated, he leaned over, elbows on his knees, and rubbed his eyes. I'd never seen him look so worn-down.
"You okay?" he croaked.
I nodded, but I doubt he could see me. He had just stared directly into the lights. His vision would have to readjust. But I could see him perfectly, including how he avoided putting weight on his injured shoulder, how he hunched over in exhaustion.
"You should go back to sleep, Sophie," Noah said.
"Have you slept yet?"
"Go to sleep."
I grumbled but laid down, my head heavy. The emotional toll was enough to put me to sleep, but my anxiety was enough to keep me awake. "That couch is too small for you to sleep on, isn't it?" I asked, knowing the couch was the last reason for him avoiding sleep.
Noah didn't say anything.
"We can switch couches," I suggested.
"I'm not going to sleep." He sounded annoyed.
I refused to close my eyes. Without giving him time to question it, I stood up, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders, and dragged it over to his couch. Plopping down next to him, our hips touched, and he tensed as I turned to him. "Then I'm not either."
Noah glared, his eyes ablaze. "You need it."
"I slept enough."
Noah hung his head in his hands and threaded his fingers through his bangs. His watch was still on. "You are one stubborn person."
"Look who's talking."
He chuckled beneath his breath as he leaned against my arm. I didn't move away. I gestured to his wrist instead. "You never take that watch off. None of you do," I said, cursing myself for not looking at Pierson's wrists. I would have to bet he had one, too.
"It keeps us connected," Noah explained. "Why do you always wear that necklace of yours?"
He knew it was my mother's. He didn't have to bring it up, but he did.
"Can I see it again?" he asked, facing me from only an inch away. His eyes locked with mine. His vision had adjusted to the dark. He could see me now. "Can I see it?" he repeated.
I pulled it out of my tank top mechanically. He reached up and cupped the silver heart in his palm. When he ran his thumb over it, the black leather chain brushed against the nape of my neck. I knew what he saw. The smooth metal only had one slit on the bottom, a thick scrape that indented S for my name.
"She has one, too, you know," he said, dropping it against my sternum. "It has an E etched on it."
I tried to picture my mother wearing a matching necklace only a world away.
"What do you know about her?" I asked.
"Not a lot," he said, but he remained entranced by the jewelry. Behind his gaze was a memory I wanted to snatch from him. "You look like her."
I knew that, but it was about all I knew.
"Was she okay?" I asked.
Noah frowned. "We got along."
His words didn't register. "What does that mean?" I asked. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I always did. But he didn't say a word. His blank expression remained unreadable, and he refused to look at me. He was lost in his own thoughts, just like he got lost when he took tomo. His silence weighed me down.
"You were beautiful that night, Sophie," he whispered, changing the subject so suddenly that my mind sputtered in disbelief.
"What night?"
"The dance," he answered, raising his face to match mine. "You looked beautiful."
My throat tightened, remembering Homecoming, how we had danced moments before he had tossed me into the river. I could've drowned. I almost did.
"Why are you telling me this now?" My voice strained.
He shrugged, only to wince from his shoulder wound. "I wanted to tell you then, right in that moment, when we were standing by the river—" I tried to imagine my curling hair matted to my face, my makeup smeared, twigs and mud coating my dress. "But I didn't. I don't know why."
My heart pounded.
He rubbed his temples as if to get rid of a migraine. "I hit my head on a rock, right?"
I nodded, wondering how he had forgotten. "You have the scar to prove that."
Noah lifted his long fingers to his forehead and stopped at the slit. "I wasn't supposed to hit it."
"What do you mean?"
"You were."
My once pounding heart slammed into my lungs. "W-what?"
"I always thought the future tomo showed was fate, that it couldn't change," he paused. " I have lived by that comfort for years, but—"
"But what, Noah?" I grabbed his arm, refusing to let him ignore me again. I grabbed his chin and forced him to look me in the eyes. "What happened?"
He squinted, but he didn't pull his face away. "When I pushed you in, you were fine in my visions, but it changed when you hit the water," he explained, his tone wavering. "You hit it. Your head—it smashed into it—and you were unconscious. You drowned."
I went numb.
"You died." His voice shook with anger or desperation or some other emotion that I couldn't place. "I watched you die." He reached for my hand on his chin, and it was only then that I realized I was squeezing him, hard. He pried my fingers off of his jaw, then laid my hand in his. "And yet, here you are, sitting right next to me." Because he had hit it instead of me. Because he was a stronger swimmer than me.
"I jumped in the second it changed," he said. "Even when I didn't think I could save you, I had to try. I—"
Lyn was wrong. He had saved my life—right before he almost took it.
He turned my hand over and stared at my palm as his nails dragged over the lines. In that moment, he was the fortuneteller in the Albany Region, the one I had met as a child. I could feel her touch through his. When he didn't speak, I could hear her words,"You'll be fine, my dear."
I pulled my hand away from Noah before it shook. He jerked back like I had slapped him again. In a way, I had. I defied the science he lived his life by. His beliefs were proved falsified by my existence.
"Sophie—"
"I-I don't know what to say," I stuttered, closing my palm, unable to look at it anymore.
"Do you think I do?" Noah's released a mad man's chuckle. "I'm not sure what it all means, what any of this means, except that tomo can be resisted, and I— I have to let my father know."
My fingers twisted around his fingers, calloused but somehow soft. "Do you think that's a good idea?"
Noah tilted his face. "Tomo promised peace after this war," he recalled the information everyone knew but didn't talk about. "But if you defied it—"
Peace wasn't guaranteed.
He didn't have to say it out loud for me to understand. I grimaced. All of his suffering—everyone's suffering—would be for nothing. The hope had died in the river I fell into.
"I thought tomo was up to interpretation," I managed.
"It is," he agreed, "but I'm pretty good at the interpreting part."
He had learned through his addiction.
My curiosity consumed me. "What's it like?"
"Don't ever take it." His voice was hard, like he heard what I was thinking.
"I won't," I promised. "I just want to know what we're fighting for."
We weren't fighting for the drug, but the drug was the platform we stood upon. I knew that, and he knew that I knew that. But I wanted to truly know. I wanted to know everything.
"I only have two days left," he changed the subject.
I dug my nails into his leg. "Why didn't you tell me that?"
"Because I didn't know until—" he sighed. "Gigi told Miles when she saw him. She got the news through Pierson. I don't know where he got it."
His words lingered because he wasn't saying what I wanted him to say.
"That doesn't make sense," I argued. "Your only plan is to get your sister out—"
"Do you know why they killed my mother?"
His question sliced through me.
"She was the only one who had the exact ingredients memorized," he said. "If we can't make more, the drug will run out."
Phelps would win. Like my father said, he could kill all of us, but the war would go on as long as the people had the hope from tomo. Without that hope, they wouldn't fight. They wouldn't die for another generation's freedom. They would forget about the freedom altogether. It would die like a fairy tale, a mere fantasy that was told at underground parties.
"My sister has a photographic memory," he continued, finally explaining Rinley's purpose. "If we have any hope, it's living in her head, and Phelps doesn't even know it."
Saving Rinley wasn't even about saving her life.
"If she's alive, we can live," he finished.
"But I defied it."
His knees bobbed up and down as if he were running. "I know," he said, "but my hope isn't the world's hope." He didn't even care if it were a lie. "You're also the only person I've heard of that happening to."
"So, what? I'm special?"
His tense lips laid out a smile. "Of course you are."
A blush ran over my face, and he stood up, gesturing for me to join him. When I didn't move, he spoke, "You wanted to know how tomo worked."
"I thought you didn't want me to take it."
His head hung back as he groaned. "I'm not giving you any," he said, repositioning himself, but his words made it sound like he had some on him. "I'm going to show you."
In the darkness, his blond hair resembled a dim halo. His outstretched hand was impossible to leave empty, so I grabbed his palm. He pulled me to my feet. I held my breath and stared at the buttons of his shirt, the holes like little eyes peering back at me.
"Ready?" he asked, his voice rushed.
I nodded, but I didn't look at him until he laid his hands on my face. His palms were cold, but the pads of his thumbs were soft as he moved them over my eyes. When I shut my eyes, he spoke, "Sometimes you see it." When he let me open my eyes, his lips were against my ear, "Sometimes you listen to it." His tender voice traveled down my neck, and my nose brushed his shoulder. "Smell comes next." He smelled clean and crisp, like a spring breeze as it crossed over a lake. I could see the photograph of the ocean from the Raleigh Region he had given me. It was still in my pocket. I imagined that if I knew what an ocean smelled like, it would be him.
"But most of the time"—his lips hovered over mine—"you feel it," he whispered before he kissed me.
He leaned against me or I leaned against him. I wasn't sure. I could only feel his lips move across mine, light and careful, sweet and sincere. As his hand curled through my hair, my hand tangled into his shirt. His warm chest radiated through my torso, and any breath I had left escaped me. He pressed his fingers into my lower back. The end of my shirt raised, just an inch, enough for his skin to touch mine. And then, he suddenly flinched away.
We both gasped. His chest moved up and down. I stared at my knuckles, white from my grip on his shirt. I loosened my hold. A button had come undone.
"I-I—" I stuttered.
He threaded his fingers through my hair, just to kiss my forehead, and then he stepped back, leaving me cold and breathless. "Get some sleep, Sophie," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. "For me."
I didn't say anything. I couldn't. My throat was tight, my mind racing.
Noah—Noah Tomery—had just kissed me. I had just kissed Noah Tomery. It wasn't my first kiss, but it felt like it was. The kiss filled me. It ended me.
When I didn't move, he chuckled beneath his breath and moved closer. His arm curled around my waist. He directed me to the couch. When he sat down, he pulled me down on top of him. Our limbs tangled.
"Stay here," he said. "Just sleep."
I moved my head into a nod, but my ear was against his shirt. I couldn't move, even if I wanted to. I was pressed between the couch and his chest. For once, the warmth was comforting, but I didn't think I could sleep. Not now. Not with his heartbeat in my ear. But the sound was soothing, and my eyes closed as it pounded away, soft like thunder rolling across approaching clouds.
I was surrendering, and I was surrendering to a lot more than sleep.