It was strange, looking at the house now, after so many years had gone by.
Back then, it had been a certified shithole, but now, with half the world destroyed and most buildings looking like someone had stuck them in a snow-globe and shook them up until they were coming apart at the seams, the house didn't look quite so bad in comparison.
In fact, it had a weird sort of charm about it that I liked. Or maybe, it was just the memory that came with it that I clung to. I clung to a lot of memories.
Some days it seemed all that I had.
Outside of the cities and larger towns, the effects of the Last World War and evidence of the Grey occupation was not quite as devastating to see, but it was still here, nevertheless. Burnt-out houses still somehow cleaving to their skeletal structures. Cars abandoned in ditches. Half-destroyed roadblocks with towers of sandbags in disarray. Driving for miles without seeing another living soul. Just a stark barren wasteland of ghosts and memories of what once was.
I stepped over the border where the fence now lay in the long grass, roots twisting around the rotting wood as if they sought to pull it down into the earth. The gate to the garden was still in place, the concrete posts refusing to yield, but it seemed madness to use it when I could just step over the fence. Besides, I dared not risk the sound of an oil-thirsty hinge screeching my presence to anyone who might be close by.
It would have been foolish to think the Earth was a much safer place now the Greys were no more. It was still a dog-eat-dog world. The seeds of mistrust the aliens had sown, were still embedded in the soil of the human race so deeply that I knew it was going to be a long time before you could look another person in the eye without fearing what lay beneath their fragile flesh. The creatures themselves might have been gone, but the world they'd left behind was far from healed and still a long way from finding its way back to the light.
Ivy said the world had strayed from the light long before the Greys came, and I was inclined to believe her. The human race was a damaged species – brutal, selfish and cruel - but despite everything, I still had hope it would mend itself in time and maybe, just maybe, be reborn into something worth fighting for.
Until then, I knew it was better to remain cautious and on alert. One wrong move could earn me a bullet to the head. One misspoken word could reveal what I was, and I faced the New World every day with the knowledge that the truth could get me killed.
The two months since the Fall of the Hive had been both reaffirming and terrifying.
The newly formed group of Taj's and Levi's crew had begun to flourish, using their shared resources to create something stronger, something that helped me see that hope I'd so desperately wanted to come out of all of this. Much to my surprise, they hadn't rejected me as I thought they would. They'd made it clear they would keep my secret and that I always I had a place with them, but I also knew I couldn't stay. Not yet. I limped along for a while, pretending that I could assimilate into this life, but the nagging pull in my veins had become relentless, and eventually I accepted that I had to do something.
I had to try.
'You don't have to do this,' Jace had said as I'd prepared to leave. 'You don't have to go alone. I could come with you.'
'I was alone before. I will be alone again. It'll be okay,' I'd replied, looking over his shoulder to the craft that had wiped Buckingham Palace clean off the map of London as if it had never existed.
The once-terrifying monolithic craft still lay where it had fallen, half-embedded into the ground like an edgy art exhibition you would have expected to see outside the Tate Modern. Now it was just a shell of what it once was, scavenged for parts and macabre souvenirs of dark times. A shiver ghosted my spine every time I looked at it, scarcely able to comprehend how we'd survived the fall and managed to escape the twisted wreckage it now was. Of course, not all in the group had survived – Iza, Gav, a few more from Levi's crew – and the pain of that, and the guilt it brought with it, was still raw and strong.
'Will you come back?'
I'd looked at him then, this man who had risked everything to be my friend – who still was my friend – and I'd shot him a wry smile.
'Missing me already, Jason Bourne?'
'I won't miss you, Lara,' he'd sniffed. 'I'll be glad not to share rations and weapons with you anymore. You're greedy as fuck.' He'd grinned, but his eyes told a different story. 'How long will you search for him?'
'For as long as it takes to know if he really is dead.'
'You could be searching forever. How will you even know?'
I'd sighed as I'd scanned the city landscape, or whatever was now left of this place I'd come to love because Evie had loved it. Because they had loved it.
'Oh, I'll know. If he's alive, he'll find me,' I'd said. 'He always does.'
Three weeks into my search and I knew that London held nothing for me.
I'd flicked through Evie's memory book, trawling through page after page of places familiar to them both, places that might have meant something and finally, after all the searches proved fruitless, I'd ended up here.
The holiday cottage. The place in which they'd first confessed their love for each other. The place in which they'd realised this thing they had together was probably going to be for keeps.
This was my last port of call.
My last hope.
Treading carefully through the tough, tall grass, I gripped my pistol tight, scanning each window for any signs of movement, turning slowly to scan the peripheral area. Up on the roof, a seagull squawked as if announcing my arrival - or objecting to it, I wasn't sure – and opened its wings wide, pompously fluffing out its feathers.
Other than the gull, and the sound of the sea in the bay, it was graveyard quiet. My skin prickled ominously.
The front door was slightly ajar, a stack of aging, rotten newspapers and post piled just inside, turning into a small mountain of papier-mâché filling the gap and spilling out onto the doorstep. I sidled through the gap, peering around the door into the hallway beyond and gripping my pistol in both hands to steady my aim.
The hallway was unwelcoming, but then again, it always had been. The walls were stippled with woodchip paper that had been painted magnolia and which now appeared more yellow than ever before. Rain had mottled the paper just inside the doorway with a blackish mould that had gripped the wall with a fervour, its rotting fingers stretching out eagerly to claim as much of the hallway as it could. A single naked bulb hung from the ceiling. On the wall, a print of the local landscape encased in a cheap black plastic frame was slightly askew. The only addition was a faded slogan graffitied across it in spray paint, the empty can lay discarded on the tiled floor.
Trust No One.
I half-smiled at the truth it told, before moving slowing and carefully to the doorway on the left, peering into the living room and seeing, not the bleak, empty room, but the memory it held.
Tom complaining about the 1970's brown tweed sofa with the wooden arms and the threadbare cushions. Evie laughing hysterically as he opened the dusty curtains, and the curtain pole came free of the wall and bopped him on the head. Tom and Evie curled up on the rug in front of the fireplace, toasting marshmallows on sticks and drinking wine.
Backing away, I scoured the rest of the downstairs and proceeded up the staircase, keeping close to the wall so I could be sure of no surprises coming at me from above.
Upstairs, the rooms were just as empty as the rest of the house and just as dull and awful as I remembered.
The only thing missing was him.
Tom.
In the main bedroom, I moved to the small window which gave me a view of the bay. The sun was already starting to set, and I watched it for a while, mesmerised and in awe that it could hold so much beauty, when this house was leeched of it. I was Dorothy of Kansas, standing in my black and white farmhouse, watching the vibrancy of Oz through my bedroom window and wondering which witch I had to kill so I could escape into that kaleidoscope of colour. For the first time in over two years, I itched to pick up a brush and make it all come alive on canvas, and then I remembered that I wasn't an artist.
That was her. Evie.
All I could ever do was try to imitate the woman I so dearly wished I could be.
A floorboard creaked and I simultaneously raised my gun and turned my head, barely even needing to move to get my target in my sights.
Tom stood in the doorway, his arm raised also, his pistol pointing directly at me.
The tension stretched between us, becoming this huge, monstrous thing and as the seconds stretched with it, I never took my eyes from his, nor did he take his from mine.
He looked tired. Pale. But his eyes shone as they always did, a glint that he could never hide. A spark that always kindled deep in my bones and warmed my skin.
'I knew you'd come,' I said, breaking the heavy silence.
'I knew you would be here,' he replied.
Neither of us dropped our guns. My arm ached, but then again it hadn't stopped since the crash. I think everything had ached every day since. I'd ached every day since. My body, my head, my heart.
'Are you going to kill me now?' I asked, softly. 'Finally?'
Tom shrugged, a small smile playing on his lips in the way it always did when he was amused.
'Well, that depends...' He glanced around the room. '...on whether you hog the blankets like you did last time.'
'I'm pretty sure that was you.'
He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes playfully. 'Your memory must be skewed.'
A sadness crept in, deep and pitiful. 'A lot of my memories are skewed. Some days, I'm not sure what's real and what isn't.'
Tom blinked slow and dropped his arm. His whole body looked anchored to the floor then, as if his exhaustion had suddenly reached its peak.
'Every memory is real, Evie,' he said. 'Every event. Every happening. All of it is real.'
'Real for who?' I said, letting my arm fall. I looked at the gun in my hand. Evie's hand. 'These things we remember, they happened, but the memories don't belong to us. They never really did. We just stole them.'
The bay was bathed in ochre now, the sea and the sky a melting pot of gold on the horizon. It had felt like a long time since I'd seen anything as beautiful. My chest hurt, and I swallowed back the tears which threatened to rise.
'When they found me in the wreckage, and you weren't there, I imagined Tom's death all over again,' I said, not taking my eyes off the bay. 'I thought I'd killed you after all. That maybe you'd turned to ash while I'd been unconscious.'
I heard him move closer. The creak of a floorboard. Felt the warmth of his body like the dying embers of sunset.
'Careful,' he chided, softly. 'You sound almost regretful. Do you wish you had? You did want me dead, after all.'
I nodded. 'At first, yes. It's all I ever dreamt about. It's all she dreamt about. Putting a bullet between your eyes or a knife in your throat. The hatred felt so alive. It was like something feral under my skin, desperate to get out. Do you think it was her hatred, or mine? Something locked deep down inside that knew who you really were?'
I looked at him then, thinking I would see the Grey that had set me on this path, and instead saw no one but the man I'd spent the past two years grieving for. I wasn't sure if I could even own that grief because it had been hers. Her pain. Her torture.
'I-I don't know,' he said, a frown darkening his brow. 'You'd buried the truth in a way I never thought possible. I spent a long time hunting Greys who had gone too deep. Every single one came to know what they really were, even if they didn't at first. They always remembered in the end. You were different. It didn't matter what trauma you went through as Evie. Nothing sparked the memory of who you really were. Nothing. Of course, you're a hybrid, so it wasn't quite the same, but you always knew what you were until you became Evie. After that, well, I think you might have gone forever without remembering, if it wasn't for the orbs.'
My skin prickled at the thought of them, and even now, I felt the pull in my veins, a faint but familiar pulsating heartbeat that made me yearn for everything the Hive had offered. I hated how tempting it had been, how easily I could have fallen under its spell.
'You came here to hunt us. What happened?' I said. 'When did it all change for you? You weren't always like this. You weren't always...'
'The alien Che Guevara?'
He smiled and I couldn't help but reciprocate. That kind of flippant response was so Tom. He moved to the other side of the window, holstering his gun and leaning against the wall, his gaze searching the molten gold sea just as mine had. I didn't want to look at him, but I couldn't help it. He'd always had that effect on me. Even now I knew the truth of who he really was, I couldn't stop.
'You're right. I wasn't always like this. In fact, I was certain that I wouldn't be infected the way the others had been. But that's who I was back then. Arrogant, and yet I would have been insistent that we weren't capable of arrogance. That was too human, after all.'
He chuckled, his laughter fading as quickly as it had come, replaced by something dark and unreadable. 'It was like a slow burn, I suppose. So slow, I barely saw it coming. Each target brought something new. New wonders. New experiences. New emotions. It was like I was living this double life, still dancing to the Hive's tune, while secretly harbouring this desire to be something else. It became like an addiction. The more I tasted what it was like to be human, the more I struggled to let it go. I tried though. I tried really fucking hard.' He glanced at me. 'And then there was Tom. And you. After that, there was no going back.'
'They changed us,' I said. 'They changed us both.'
'Yeah, I suppose they did.'
I stared at him for a moment, coveting his face like it was the first time I'd lain eyes upon it. To hear him say all this, knowing who he had been once, I could hardly take it in. I felt overwhelmed by it, by him, by this whole bloody mad thing.
'What happened after the Fall?' I said. 'Why did you disappear? Why didn't you come for me?'
I hadn't wanted to admit at the time how much it had hurt to realise that he was probably still alive somewhere and that somewhere wasn't with me. I hadn't wanted to admit it even to myself, because admitting that would have meant acknowledging that I'd wanted him to be there. I didn't want to want him. There was so many lies, so many half-truths and betrayals, that I couldn't unpick the threads of them all without getting tangled in the web.
'I wanted to,' he said. 'More than you could possibly know. But I was scared that you wouldn't want me to. After everything I'd done, I wouldn't have blamed you.' He sighed, looking down at his hands and picking at his thumbnail in the way he always did when he was anxious. 'And besides, I wanted to give you a chance to start again without this endless game we've played all these years. I wanted to give Evie a chance. She deserved that. You deserved it. I'd haunted you for so long, the least I could do was to stop being your ghost.'
I swallowed. 'I looked for you. I searched everywhere I could think of.'
'I know.' He shot me a wry glance. 'To be honest, I did wonder if you were looking for me so you could finish the job.'
'And I wondered if you would give me reason to.' I put the gun on the window ledge, my fingers lingering on it just for a second. 'Why didn't it work with you? Why didn't you die with the rest of them?'
Tom smiled, wider this time, one of those brash grins that could make me dizzy. All teeth and sunlight. 'See... there's that regret again.' He raised a hand and touched his fingers to his temple. 'It's funny because I felt you, in here. I felt the pain of the connection being severed. I really thought that I would die with the rest of them. Maybe it's because I'm more human now than Grey and have been for a long time. Some days, I can barely remember the creature I once was. The one you first met.'
He looked away, unable to hold my gaze. Guilt drenched his skin. Guilt and sadness and regret about the creature he had been and everything he had done, and for the first time, I knew it was his truth.
'What do you remember of those times?' I asked.
'You,' he replied instantly, barely missing a second's beat. 'Everything started with you. In fact, I think I might have been a little obsessed even then. I remember hating you. Being consumed by my hatred for you. You were hardly more than a kid and you outsmarted me. Because of you, I discovered what it was to fail. I wasn't conditioned to fail. I thought about you all the time. About what it would be like to finally kill you. I knew it would be the only way to be free of you. I hated you and yet I envied you.'
The room seemed colder, the last remnants of the sun dying and taking with it the little warmth that had managed to creep into this ghost house.
'Envied? You, the great Commander of the Grey's Earth Invasion, envied me? The hybrid girl? The abomination?'
Tom's face grew serious, as he nodded. 'You had the one thing I didn't. Freedom. You were in control of your own life, your own destiny. You were governed by no one. Over time, I came to realise just how valuable that was. To think freely. To feel. God, I just wanted to feel something the Hive didn't tell me to feel.'
I felt his anger then and couldn't help but wonder how much of that was fuelled by the Grey, and how much by Tom. He'd hated injustice. It drove him mad with fury half the time. There weren't many things that had angered Tom, but injustice suffered by others, was always the one thing guaranteed to animate him to the point where I thought he might combust.
He blinked again, and I knew he was finding a memory, something that made his eyes soften and his mouth curl into a small, shy smile as he looked out the window.
'And there was Tom,' he said, his voice tinged with awe. 'I watched you, you know. I watched them. That night in the alley. I'd never felt such jealousy in my entire existence. I barely even knew what it was. I'd hunted you for so many years and each time I got close, I realised something was changing. I wanted to know you. I wanted to speak with you. To know everything.When he stepped up to defend you, I thought he was insignificant in comparison to you, but I was wrong. The moment I took him, I knew how wrong I'd been. I'd underestimated him completely. The strength in him. The love. The utter refusal to bend to my will. Instantly, I knew I was lost. He knew that it was you I wanted, that I had planned to kill you and he refused. He was horrified. Utterly repulsed by it. He changed everything. He took those unnatural thoughts of mine and he set me free. Their love set me free. I knew then there was no going back.'
'I guess there was no going back for either of us.'
I turned my back on the sunset and looked around the room. The bed in which Tom and Evie had slept was gone now, but I could still see them here, huddling under the blankets, wrapping themselves around each other until their bodies were exhausted and slick with perspiration. I could still hear them talking until the early hours, whispering to each other, sometimes giggling like teenagers, sometimes just content to lay in each other's arms and saying nothing at all.
'Why them?' I said, after a while. 'What made them different?'
Tom shifted slightly and moved closer, leaning his back against the ledge. I felt his arm brush mine. Once. Twice. Not an accident. My breath caught in my throat.
'I don't know that they were different to any other couple madly in love,' he said, his eyes slowly scanning the room too.
I wondered if he was seeing what I saw. Hearing what I could hear. Were our memories of this the same?
'But it was a strong love. Maybe the strongest it possibly could be. Enduring. Deep. Relentless.' He smiled to himself. 'So bloody relentless.'
'Relentless.' I whispered the word. 'Yes. That was it. Relentless.'
I felt his fingers touch my own. Soft. Gentle. Warm.
It was everything I had thought about these past two months, everything I had dreamt about, and yet I still found myself pulling out of his grasp, twisting out of his reach as he tried to hold onto me. Covering my face with my hands, I turned away from him, feeling the pain rolling through me in waves stronger than those that now lapped at the bay shore.
'What is it? What's wrong?' he said, moving to my side causing me to hold my hands out to ward him off.
'No, please,' I begged him, backing away. 'Please, stop, I can't do this. I'm sorry, I can't.'
'You can't what?' he said, his brow crinkling with anxiety. 'Eve?'
'Stop calling me that!' I said. 'I am not Evie and you are not Tom. It's all been a lie! Can't you see that?'
'Has it? All of it?'
'Of course, it has! You know it has! All this time, we've been lying to ourselves and each other.'
'Did it feel like a lie to you, before you learned the truth? Because it never felt like a lie to me and I always knew the truth. Despite everything....' He trailed off, frowning, and I fought the urge to return to him and run my thumb gently up the crease between his brows like I always used to. Like she used to. 'Despite everything, it always felt real to me. Every single second of it. I might not have actually lived it all, but I feel like I did. Don't you?'
I stared at him, feeling so lost, so utterly unsure of everything. I didn't know who I was anymore, but I knew that it hurt. I'd spent the past few years believing I was her, only to discover I was the one thing I'd come to hate more than anything. Or, at least, part of me was.
I didn't know how to come to terms with that. I wasn't sure I ever could.
'Don't you see? It doesn't matter if it feels real,' I said. 'We are not them. We killed them, which makes us no better than the rest of the Greys! Oh, we can stand here and pretend otherwise. We can push it all aside and think we're the good ones, because we destroyed the connection to the Hive, but we still killed people.' I paused to take a breath, feeling the deep, agonising chasm in my chest. 'You might claim to have been pretending up there on that ship, but you were right. Everything you said was the truth. We're not human and we never will be!'
Tom's eyes widened, his face aghast. 'We could be. If you just gave it a chance, we could be everything they were and more.'
'And do you think this world would accept us if they knew the truth?' My hand crept to my throat. 'They're killing people in the city, Tom. They're fucking killing anyone they suspect of not being human. I saw it with my own eyes. There are bodies swinging from Tower Bridge! There are heads stuck on fucking pikes on the A40 coming out of London. And you come to me with some screwed-up notion that we can carrying on pretending? It's a fantasy, nothing more, and fantasies are only destined to die in this world.'
'Then what do you suggest we do, huh?' His voice rose, anger spotting his cheeks. 'We can't change what's done. We can't go back and undo the wrongs we did to them both and you know what? I wouldn't even if I could.'
I gasped, rocking back on my heels as if his words had punched me. 'You say you're more human than Grey and then you come out with something like that? How can you even think that?'
'Because I am him,' he cried out, his voice cracking and so full of anger. He thumped a fist against his chest. 'Because every day I wake up and I know I am him, damn it. I am Tom. Everything I do now is what he would do. Everything I think, everything I feel. It's all him, Evie. I am not a Grey. I'm not.'
'Stop it!' I snapped, clutching at my hair in exasperation. 'Just stop! You are not Thomas Morgan. You might look like him and sound like him. You might have his memories. You might even think you are him, but you're not. No more than I am Evie. You are the Commander of the Grey Invasion Army and I am Annie Cutler-Jones, daughter of Lieutenant-General Mark Cutler-Jones, otherwise known as Zero. What we are we meant to do, huh? Pretend those people never existed? Pretend that we haven't spent the past fifty years as enemies? If you honestly believe that we can do that, then you really are living in a fantasy.'
Tom's face twisted scornfully. 'And if you honestly believe that we can't, then why the Hell did you even come here?'
'Maybe I came here to end it, once and for all.'
The words tumbled out, brutal and cold. The room was darker now, the sun having set, taking the amber light with it and leaving us with dark violets and indigo and my words spat and hissed from the shadows, cruel wraiths intent on hurting him.
He stiffened; his hands bunched into tight fists by his sides. 'So, we're back to that, are we?'
'What else is there?'
All at once he grabbed my gun from the ledge and was across the room before I could barely react, a swift aggressive move that made my heart lurch from my chest as I saw him come at me with the pistol. Grabbing my hand, he thrust the gun into my palm, forcing me to curl my fingers around it and he pressed the muzzle against his chest, holding it there.
'If that's all that is left, then do it,' he said, staring wildly into my eyes. 'Kill me.'
'What are you doing?' I gasped.
'It's simple,' he sneered. 'If you insist that you're Annie and I'm still your enemy, why don't you just do it? You can have what you always wanted. All you have to do is pull the trigger.'
'Stop,' I croaked, panic taking hold as he squeezed my fingers tighter.
'Stop, stop, stop. You keep telling me to stop and yet you do nothing. What's the matter? This is your chance. I'm telling you I'll let you do it. I won't defend myself. You can kill me, and this can all be over. You can end it right now!'
I'm the end of them all.
I recoiled inwardly from the voice that whispered inside my head.
My voice. Annie's voice.
I almost wanted to see him then, the Grey. The one who had forced my father to his knees and reveal what he really was. The one whose assassins had killed my mother right in front of me. It would have made this so much easier.
But he wasn't there. It was just Tom.
Tom. Always Tom. Relentlessly Tom.
I looked down at the gun, pressed hard against his chest and something snapped inside, the final thread of my resolve fragmenting into pieces.
'Please... please, I can't... don't make me...'
Tom let go and took a faltering step back. My arm dropped like lead at my side.
With a strangled cry, he raced from the room, leaving me to stare dumbfounded at the gun in my hand and listening to his footsteps on the stairs growing fainter, while my heart pounded louder in my chest.
The house was quiet again. Blinking, I raised my head, looking around the room, desperately trying to find a memory to cling onto and finding nothing but shadows and silence. It was such a small room, with its angled ceiling and box window, and yet, without him in it, it felt like an endless monstrous black chamber, and then there was I: tiny, insignificant and alone.
Alone.
I was alone before. I will be alone again. It'll be okay.
'It's not okay,' I whispered to the empty room.
A shiver ran over my skin.
Holstering the gun, I ran from the room, charging downstairs, wondering which way he might have gone. Hearing a sound from the back of the house, I fled through the kitchen to where the backdoor was ajar, ignoring the rats which scuttled over the kitchen counters and across the cracked vinyl floor.
Outside, Tom sat on the edge of the step, where the patio sunk down into what was left of the lawn, leaning forwards slightly, his arms resting on his knees. In the distance, I could hear the waves on the shore. Crickets called from the long, twisted grass. Even in the fading light, the wild garden seemed somehow beautiful.
'I was going to keep running,' Tom said, his voice soft. 'But then I remembered this place. This exact spot. And I couldn't go any farther.'
This was the place.
They both sat on the step, exactly where he sat now. Open paper bags of fish and chips on their laps. The bitter tang of vinegar in the air. Tentative looks. Her knee comfortably resting against his. He stole a chip from her bag. Laughter and wine. Some cheap bottle of white they'd bought from the overpriced local shop and poured into mugs as there'd been no wine glasses in the cottage. Kisses that tasted of chips and salt and contentment. A rightness in her chest that she couldn't explain.
'This is where they...' I began.
'...I told you I loved you for the first time,' he replied, turning his head to look at me. 'I'd been wanting to say it for ages, but I was scared of opening my mouth and saying the words and realising you didn't feel the same. I kept having images of you looking at me like I was the most pathetic creature you'd ever seen. I mean, imagine you, loving me? But, that night, I suddenly wasn't scared anymore. Maybe it was the terrible wine, I don't know, but I just knew that if I didn't say it, right in that moment, then I didn't deserve you anyway.'
He sniffed and looked away, raking his fingers through his hair. 'I don't deserve you. Not then and definitely not now. But, I know that I love you and I know that it's real.'
Walking over to where he sat, I perched on the step next to him, hugging my knees into my chest as I looked out into the garden where the shadows converged under the trees.
'I really wish we had fish and chips now,' I said.
Tom chuckled, picking at the grass which had pushed its way up through the cracks in the step. 'I think I'd even drink that terrible wine.'
'It really was disgusting, wasn't it?'
'The worst.'
I shifted slightly so my knee was resting against his and I looked at that point where our bodies touched, just like they had then, letting the silence envelop me. We stayed like that for a while, and I sighed as I breathed him in.
In and out. In and out.
'I'm scared,' I whispered, screwing my eyes tight shut.
'Scared of what?'
'Everything,' I exhaled. Low, and hard and pained. 'I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of what I am. I'm scared of people learning the truth. I'm scared of having to keep running. I'm scared of this entire world. But, most of all, I'm scared of how much I love you.'
'You're scared of that?'
'Terrified.'
'Evie, why?'
I opened my eyes, trying desperately to swallow back the sob which was building in my chest.
'Because... because I want it to be real and I'm scared that it's not. I'm scared that it's their love and that I've got no right to claim it as my own. I don't know what's real anymore. I love you and I feel it so fucking deeply that sometimes it hurts, you know? It's like I have this hurricane in my chest and it's spinning and spinning, and I can't make it stop. You were my enemy, my nemesis, and now you're him. My Tom. My fucking Tom. Mine. You said that you wake up every day and you know that you're him? Well, I wake up every day and I know that I love you and I'm terrified that you'll leave me again. I'm terrified that I will feel what I had to endure every day of my life after you left. Desperate and alone and broken. I can't go back to that place, Tom. I just can't.'
The tears came then. My throat tightened and I sobbed, feeling the pain so hard that I thought it might never stop.
'Evie...' he whispered against my ear as he pulled me to him. 'Evie... fuck.'
I curled up against his chest, burying my face into his neck and he rocked me gently, brushing the hair back from my face, planting small soft kisses on my forehead, my nose, my cheeks.
'It scares the Hell out of me too, you know.'
'It does?'
'I was meant to kill you. Not fall in love with you. All I ever wanted to do was know what it was to feel, but to feel this? I've never felt anything so completely and utterly in my whole existence and I know what it is to be connected to the Hive, but let me tell you, the Hive has got nothing on this. Do you understand? Nothing. It doesn't even come close.'
I touched my fingertips to his mouth.
Tom's mouth.
'I don't know what this New World holds for us. It feels like opening a book to the first page and finding it blank and that is fucking scary, but I do know one thing...'
He kissed me then. Firm. Passionate. Beautiful. I held onto him, relishing the taste of him on my tongue, the warmth of his skin, the way his hand had crept under my shirt and found the soft skin at the base of my spine.
'What do you know?' I murmured.
'That it's going to take a Hell of a lot more than an army of Greys or whatever else is hiding out there in the universe to make me ever leave you, Evie Morgan.'
He kissed me again, lingering longer this time, stealing my breath and my ability to think straight. 'Listen,' he said, when he broke away, his fingers moving to my waist, stroking the soft curve of my stomach. 'I can't provide the fish and chips, but I was wondering whether you fancied going inside and conspiring together?'
'Conspiring? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?'
My mouth curled into a soft smile as he pulled me onto his lap, pressing his body against mine and filling my head with images of the brush gently caressing the canvas, of the horizon melting into the golden sea, and the smooth glide of oil paint bringing life to everything I desired.
'Yes, Thomas Morgan,' I whispered, against his lips. 'I think I'd like to conspire with you very much, but I don't want to go inside. I want to stay out here.'
'Out here? Anyone could be watching?'
He pressed his mouth against my neck, and I sighed as I lifted my gaze to the indigo skies that had come to hold so much more than we on Earth had ever dared to imagine. Not just an endless panorama filled with the moon and stars, but a vast chasm of darkness, in which a thousand hungry eyes watched and waited.
'Let them watch then,' I said. 'Just bloody let them.'
I wrapped my legs around his waist.
'Our days of hiding are over.'