I reached over and took my best friend’s hand in mine. “Yes, we do. We should have had this conversation a long time ago, but I messed things up.”
“Let’s not go feeling sorry for yourself.” Henry rolled his eyes. “We both messed things up.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess you’re right.”
“I usually am,” he said. He paused, looking at the night sky above us. “Actually, I never am. I don’t know what I’m talking about,” he said, and then he started to laugh, too.
“It’s time I make things right, and that means talking about James. And me. James and me. I know that George took him back to the council—”
“Would it be a waste of my time to explain to you that the likelihood of ever seeing him again is slim?” he asked.
I offered a small smile. “Yes, it would. That’s where I went wrong before. I convinced myself that I was never going to see him again, and I didn’t let myself feel the weight of that. At least not completely. So, I tried things with you. I wasn’t ready. I tried to be, but I wasn’t.”
Henry pulled his hand from mine, turning his face from me. “Don’t sit here and tell me you didn’t feel anything for me. I remember the way you kissed me.”
I swallowed, knowing the next thing I said would destroy him. But it would be a temporary destruction, like burning down a forest so it could grow again. “I did feel something for you. I’ll probably always feel something for you. But even in those moments when I convinced myself I would never see James again, I was still more in love with the memory of him than I was with you.”
I braced myself for Henry’s reaction. Instead of arguing, he sighed and ran a hand over his face. I realized he was probably just as tired as I was. “I know,” he said.
I pulled myself to my feet and placed a hand on his arm. “I wish it could be different.”
“You know what’s crazy? There’s a part of me that doesn’t care that you’ll never love me as much as you would him.”
“You say that right now, but you would mind one day. And then you would hate me. I can take you being mad at me now, but I could never handle you hating me,” I said.
Henry nodded and walked off into the darkness without another word. I stared after my best friend as he moved further and further away from me, and despite his slumped shoulders and bowed head, I knew I had done the right thing.
For once.
Chapter 7
Tess,
There are no words to express the utter astonishment I felt at receiving your letter. I never even let myself hope to see you again; it didn’t feel fair. You were alive. You had your sister. What else could I ask for? And then your letter arrived, handed to me by one of the creators under my plate at dinner. Effortlessly. The smallest of gestures with the greatest of impact.
Despite half of your letter being crossed out, no doubt by someone to keep hidden any fact or detail that might lead them to you, I lost myself in every word that crawled across the page.
I have always moved through life blindly. I have always stumbled, reaching my hand out, searching for the wall, needing something to help me along. This is the way it has always been with me, and I sometimes think it’s the one part of my being that will never change.
You have been my guide since that first day in the piano room. When I think back on you, our times together, I don’t want to change. The council is wrong. Kendall was wrong.
Needing someone isn’t weakness.
The council is trying to change me. When George returned me to them, taking me right to the center, the headquarters, he was welcomed back a hero. It was almost as if the man who processed us was expecting George to show up with me. The things he knows, Tess, are enough to make any man tremble with fear. Every dark thing that has ever whispered seductively in my mind, he has recited back to me.
I believe George used his ability to gain acquittal for his crimes. It probably didn’t hurt that he had me as well. Once I went through de-briefing (don’t worry, I said nothing of you or the community, I swear it. I would never tell them. I would die before giving them a way to hurt you more than they already have) I told them I had left the compound because I sought to find out what lay in the woods. I was curious. Once they were done questioning me, George and I were both assigned to different creators, and I have only seen him once since.
That’s what they do with chosen ones here. Each one of us is assigned a job based on our ability. You were right when you guessed that I would be selected as a bodyguard for someone important. Once they ascertained the extent of my ability from George, they assigned me to a man named Scott Harper. He is the son of Abrams, one of the original creators of the first batch of chosen ones presented to the public. No one dares to call him by his first name, though. Just Harper. I suspect they are afraid of showing disrespect. Even his two sons call him sir.