Cress propped the cane against the panel of instruments. “He was probably worried you’d forget, after such a high-stress…” She trailed off, her eye catching on the portscreen text.
Thorne c.o.c.ked his head. “What’s wrong?”
The port had opened to a screen containing instructions for the eyedrops, and also a detailed account of why Dr. Erland believed the plague was a manufactured weapon being used as biological warfare.
But at the top of all that …
“There’s a tab labeled with my name.” Not Cress. Crescent Moon Darnel.
“Oh. It was the doctor’s port.”
Cress’s fingers glided over the screen, and she’d opened the tab before her mind could decide whether it wanted to know what was in it or not.
“A DNA a.n.a.lysis,” she said, “and … a paternity confirmation.” Standing, she set the port on the control panel. “Let’s do your eyedrops.”
“Cress.” He reached for her, his fingers gathering up the folds of her skirt. “Are you all right?”
“Not really.” She looked down at him. Thorne had pulled the blindfold around his neck, revealing a faint tan line around his eyes. Gulping, Cress sank into the pilot’s chair again. “I should have told him I loved him. He was dying, and he was right there, and I knew I would never see him again. But I couldn’t say it. Am I horrible?”
“Of course not. He may have been your biological father, but you still barely knew him. How could you have loved him?”
“Does it matter? He said he loved me. He was dying, and now he’s gone, and I’ll never…”
“Cress, hey, stop it.” Thorne swiveled his chair to face her. He found her wrists, before sliding his hands down to intertwine with her fingers. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It all happened so fast, and there was nothing you could do.”
She bit her lip. “He took my blood sample that first day, in Farafrah.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “He knew all this time—almost a whole week. Why didn’t he tell me sooner?”
“He probably wanted to wait for the right time. He didn’t know he was going to die.”
“He knew there was a chance we were all going to die.” Her next breath shook inside her diaphragm, and as the tears started, she felt herself being pulled toward Thorne. He drew her into his lap, scooping one arm beneath her legs to keep the enormous skirt from tangling around her. Sobbing, Cress buried her face against his chest and let the tears come. She cried hard at first, the release pouring out of her all at once. But she almost felt guilty when, minutes later, the tears already started to dry up. Her sadness wasn’t enough. Her mourning wasn’t enough. But it was all she had.
Thorne held her until the sound of his heartbeat became louder than the sound of her crying. He smoothed her hair back from her face, and though it was selfish, Cress was glad that he couldn’t see her then, with her red face and puffy eyes and all the unladylike fluids she’d left on his shirt.
“Listen, Cress,” he murmured against her hair once her breaths were almost stable. “I’m not an expert by any means, but I know you didn’t do anything wrong today. You shouldn’t tell someone you love them unless you mean it.”
She sniffed. “But I thought you said you’ve told lots of girls that you loved them.”
“Which is exactly why I’m not an expert. Thing is, I didn’t love any of them. I’m honestly not sure I would recognize real love if it was…”
She swiped the back of her hand over her damp cheeks. “If it was what?”
“Nothing.” Clearing his throat, Thorne leaned his head against the back of the chair. “Are you all right?”
Sniffing again, she nodded. “I think so. I might still be in a little bit of shock.”
“I think we all are, after today.”
Cress spotted the bottle of the eyedropper solution, beside the doctor’s portscreen. She didn’t want to pry herself away from Thorne’s arms, but she also didn’t want to think about the doctor anymore. The secret he’d kept. The words she couldn’t say. “We should probably take care of these eyedrops.”
“When you’re done shaking,” Thorne said. “I don’t like shaking things near my eyes.”
She laughed weakly and went to pull herself from his lap. Thorne’s arms tightened, but only for a moment before he let her go. She forced her guilt back inside. She wouldn’t think about it right now.
After reading the doctor’s instructions—three drops in each eye, four times a day for one week—she unscrewed the top. Drawing the solution up into the dropper, she moved to stand behind Thorne’s chair, her wrinkled gown swaying around her.
Thorne propped his feet on the control panel again and tilted back until his face was turned up to the ceiling. She hadn’t seen his eyes in days, but they were as blue as ever.
Cress placed a hand on his brow to steady herself and his cheek twitched. “Here goes,” she murmured, squeezing the dropper. He instinctively flinched and blinked, pushing the drops like tears down his temples. Cress brushed them away, unable to resist smoothing a strand of hair off his forehead. Her attention caught on his lips, and suddenly self-conscious, she pulled her fingertips away. “How does that feel?”
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Like I have water in my eyes.” Then he chuckled wryly, opening them again. “Maybe the solution is just water, and the doctor was playing a practical joke on me.”
“That would be awful!” she said, twisting the cap back onto the solution. “He wouldn’t have done that.”
“No, you’re right. Not after what we went through to get it.” He lifted his head from the back of the chair, tugging at the bandanna knotted around his neck. “Though he did make it pretty clear that he didn’t think too highly of me.”
“If that’s true, it’s only because he didn’t know you well enough yet.”
“True. I would have charmed him eventually.”
She smiled. “Of course you would have, in addition to showing him your many other fine qualities,” she said, blushing as she set a reminder on the portscreen to go off four times a day. But when she looked at Thorne again, his expression had become serious. “Captain?”
His Adam’s apple bobbed. Sitting up straighter, Thorne rubbed his palms together. “I have to tell you something.”
“Oh?” Hope skittered through her veins as she claimed the pilot’s seat again. The luxurious dress poufed around her.
The rooftop. The kiss.
Had he realized how much he loved her?
“What is it?”
Thorne pulled his feet off the control panel. “Remember when we were in the desert … and I said I didn’t want to hurt you? Because you were wrong about me?”
She knotted her fingers together. “When you tried to deny how much of a hero you really are?” She tried to put a hint of teasing into the statement, but her nerves were so jittery it came out as more of a frightened squeak.
“A hero. Exactly.” Thorne rubbed a finger between the blindfold and his throat, loosening it. “Here’s the thing. That girl that I stood up for when those jerks took her portscreen?”
“Kate Fallow.”
“Right, Kate Fallow. Well, she was really good at math. And, at the time, I was failing.”
The antic.i.p.ation fluttering through her body turned to ice. Wait—was this his confession? Something to do with … Kate Fallow?
He cleared his throat when she didn’t say anything. “I lost the fight and all, but she still let me copy her homework for a month. That’s why I did it. Not out of a misplaced desire to be heroic.”
“But you said you had a crush on her.”
“Cress.” He smiled, but it looked strained. “I had a crush on every girl. Believe me, it wasn’t a big motivator.”
She squeezed back against the chair and pulled her knees to her chest. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“I couldn’t before. You were so certain that I was this other person, and I kind of liked that you saw me differently than anyone else. Part of me kept thinking that maybe you’ve been right all along, and it’s everyone else who’s been wrong about me. That even I’ve been wrong about me.” He shrugged. “But even that was just my ego talking, wasn’t it? And you deserve to know the truth.”
“And you think my entire opinion of you was based on one incident that happened when you were thirteen years old?”
His brow knitted. “I thought I’d done a pretty good job of clarifying all those other incidents, but if you have more, by all means, let me ruin those for you too.”
She bit her lip.
The rooftop. The kiss. He’d kept his promise. He’d given her a kiss worth waiting for because she was about to die—they were both about to die. She knew it had been a risk, and probably a stupid one. And that was the choice he’d made rather than let her die without experiencing that one perfect moment.
She could think of nothing more heroic.
So why wouldn’t he mention it?
Perhaps more important, why couldn’t she?
“No,” she whispered finally. “I guess I can’t think of anything else.”
He nodded, though his expression was disappointed. “So given all this new information, you, uh, probably don’t think you’re still in love with me. Do you?”
She shrank into her chair, sure that if he could see her now, he would know. The truth would be evident in every angle of her face.
She loved him more than ever.
And not because she’d scoured file after file of reports and summaries and data and photographs. Not because he was the dreamy, untouchable Carswell Thorne that she’d imagined kissing on the banks of a starlit river while fireworks exploded overhead and violins played in the background.
Now he was the Carswell Thorne who had given her strength in the desert. Who had come for her when she was kidnapped. Who had kissed her when hope was lost and death was imminent.
Thorne awkwardly scratched his ear. “That’s what I thought. I figured it was just the fever talking, anyway.”
Her heart twisted. “Captain?”
He perked up. “Yeah?”
She picked at the chiffon overlay of her skirt. “Do you think it was destiny that brought us together?”
He squinted and, after a thoughtful moment, shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure it was Cinder. Why?”
“I guess I have a confession too.” She pressed the skirt down around her legs, her face already burning. “I … I had a crush on you, before we even met, just from seeing you on the netscreens. I used to believe that you and I were destined to be together, someday, and that we would have this great, epic romance.”
One eyebrow ticked upward. “Wow. No pressure or anything.”
She squirmed, her body was vibrating with nerves. “I know. I’m sorry. I think you might be right, though. Maybe there isn’t such a thing as fate. Maybe it’s just the opportunities we’re given, and what we do with them. I’m beginning to think that maybe great, epic romances don’t just happen. We have to make them ourselves.”
Thorne shuffled his feet. “You know, if it was a bad kiss, you can just say so.”
She stiffened. “That’s not at all what I … Wait. Did you think it was a bad kiss?”
“No,” he said, with an abrupt, clumsy laugh. “I thought it was … um.” He cleared his throat. “But there were clearly a lot of expectations, and a lot of pressure, and…” He squirmed in the chair. “We were going to die, you know.”
“I know.” She squeezed her knees into her chest. “And, no, it wasn’t … I didn’t think it was a bad kiss.”
“Oh, thank the stars.” His head fell back against the chair. “Because if I’d ruined that for you, I was going to feel like such a cad.”
“Well, don’t. It met every expectation. I suppose I should thank you?”
The discomfort melted from his features, and she was jealous as her blush stayed burning hot. Thorne held a hand out toward her and it took every ounce of the courage she’d earned that day to tuck her hand into his.
“Believe me, Cress. The pleasure was all mine.”
Fifty-Eight
She dreamed that she was being chased by an enormous white wolf, its fangs bared and its eyes flashing beneath a full moon. She was running through crops thick with mud that sucked at her shoes, her breath forming clouds of steam. Her throat stung. Her legs burned. She ran as fast as she could, but her body became heavier with every step. The shriveled leaves of sugar beets turned rotten and brittle under her. She spotted a house in the distance—her house. The farmhouse her grandmother had raised her in, the windows beaming with warmth.
The house was safety. The house was home.
But it receded into the distance with each painful step. The air around her became thick with fog, and the house disappeared altogether, swallowed whole by the encroaching shadows.
She tripped, landing on her hands and knees. She rolled over, scrambling and kicking at the ground. Mud clung to her clothes and hair. The coldness from the ground soaked into her bones. The wolf prowled closer. Its lean muscles moved gracefully under the coat of fur. It snarled, eyes lit with hunger.
Her fingers fished around on the ground, searching for a weapon, anything. They struck something smooth and hard. She grasped it and pulled it from the squelching mud—an axe, its sharp blade glistening with moonlight.