Page 28 of Never Bound

“She kept telling me she’d come for me,” Milagros said. “I believed her, but she was a wanted fugitive, and I couldn’t let her put herself in more danger for me. I don’t know which of us spent more sleepless nights.” Their luck, so to speak, changed when Milagros had been injured on the job and sent, much like me, to a discount auction, for a reserve price that Erica could almost afford. One of the richer remaining members of the SLA put up the rest of the money and found a proxy buyer to close the sale. Milagros was soon freed—but they’d had to spend another full year in hiding, together, before Erica’s family lawyer managed to convince a court to drop the terrorism charges in exchange for turning herself in, pleading guilty to a lesser charge of vandalism, and paying a fine. “And here we are, right where we started—the campus science department,” finished Milagros. “And soon, I’ll become Dr. María de los Milagros de Ulloa y de la Torre-Giralt-Muller, partially after the Spanish explorer who discovered Ulloa’s ring, but mostly because I’m amused by the idea of some pompous dean having to read all of that out loud at the graduation ceremony.”

Objectively, I found this last fact hilarious, but in reality, I barely heard it. Because at some point in the last hour, I had realized I wasn’t angry anymore. Not at Louisa, anyway. Maybe it was her genuine panic near the telescope when it looked like we were in trouble, grabbing my arm without a thought. Maybe it was my guilt over the fact that the biggest asshole I knew was now terrorizing her with literal death threats, which I blamed myself for—and which wasn’t totally off, given that Corey apparently held me personally responsible for ruining his life, instead of just, you know, looking in the fucking mirror. Maybe it was that even if I technically hadn’t lied to her, it didn’t fucking matter because she still felt betrayed. Or maybe it was the fact Iknewshe hadn’t reported me to her father and never would. I’d known it the whole goddamn time, really. But like the stupid, stubborn, arrogant motherfucker I was—as stupid as I’d been at fifteen—Istillcouldn’t apologize. Couldn’t admit I was wrong.

Because if I was wrong, I didn’t have shit. The only thing that had ever made me special—the only thing that had ever made my sad, pathetic life worth a damn, in my own eyes or anyone else’s—was beingright. Was being smarter and cleverer and wittier andbetterthan everyone else, even if they never acknowledged it. My childhood had taught me that, and my teen years with the old professor had cemented it.

Although now, I was kind ofgladto be wrong. About Louisa’s betrayal, anyway. But only that.

Anyway, much as I enjoyed being in a car, the idea of actually walking somewhere had me even more captivated. Since I’d arrived, my only trips out had been shopping with the housekeeper, to vast retail parks full of big-box stores and fast-food chains, only making me long for the compact, narrow streets of European cities. There, being sent on solo errands meant stealing time to explore the city. Here, it seemed like you had to drive for twenty minutes to get anywhere, and even then it was nowhere worth seeing—except for the mountains, but they never seemed to move any closer.This, however, could pass for a proper city, with its narrow sidewalks and bicycle lanes connecting artisan bakeries and art galleries.

But I didn’t have the wherewithal to care. I was too busy figuring out how to stop the girl in front of me—whose hair and eyes had turned a misty rose, reflecting and refracting the low sun in the shop windows—from drifting out of my reach for good. It wasn’t helping that she jerked away every time I came near. Society not allowing me to touch her was bad enough.Hernot allowing me to touch her was an infinitely more painful kind of torture.

Even worse, here Milagros was bouncing along beside us, joyfully emphasizing that sometimes it works out, with no way of knowing that I’d already made such a mess of everything that she might as well have added,except not for you, you irredeemable fuckup.

“Do you speak Spanish?” Milagros asked me as she led us up the walk to a one-story white adobe house set on a quiet side street, the landscaping in its front yard a curated riot of cactuses and palms and a wrought-iron iguana.

“I’m still learning it,” I finally said, like it was embarrassing to speak only four languages instead of five.

“Miracles,” chimed Louisa suddenly, just loud enough for me to hear.

I turned away, pretending to be fascinated with the fishtail cactuses by the steps.

“Your name means ‘miracles,’” she added as Milagros opened the door.

HER

The deceptively large house felt like a living, breathing organism, dense with lush and growing things. Pots hung from every conceivable space on the ceiling, bursting over with stringy vines of all shapes. Umbrella and bird-of-paradise trees curled up from urns on the floor, competing for space with jumbled Southwestern art and towering bookshelves. The airy, sunny indoors flowed into the outdoors, with swings and hammocks among the white upholstered chairs, in whites and tans and other neutrals. The very air felt infused with oxygen.

Out of the corner of my eye, I observed him watching the room out of the corner ofhiseye. Even here, in Erica Muller’s house, probably the safest space for a slave for 200 miles, he still couldn’t drop his armor. After throwing off the denim jacket, he hovered right inside the door, scanning the place like a computer. I knew by now what he was doing—taking in data on everything and everyone, trying to figure out what he was and wasn’t allowed to do. It was a skill he’d had to hone over many hard years. Milagros helpfully took the jacket and opened a bottle of wine, which seemed to help him relax. And fuck, hedeservedto relax. Nobody should have to spend their whole life having to guard against somebody jumping out and punishing them simply for existing.

His gaze, which I wasn’t supposed to be returning, said all of that, and more, and before carefully following Milagros into the kitchen, I looked away, blushing, reminded of our first few encounters when eye contact was a sinful treat to be stolen, squirreled away, and devoured in secret.

“If I were you, I’d need a drink after that,” said Milagros, possibly having noticed that he had also stolen a glance at the impressive wine rack. “It’s before five, so Erica wouldn’t approve,” she said lightly. “But she doesn’t own me.”

I could swear I heard sarcastic laughter from the other room.

“You guys seem to have some kind of weird reciprocal stigmata going,” Milagros said, looking back and forth to the similar puncture wounds on our hands, which had almost stopped bleeding at this point. “I don’t know if it’s a religious thing, a sex thing, or what. I won’t pry. By the way, I hope you don’t mind Spanish white.”

“Verdejo?”he asked.

“Sí.”

Really? For someone who claimed not to speak Spanish, he seemed to be doing okay. His eyes were also now popping over the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, especially Milagros’ collection of astronomy books. Then I followed his gaze to the piano. Was I dreaming? Was this really going to happen right now?

“It’s been a while, but may I?” he asked, all scrupulously polite as if he still expected to get his hand slapped, even here.

“Mi casa es tu casa,”said Milagros.

“Gracias.”

Milagros was looking at him skeptically now.

“What?” he said. “I said I was learning Spanish. I learn fast.” He put his glass down, sat on the bench, and in an instant, had a gorgeous-sounding jazz arpeggio pouring out of the keys. “Sorry, I’m kind of rusty,” he explained over his shoulder.

“They say science and music use the same part of the brain,” remarked Milagros idly as he kept playing, a clever, complicated jazz arrangement that I, miraculously, recognized.

And that was because it was “Stardust.” One of the tracks he’d played for me during that mostly futile but desperately cute jazz appreciation crash course he’d put me through, without ever mentioning thathecould play just as well as anyone we’d listened to. For a second, I stood there with my mouth open. What the fuck? Where? How? And what would I have to do, who would I have to pray to, what would I have to sacrifice, to be able to stay here forever, listening to him play that over and over again? Because if I could, I was pretty sure nothing would ever be wrong again.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” I asked Milagros after she jolted me back down to earth to accept a glass of wine in my awkwardly bandaged-up hand. “How was it? After you were together, I mean.”

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