Page 45 of Never Bound

“Oh,” she said softly. “Well, if you don’t want to think about it, I’ll just think about itforyou.”

“I appreciate that. But how long is it going to take to start your residency, anyway?” I was trying not to sound dismissive, but I saw her deflate anyway.

Shit.

“Ten years?” she said sadly, though the question mark was really just to soften the blow.

It sounded like a prison sentence, and in a way it was. My whole life was. One that personally—though no doubt I’d done a lot wrong—I didn’t think I deserved. “You really think your dad’s going to keep me around that long?”

“If he doesn’t, I’ll find you,” she said. “Wherever you are. Whatever they ask. I’ll find a way.”

I paused, took a deep breath. “Lou, I’m going to ask you something, and please don’t get upset. You know it costs money to buy someone’s freedom, right? A tax equal to their last sale price. And that’s ontopof what you pay to buy them.”

“I know.”

“And how much do residents make at first?”

She sighed. “Honestly? Not much. Plus, loan payments.”

“And do you know how much your dad paid for me?”

She closed her eyes. “Do you?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes,” I said after a moment. “We aren’t supposed to know, not in a private sale. But there’s always a way to find out. And it’s—”

“Don’t tell me,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to know. Not only because I couldn’t afford it, but because … well.”

“My worth is incalculable?” I teased.

“Let’s put it that way.”

I had one long curl of her hair entwined in my fingers now, like one of the living vines that grew up and down the walls, lush and vibrant under my touch. “You’re so young.”

Of course, she could have pointed out that I was young, too, but we both knew I was talking in terms of experience. And in those terms, I had about a lifetime on her.

And in that lifetime, as someone had helpfully pointed out, I’d already been lucky once.

“Look, Erica and Milagros beat the odds,” I reminded her. “What about the ones you don’t hear about? The ones lost to history? The ones with ruined lives and futures, the ones whose bones are at the bottom of mineshafts? Sure, Erica could help find Maeve and maybe even prove that she was freed, but then what about us? What happens after? Are we just going to go on like this? I hate to break it to you, Lou, but this”—I waved my hand, gesturing to the walled garden, the temporary Eden in which we now lay peacefully in repose—“this isn’t what we’re going back to. This isn’t real. This isn’t ours. It’s not our cat or our piano or our pool. We don’t have a pool. Well, you do. I just skim the bugs out of it.”

“But wecouldhave one someday,” she said softly. “AndI’llskim the bugs.”

“That’s very sweet, but it’s not really the point. Look, I told you I’m going back to be with you for as long as I can. I made up my mind about that. But let’s face the facts here. We kind of suck at this,” I said with a rueful laugh. “Like half the people in your house already know, and more than a few outside of it, and it hasn’t even been a month. How long do you think it’s going to take your dad to figure it out?”

I hated how defeated she must have looked, but this was a kindness, I told myself. If she had to hear it, she might as well hear it now.

“And even if we get past that, at some point in the next ten years—hell, the nextoneyear, there’s a good chance I’ll be on the run, in a mine, or dead, and even if I’m not, I’ll still be a slavesomewhere, watching you waste the best years of your life waiting for me. Waiting for a ghost because that’s all I’m going to be to you by then. Do you understand? It’s the same reason you can’t come with me. I can’t do that to you,” I said, swallowing hard, “and I won’t.”

“We said we were a team,” she said in the smallest, quietest voice I’d ever heard.

“To be a team, you need goals, Lou. You need thechanceto set goals. To plan a future. And I don’t have a future. You do. That’s the difference.”

She shook her head, blinking away tears again.

“In ten years, you’ll be traveling the world, finding cures for exotic diseases, saving sick babies in far-flung villages, and meeting smart and amazing people you never even knew existed. Your people. People who can give you the beautiful life you deserve. Who can give you everything I can’t.”

“Fucking hell. You really are stupid.”

I froze.

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