Page 55 of Never Bound

She paused long enough that I was pretty well convinced she was gone. “Well, I’m sorry,” she finally huffed in an old, familiar tone. “But that’s how I feel, and if I want to say it, I will. You don’t get to tell me what I can say, or what I can feel, or what I can believe.” She took a deep breath. “I love you. I love you, okay? And I don’t want to hear another word out of you about it.”

And amazingly, I laughed. “Well, shit. Of all the things to act like a spoiled princess about. You really aren’t making this easy for yourself, you know.”

“Hey,” she went on, softer now, “when have you and I ever been about easy? Anyway, the truth is … I’ve never said it before, either,” she added. “To a boy.”

In my mind’s eye, I could see her blushing.

“You’ve never said it either, have you?” she asked. “To anyone.”

“No,” I admitted.

“Have you felt it?”

I closed my eyes. “I think so,” I said with finality. “But I’m not exactly an expert on this kind of thing.”

“Well, I’m not either, you know.”

“I’ll—I’ll figure it out,” I said quickly, suddenly realizing I might have just fucked up absolutely everything. She mightleave. My only hope was that she could read between the lines of what I was saying—even if what I was saying wasn’tit. “Just give me some time.” I sat up and scrambled against the chain to get closer to the door as if I could somehow reach out and touch her—as if that weren’t the very thing throwing me in here was meant to prevent me from doing. “I promise. Just, um, don’t leave right now,” I pleaded.Or ever.“Yeah?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She said it without a pause. Like it had never even crossed her mind. I exhaled and collapsed back down onto the concrete.

“And,” she continued, “it’s okay if you’re not ready to say it. Because … because you will.”

And God, if her beautiful face were minted on a gold coin, this would be the other side of it—why she wasn’t justaprincess, she wasmyprincess.

And why I felt such relief, I would never know because as soon as she got word that her father was coming downstairs, shewasgoing to have to go.

And then, eventually, so was I.

I leaned closer to the door, barely breathing. “Listen, remember back at Erica’s? That conversation we had in the kitchen, when I asked you why you were there?”

“I remember.”

“I knew I’d done nothing,nothingto deserve you there—for fuck’s sake, I’m too much of a selfish, cowardly asshole to even choke out three little words—and yet, despite it all, you were there. And I just … I doubted that I, a faithless man in a faithless world, could possibly have the love of someone with so much goddamnfaith.”

“Well?” she breathed, soft as a whisper. “Do you still doubt it?”

I shook my head slowly, forehead resting against the metal shelf, and whispered it like a prayer. “No.”

My fingers dug into the shelf like it was the only thing holding me up. “Look, maybe ... I don’t believe in souls. You know that. But I know you do, so if I’ve got one—if there’s some piece of me that still exists on the other side of all this, of whatever I end up—then it’s yours,mäi léift.And maybe ... maybe in some better world, one where I’m not shackled and you’re not dragging around the weight of the privilege you didn’t ask for and every goddamn person you couldn’t help, maybe we get to find each other again. Not as what we are now. But as what we were supposed to be.”

She hiccupped her next words, and I knew what that meant. Hell, I couldseeit—her face crumpling, her shoulders shaking, trying to stay quiet and loudly, exquisitely failing, like always. And I could never do the one goddamn job that mattered—

“I have an idea. Put your hand by the bottom of the door.”

I obeyed instantly. The length of the chain was just enough. If I stretched out my good arm as far as it would go, trailing the bad one behind it, I could fit the rough tips of my fingers just beyond the surface of the door. And I was rewarded by warm, delicate, manicured nail tips against my own. It wasn’t anything, really. But it was so much more than I ever, in all my years—exposed, boiling, freezing, starving, bleeding, chained, caged in dirt and mud and piss-filled holes—thought I would have, or ever deserve. I still didn’t deserve it, or even understand it, but what I’d said was true: I didn’t doubt it. Not anymore. I knew she would stay until the very end of the line, and that I would stop being so fucking noble and let her. Until the other side of the door was quiet, until one or both of us fell asleep on the concrete floor, or the housekeeper gave her the sign, whatever happened first.

She was quiet already. Could she already be lying there asleep, the tears on her cheeks frozen where they’d fallen? Could this be—

And then came a sudden, sharp, staccato giggle.

“What’s so funny?”

“Here we are, talking without seeing each other’s faces,” she said. “Just like the first time.”

16

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