Page 85 of Torn

Three days of rain, hail, rain hail, rain. Three days of perching by the carnival, wandering the city, hoping to hear a message from her. Any message.

Until he can’t take it anymore.

Until he understands what he had and lost.

Until he’s utterly, terribly, violently in love.

Now he knows what surrender feels like.

He kneels on the roof’s edge and stares at the midnight skyline. This mortal world is a fickle combination of brilliance and obscurity. Some of the city’s edifices cower into shadows, while others bust through the clouds like fists.

From below, urban life makes an unruly racket, dishes smashing and a Ferris wheel bleating. Noise, noise, noise. He tastes the cacophony, smells the confusion, and feels the clench.

Yet it’s a vivid realm, a spectacle of glistening trees and starlight. Spastic whirligigs dash across the sky from the central park’s carnival, fluid strobes turning the whole thing into a kaleidoscope.

Such a vibrant place. Yet it’s the darkest and loneliest one he’s ever known.

Inside an observatory across the street, behind a set of translucent double doors, a solitary neon sign flickers as if it’s been drained of energy. It struggles to keep working, to stay alight.

Just like his heart.

His cursed, infernal, powerless heart.

And standing on the opposite side of that threshold is the reason why. Idling amidst that neon—like a cruel flash of inspiration, like a fully formed idea—isshe.

Pausing by the entrance, she swallows, her throat bobbing. She hasn’t looked through the partition, hasn’t sought him out as she once did. But she knows he’s out here. Somehow, she knows.

Her luminous face won’t glance at him, even though he’s desperate for it, even though he misses her. He misses that outrageous personality, misses the way they used to clash, the way they used to blend.

He misses the way she tore him in half.

Dammit, he wants to drag his finger across the glass doors. He wants to fog the surface and write a message there—an apology, a plea for forgiveness.

And dammit, he wants to answer a question that has plagued him for as long as he’s known her. The question that he’s never been able to face.

Who sees you?

He would answer it now. By the Fates, he would.

But he can’t, because she won’t listen. She won’t hear him, much less believe him. So instead, he wills her to turn in his direction once. Just once more.

If only she would stay right there, right in his view. If only she would keep the neon glowing between them. If only she wouldn’t leave him alone.

Please don’t leave him alone. Not again.

But then, she should. Really, she should.

He’s dangerous to her. She’s threatening to him.

So indeed, she should turn away, save herself. She should leave him, forget about him. And actually, that’s when he realizes: She’s already done that.

In fact, she did that a long time ago.

23

Merry

They’d been torn asunder long ago, before they’d ever met. Back when she was birthed from a star, back when she was discarded, cast off from her origins. Even though his own star had shone so near to hers, he came into being later, never knowing she existed.

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