Page 40 of Alphas Like Us
I hover over him again. “Better?”
He nods once, taking another breath. He’s still in a lot pain from multiple fractures. Our eyes latch for a heady moment as a flash strikes theair.
As the night sky rumbles aboveus.
Maximoff stares out in a short second before he looks back at me and says, “That’sus.”
I don’t follow. “Plato talking to youagain?”
He groans, thencoughs.
“Relax,” I tell him, ambulance sirens blaring in the distance. And it’s only when lightning cracks the sky and thunder roars again do I realize what he meant bythat’sus.
Thunder.
Lightning.
My brows rise. “I’m lightning then, and you’re thunder. You always follow me every time Iappear.”
His lips lift in a choked laugh. “You’re right…you will annoy me todeath.”
My chest swells, and I can’t hold back. I lean down and kiss Maximoff, gently, on the lips, and he tries to kiss back and even sit up. But I don’t lethim.
Later.
There will be a later. There has to beone.
7
MAXIMOFF HALE
A heart ratemonitor lets out quietbeep beeps.An IV is hooked in my vein, connected to bags of fluid, and I ended up asking Farrow what the nurse clipped to my finger: a pulseoximeter.
I’ve been dazed for awhile.
Maybe since I was put on a stretcher and wheeled into an ambulance and brought to PhiladelphiaGeneral.
I think about how I’ve been stalked, threatened bodily harm and death. How I’ve crashed my motorcycle dozens of times, back-flipped into ravines, skydived, wiped out on a snowboard, eaten pavement after skateboard tricks, swam in strong ocean currents, and after all these things, all this damn time, I’ve never been afraid to die. And thentonight.
I wasafraid.
I was fuckingterrified.
My mortality, my fragile life, just crashed against me, and I remember that I’m only twenty-two. I remember that I can’t control the direction of anything, and I’m a passenger to the universe—butGod, this ride can’t end for me. Not here, notnow.
I wasn’tready.
I’m notready.
I begged and pleaded to receive one more minute with Farrow. I’d been surrounded by the love of family for twenty-two years, but I didn’t even get a full year with the love of another man, a companion, a soul mate—and maybe I was beingselfish.
Asking for more when I’d been given so muchalready.
But then I thought about how he never had a family that really loved him for him. And I thought, if not for me, don’t do this to him. Don’t guthim.
So I’m not returning this second chance, this extra time. Maybe it’s why I can’t stop staring at himnow.
Then again, my brain has always been obsessed. I’m pretty sure he knows thattoo.
