Page 71 of Requiem

Never.

She sounds winded when she says my name. “Theo—”

I slam her back against the wall, taking her face in my hands. Pinning her, I bring my mouth down on hers, crushing her lips with my own. She tastes like summer, and strawberries, and lime. The wet heat of her mouth makes my head fucking spin. Sweeping my tongue past her lips, she opens to me, letting me inside, and I can’t stop the possessive growl that climbs the back of my throat. She kisses me back, her tongue stroking mine, her breath fanning my face with short, sharp, frantic bursts of air as she winds her arms around my neck. Her heart slams in her chest, her pulse charging just beneath her skin as she curves herself into me, and my brain short fucking circuits.

Holy.

Fucking.

Shit.

I have to have her.

I need her more than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire life.

I’ll fuckingdiewithout her.

Ripping her mouth away from mine, she looks up at me, lips swollen, her pupils blown, and for once the vibrant jade coloring of her left eye and the ocean blue of her right is swallowed by bottomless black. She looks so turned around that I want to scoop her into my arms and hold her to me and protect her for fucking ever.

“Is it just me?” she whispers breathlessly, “or have we been waiting for this moment for a very long time?”

I run my fingers over her lips, possessive, fascinated by the intensity of this pull in my gut. “I’ve been so fuckingblind,” I answer.

“This feels like coming home,” she pants.

“You are home.Myhome. Fuck.”

“Gross! Merchant and Voss are eating each other,” a female voice cat-calls. Nasty tone. Spiteful. Beth, naturally. She was always the most dominant member of Sorrell, Ashley and Beth’s little friend group. She worked hard to be the prettiest, the funniest, the cleverest, the most popular with the boys. Voss never tried at all. Ever since Sorrell came back from New York, Beth’s been a total cunt to her. She’s even more threatened by her now, because Vossstillisn’t trying, and she is everything that Beth will never be.

I study the lines of Sorrell’s face—a face I know so well, and yet it feels like I’m seeing it for the very first time, with new eyes. The smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Her dark brows. Her pouty, full lips, the top slightly fuller than the bottom. Her canines have always been a little pointier than most. It’s a silly, unimportant little detail about her that most people wouldn’t notice, but alongside those remarkable eyes of hers, the combination does make her look a little wolfish. I used to tease her about her feral appearance, but I would never dream of teasing her for it now. She looks fierce. Defiant. Unique and incredible. She’s stolen my fucking breath away.

She blushes, turning her face into my hand, attempting to hide from me inside my own palm. “Do not look at me like you’re already in love with me, Theo Merchant. My heart can’t take you looking at me like that yet.” She shakes her head, digging a knuckle into my ribs, as if we’re still just friends. Like the world isn’t a whole new plane of existence now. “I need some time to prepare before I can handle you looking at me like that.”

I pepper her forehead, and her temples, and her cheekbones with slow, lazy feather-light kisses. “All right. Fine. I’ll stop. But let me know when you’re ready for it, Voss. ’Cause I’m so gonna be waiting.”

21

SORRELL

I’ve never had reoccurringnightmares until now.

They’re waking nightmares, vivid in detail and merciless in their persistence. For ten days straight, I stir from my sleep, exhausted even though I sleep like the dead. And then there is Theo, waiting for me. He says nothing. Grim-faced and pale as Death himself, he escorts me from my floor to class, to the next class, to the dining hall. At lunch, he sits opposite me, eating his food in silence, eyes cast down at his meal in front of him.

He becomes my dark-haired prince of déjà vu. Slowly, Iknowthings about him. Perhaps I’ve always known these small details that present themselves to me, but each one feels like some kind of colossal revelation. The tiny scar on his right pinkie knuckle, from when I snapped one of the wheels off his GI Joe truck and he punched the doorjamb when we were eight. The quirky little cowlick above his right temple that makes his hair stick up at a weird angle when he doesn’t tuck it behind his ear. The mole at the base of his neck that I still haven’t seen properly, hidden behind his hair. The way he taps the end of his pencil between his teeth when he’s thinking about something. The four-leaf clover tattoo on his right arm, in memory of his grandfather, who…whodied…

Oh god.

When I think about this tattoo, a wave of emotion slams into me, a deep, pervasive melancholy, and I know that it didn’t just destroy Theo when his grandfather passed. It destroyedme, too. I knew his grandfather. Loved him. I mourned him when he passed.

After another discussion with Principal Ford, I agreed to stay here at Toussaint to see if any of my memories return to me, and little by little, painfully slowly, the plan seems to be working. That doesn’t mean that I’m happy to be stuck here, in this dusty old boarding school. I am a ghost, walking the hallways, feeling disconnected from my body in a way I can’t describe. It isn’t as if the other students can’t see me. I’m not invisible. But some of them see me in a way that I will never be able to see myself, becausetheyactually know me, and I do not. Such an unsettling thought.

On day eleven of my self-imposed incarceration at Toussaint, I finally look up at Theo and ask him a question; I just can’t go on wondering any more. “Did you take my virginity?”

Theo spits out a mouthful of tomato soup.

On the end of the table, Lani, who’s been gradually creeping closer to us over the past week, determined to come and sit with us but chased away by her brother at every turn, nearly knocks over her can of Diet Coke. She catches it in the nick of time and sets it right. “Jesus,” she hisses. “I donotwanna be around for this conversation.”

Theo wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “You shouldn’t be eavesdropping on our conversations anyway.”

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