All Our Yesterdays (27 page)

“Why were you scared of me?” I whisper.

He doesn’t look at me. The streetlamps fly past outside the window, outlining his silhouette in orange and then plunging it into blackness again. The pulse mimics the beat of my heart.

“Don’t make me tell you now,” he says. “Not like this.”

Hope balloons up inside of me until I could be floating, but I pop it and come back down to earth. I know how that conversation will go. He’ll look at me and say,
I love you, Marina. Like the sister I never had. I was scared to tell you, because the people I love tend to go away.
And I will try to smile and tell him I love him, too, like a brother, and then I’ll cry myself to pieces and never, ever tell him the truth. I can already feel the pain of it, the hot burn of misery somewhere behind my eyes.

But, oh God, what if I’m wrong? What if my crazy, racing heart is right?

James reaches for my hand. “Just don’t leave me, okay, kid? Please don’t ever leave me.”

I squeeze his fingers. “Never. You’re stuck with me, Shaw.”

I think he tries to smile. “I’ll hold you to that, Marchetti.”

Twenty-Four

Em

I stare at the dashboard for at least an hour as Finn drives, following the speeding lights of the BMW. I’ve been turning the dilemma over and over in my mind, examining it from all angles and probing it for a weakness, but it’s impenetrable.

“It’s over,” I finally say. “Now that he knows, he won’t let Marina or Finn leave his side, and the doctor will send someone back tomorrow to hunt us down, if time doesn’t erase us first. We’re done.”

“Probably.”

I look down at the gun in my lap. I don’t know why I haven’t put it away yet. I touch it with one fingertip. “Even if we manage to get him alone again, I don’t know if I could do it. I’ve had three chances now, and I’ve failed every time.”

“Three?”

I look up, realizing what I’ve said.
Stupid.
I glance at Finn and the angry red bruise rising on his jaw. “There was . . . while you were asleep in the car at your house. I watched Marina and James through a window.”

“Together?”

“They were just sleeping,” I say softly.

Without a word, Finn jerks the wheel violently. We veer off the highway and down a small exit ramp.

“What are you doing?” I yelp. “We’re going to lose them!”

“I don’t care. You said yourself we’ve as good as failed already.”

He drives us into the parking lot of a gas station and gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him. The sound reverberates through my body, like he screamed without ever opening his mouth. He disappears inside the garishly lit station, and I sit frozen in the car, shame pressing me into my seat, making me feel small.

He’s gone a long time. At first I try to keep track, counting the seconds in my head and watching the windows for his fair head. But eventually I give up. I rub my hands across my arms to keep off the chill creeping in through the broken window we taped up with a trash bag.

When he finally comes back to the car, at least a half hour later, he’s clutching two cups of coffee and has a plastic bag dangling from one wrist. He opens the door and slides back behind the wheel.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he says. “But please don’t talk to me yet.”

I swallow and nod.

He hands me a cup, which is deliciously warm in my hands, and dumps the contents of the bag. Two turkey sandwiches, potato chips, and a package of Oreos. God, how many times did I dream about Oreos in that cell? How many times did I tell Finn that the biggest regret of my life was not eating more of them when I could, because I’d been stupid enough to worry about the sugar and fat? My eyes suddenly burn. I lift the coffee cup to my mouth and use the movement to cover my brushing away tears.

“You’re still in love with him,” Finn finally says, calmly. I wish he would yell at me or shake me. It would be easier to take than him sounding so weary. So
sad
.

“Finn—”

“I knew it,” he says. “I should have always known it, and maybe I did, but when I saw you with him in that hotel room, the way you held on to him . . .” He traces his fingers across the thin scar on the back of his right hand, a nervous habit. He got it while changing a flat somewhere in South Carolina. It would’ve healed properly if he’d gone to a doctor to get it stitched up, but he didn’t want to slow us down. “I know loving someone doesn’t ever completely go away, but it’s hard for me. I see the way Marina is with him, and it
still
tears me up inside. I can’t take it from you, too. I can’t always be the consolation prize for you, Em. I just—I love you too much.”

I’m a fish on dry land, gawping and gasping.

“I know you care about me or whatever,” he continues, “but if you’re still in love with James, I need to know. I deserve that much.”

“Finn—” I say, reaching for him.

I don’t get to finish the sentence. The pulling starts behind my navel, and I’m overwhelmed by terror. Not this again. I don’t want to relive another moment. But I have no choice; I’m swept up by the tide and thrown back with such force that the world blurs around me.

I open my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them. I’m sitting on the back porch of the house in West Virginia, looking out over the mountains in the distance, which are black silhouettes against the slate-gray sky. Everyone else is inside, arguing around the dining room table. Again.

The door behind me slides open, but I don’t bother turning around. I know, maybe from the way the air around me changes, who it is. Finn sits down on the steps next to me.

“You okay?”

I nod. “Just needed a break from all the screaming.”

“No kidding.”

“Have they decided when to go public yet?”

“Maybe in another few hours.”

I glance back at the group around the table, Jonas at the head. We met Jonas a few months ago when the three of us were being smuggled across state lines by the same trucker, and we’ve been with him ever since. He was a demolitions expert the FBI brought in to consult on the evidence from the Philadelphia bombings, but he decided he needed to get out of Pennsylvania when he discovered military-grade explosives deep in the crater at the Sunoco refinery. With what we knew plus what he knew, we began to piece together what’s really been happening in the country these past three years. The bombings, the mysterious deaths, the sudden about-faces by politicians and military leaders: they all lead back to Cassandra.

Then we met Rina, and Sahid, and a handful of others. Rina owns this house deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, miles from the nearest neighbor, and we’ve been here for weeks, digging into the SIA and pooling our information. There’s a faction of the government responsible for what’s happening, and we think we can prove it.

If we could only agree on how.

“Do you think it’ll make any difference?” I say. “Going public with what we know?”

“Probably not,” Finn says, “but we’ve got to try.”

“I don’t understand why he’d want this.” I lean my head against a post. “He wanted to make things
better
. Does he really think bombs and checkpoints and mass arrests are better?”

“I’m not sure we’ll ever understand.” I see him studying me. “You look tired.”

“I am.” I rub my dry eyes. “I haven’t slept in two days. For such a little woman, Jocelyn snores like you wouldn’t
believe
.”

He grins and wiggles his eyebrows at me. “You can always come share my bed.”

I roll my eyes and push his shoulder, but it’s not like we’ve never done it. There was the first truck that took us out of D.C., hidden behind a pallet of cereal boxes. It was the dead of winter, and we huddled together for warmth during the ten-hour drive south. Then there were a half a dozen gross little motels with only one bed where I took pity on him and didn’t make him sleep on the floor, even when he offered. And the last time, when we were crashing with a friend of Rina’s and ended up sharing the pullout, I woke up in the middle of the night with Finn’s arm slung around my waist and his lips grazing the back of my neck, and I didn’t move. Just stared into the darkness, pulse racing, hoping he wouldn’t wake up.

“You’ll probably snore worse,” I say.

“Probably. You want to switch beds? Jocelyn won’t bother me.”

I shake my head, and the ends of my new, shorter hair brush my cheek. I do it again.

“Feel weird?” he asks.

“Yeah. I can’t believe I did it.” I was looking in the mirror yesterday morning and suddenly couldn’t stand the sight of myself, so unchanged on the outside when I felt so different on the inside. I found the shears behind the bathroom mirror and began to hack, feeling oddly satisfied as the hair pooled in the sink and at my feet, discarded remnants of my old life. “I must look kind of crazy.”

Finn touches the edge of my hair, rubbing the strands between his thumb and forefinger. “I like it. It suits you.”

I feel the warmth of his breath on my face as he says the words. When did he get so close? His knee is touching mine, and his knuckles are brushing my neck as he touches my hair.

“Em?” he says.

I can’t quite meet his gaze. “Yeah?”

“I’m really glad you don’t hate me anymore,” he says,
“’
cause I can’t imagine doing this without you.”

“I never
hated
you.”

His face brightens. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He leans toward me, closing the inches between us, and my mind sort of—stops. All I can think is Finn Abbott is about to kiss me. And I’m about to
let
him.

A sharp crack rips through the air. Finn and I whip our heads toward the house and see bodies dressed in black pouring in through the front door, which hangs awkwardly on its hinges, the jam splintered. They raise guns and shout.

“FBI!”

“Oh God,” I say, feeling every ounce of strength seep out of me. “He’s found us.”

Finn pulls me, limp and unresisting, to my feet and pushes me down the porch steps. “Run! Get out of here!”

“Come with me!” I say. Inside, the SWAT team is forcing our friends to their knees and sweeping the rest of the house. They’ll be on us in seconds.

“Go!” Finn hisses. He walks back into the house, his hands held up in surrender, to give me precious seconds to get away.

I turn and run blindly for the woods. I make it less than twenty feet before a hand reaches out of the darkness and grabs me. The house is surrounded; I never had a chance. My captor yanks my hands behind my back and cuffs them, and he drags me, slipping and stumbling, toward the front yard. Finn, Jonas, and the others are kneeling in the mud, and Finn winces when he sees me. One of the officers hauls him to his feet.

“What are you doing?” I say. “Where are you taking him?”

“Em, it’s okay!” he says.

“Finn!”

They drag him into the darkness, away from the rest of us.

“Finn!” I scream. There are heavy hands on my shoulders, and I struggle against them.

“Em, wake up!” Finn yells as they drag him away. I see his lips moving, but the words make no sense. The hands shake me.

“No,” I sob. “Stop!”

Finn is shoved into the back of a van, and he’s gone, but I still hear his voice. “Em, it’s okay! Open your eyes.”

I blink. The hands on me are gentle and warm. I blink again, and this time the mud and the mountains dissolve. I realize I’m inside the Honda, safe, four years in the past. Finn is hovering over me, one hand on my face, his eyes wide.

“Hey,” he says softly. “You back?”

“Yeah.” I sit up shakily. My tongue is dry and tacky, so I reach for my coffee cup, but it’s gone stone cold.

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Finn says. He sits back and pushes a shaking hand through his hair. “You were gone a long time. I thought—”

“It’s okay, I’m here,” I say, putting a hand on his knee. I glance at the clock on the dash. I was out for over half an hour. “Jesus.”

“What did you see?”

The memory rolls over me, so fresh I can still smell the wet grass and automotive fumes. I wrap my arms around Finn’s neck and try to shake the image of him being dragged away from me, dig my fingers into his skin to reassure myself he’s really here.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I love you, Finn, and I hate myself for not saying it until now.”

He seems to have caught my trembling, and he places a sweet, shaky kiss to my lips. “I think I can forgive you.”

I hug him again, holding on to him until our breathing aligns, but the peace it brings me is short lived. My worries creep back in, the way the cold creeps into the car when the heater isn’t blasting. I keep seeing him being dragged away. Me powerless to stop it.

“But . . .” I say.

Finn sighs. “But.”

“I do still have feelings for James,” I say. “It’s too easy to remember the girl I was when I loved him. I don’t know if I can do it. I know I
should
, but so far . . .”