So Close to You (So Close to You - Trilogy) (22 page)

He lifts my chin and looks into my eyes, and I feel my pulse pick up. “I don’t think you have a concussion. But you’ll probably have a headache tomorrow.”

I scrunch my nose. “Just what I need.”

His lips curve slightly. It makes him look younger. “How old are you?” I ask, curious.

“Seventeen.” He lets go of my face and steps back. The moon is so much brighter out here than it was in the forest, and I watch as he folds up the dirty cloth and tucks it into the pocket of his black pants.

“That’s how old I am. When’s your birthday?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Why do you want to know?”

I open my mouth, surprised when the truth tumbles out. “My best friend has this thing about people’s signs.”

This time his lips curve up even more. I can see the hint of a dimple in his right cheek.

“The beginning of August,” he answers.

“That means you’re a … Leo. Right?”

The softness vanishes from his face, and I wonder what kind of nerve I just struck. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Leos are strong and independent.” My voice is quiet. He stares down at me as he leans against the open door of the jeep. “And loyal and protective.”

“Do you believe in that stuff?”

I shrug and laugh a little. “I make fun of Hannah mercilessly, but sometimes I think there’s a little bit of truth in it.”

“Hannah. She’s your best friend?”

I nod and bite my lip. He follows the movement. “You miss her.”

It’s more of a statement than a question, but I answer him anyway. “Yes, a lot.” Tears start to form behind my eyes and I blink rapidly, feeling like an idiot.

Wes, of course, misses none of this. “If you’re sad, and have people you love at home to go back to, then why do you insist on staying here?” The question isn’t hostile—he genuinely sounds like he doesn’t understand.

But for me it brings back all the unanswered questions and all the secrets. I swing my legs around to face him. “You can’t ask me questions like that. Not when you’ve been keeping so many secrets from me. You say it’s to protect me, so I haven’t pushed you very hard for answers. But I can’t keep being in the dark. You
need
to tell me what’s going on. Starting with who you are.”

His face goes blank. “You need to tell me why you want to save Dean.”

I lift my hands. “Isn’t it obvious?”

He doesn’t answer.

“He’s my
family
, Wes. If I can save Dean then I can give my grandfather his life back. I can make sure Mary doesn’t lose her brother, or that the Bentleys don’t lose a son. Can’t you see that?”

The mask covering his features cracks a little, and I see the naked vulnerability in his eyes again. I realize then that he
doesn’t
see, but that he wants to.

“Wes.” I lean forward. “Please tell me who you are and what your role in the Montauk Project is.”

“I don’t want to put you at risk. If you know too much …”

I reach out, placing my hand on the bare skin of his wrist. He looks down at the soft pressure, then back at me, his jaw clenched. I realize it’s the first time
I’ve
touched
him
, at least when we weren’t running for our lives. I’m surprised by how much it seems to affect him.

“Don’t you think I already know too much anyway?” I say it lightly, but he obviously doesn’t take it that way. His hand is rigid under mine.

“Lydia, you don’t understand what they’re capable of. You don’t understand what they would do to you if you got caught in the Facility.”

I think of the screaming noises and of the room full of children.

The room of children. Wes. I sit up straighter and my hand falls away from his. The pieces come together in my head, and I gaze at Wes with a mixture of sympathy and horror.

“Are you …?” I can’t even finish the sentence. “Were you …?”

He turns away from me fully, looking out at the water.

“Wes …”

“I was born in nineteen seventy-three in New York City.” His voice is lower than I’ve ever heard it. “It was nineteen eighty-four when I was … taken. I was eleven or so, running with this gang of kids, living in an abandoned subway station uptown. I was walking down the street one day when someone grabbed me, threw me into a van, and knocked me out. I didn’t see his face. I woke up in Hero. And then the training started. If you can call it that.”

“What happened to you?” I force myself to ask the question, afraid of what he’ll tell me.

“I was
reconditioned
, or that’s what they called it. Beaten. Brainwashed. They use children because they can travel more easily. After adolescence, usually older than eighteen or nineteen, someone is more prone to going crazy, to getting hurt. Especially if it’s his first trip through time. Children seem mostly unaffected. And children are more easily controlled.”

I close my eyes, picturing everything he’s not telling me. What it was really like for him, the hell of living through the Montauk Project. “God, Wes.”

Then I remember those “after” photos, with the men either lost in time or lost in their own minds. “Is that why the subjects in this time period can’t travel?”

Wes nods. “The TM is still unpredictable in nineteen forty-four, and they can screw with dates and times. But yes, the reason those soldiers are going crazy is because they’re not young enough for their bodies and minds to handle the pressure.”

Something occurs to me and I grip my knees with both hands. “You said you were born in nineteen seventy-three. Shouldn’t you be”—I do the math in my head—“thirty-nine?”

“I’m seventeen.” He sounds amused. “For you, it’s the year twenty twelve. For me, it’s earlier. I would need to go back to nineteen ninety to be a part of the normal time line again.”

“So because we’re younger, we can travel without a problem.” I press my hand to my forehead. “But if Dean goes in …”

He watches me silently.

“… he won’t make it. Don’t you see why I have to help him then?” My voice sounds unnaturally high.

Wes’s shoulders tense.

“He’s going to get sucked up by the Montauk Project just like you are.”

“Then he’s already dead, Lydia.” The words sound as if they’re ripped from his throat. “Anyone who knows about the Project dies the moment they’re not useful anymore. Sometimes before.”

I look at him in shock. “How are you useful for the Project?” I breathe.

He tears his gaze away from me, staring down at the sand under his feet. “I’m a recruit. We travel to different periods to find information or to subtly change a moment in history.”

“But you were so angry with me because of the butterfly effect!”

“
Subtle
changes in history, Lydia. The scientists calculate the odds of unintended changes and the recruits perform the missions.”

I try not to think of what it was like in the TM. “You’re constantly traveling in that machine. How have you been doing that for six years?”

He runs his hand over his jaw, a gesture I’m starting to recognize. “You get used to it.”

He rests his hand on the door of the jeep. It’s almost as bright as day out here with the moon reflecting on the water.

“How many times have you seen the world change?” I ask quietly. “How many different versions of time have you lived through?”

His eyes go black. “Too many.” He turns away from me until he’s facing the ocean. His profile looks cut from stone.

“Why do you stay, Wes? If it were me, I would run.”

“No, you wouldn’t. They’d find you. They always find you.” He refuses to raise his eyes; his fists are tight against his sides. I reach out to him, then drop my hand, not sure how he’ll respond to my touch.

“It doesn’t matter anyway.” His voice is blank, emotionless. “Pretty soon I’ll be too old to travel, and then I’ll be useless.”

I breathe in sharply. “Are you saying they’ll kill you?”

He doesn’t answer.

“You can’t just give up. You
can’t
.” I lean forward. “Giving up is the same as dying, isn’t it?”

He finally lifts his gaze to mine. “There’s not a lot of hope in my world, Lydia. That’s why I need to keep you away from it.”

“Wes,” I whisper.

He slowly bends down until our faces are only inches apart. I feel my cheeks burn as I stare at the full curve of his bottom lip. “I don’t want you to give up,” I whisper, realizing, as I say them, that the words are true.

His eyes flicker to my mouth. I press my hands onto my knees. His lips are almost on mine—

We’re interrupted by a shout: “Who’s there?”

We pull apart. There’s a shadowy figure standing on a dune not far from the truck.

“Move back,” Wes says softly. I swing my legs into the cab and he shuts the passenger door. A man is coming down the sand toward us. As he gets closer, I see that he’s wearing rough fisherman clothing, with a blue Coast Guard cap on his head—he’s a civilian volunteer, a member of the home guard.

“It’s all right, I’m a soldier at the base,” Wes says.

“What’s your division?” The man approaches the truck. He shines the flashlight into my face, and I shrink away from the light.

“Hmm.” He gives Wes a different kind of look.

“We would appreciate if you didn’t say anything,” Wes replies. “Her parents …”

The man cocks his head at us. I hold my breath. Finally he laughs. “I remember what it was like to be young. You kids better get on out of here now.”

Wes nods. “Appreciate it.” He gets into the truck and starts the engine. We drive through the sand until we reach the old highway.

We don’t speak again until Wes parks on the Bentleys’ road, a few feet from their driveway. He sits back against his seat and looks at me. I stare straight ahead, trying to organize my thoughts.

I almost kissed Wes. I
wanted
to kiss Wes. But there’s no future for us. His life is chaos and torture and time travel. Once I leave here, I’ll probably never see him again.

“You’re a recruit.” I break the silence, trying to sound businesslike and brisk. “Which means you should have tried to kill me when I stumbled into the time machine. Why didn’t you?”

“I—” His fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “You went back in time by mistake. Once I knew you were in nineteen forty-four, I had to get you out. Like I said, you being here could change things.”

I bite my lip. There must be something he’s not telling me.

“So I’m just a job to you. Another mission?” He doesn’t answer. “Is the Montauk Project expecting you to bring me back to twenty twelve?” A dark thought flashes through my mind and I say it out loud. “Are you going to kill me the minute I get back to the future?”

“No.” Wes sounds offended, and his gaze cuts into mine.

“But if I’m a mission, then they must want you to kill me at some point.” I shrink away from him slightly.

He sees the movement and his eyes narrow. “I’m not going to kill you, Lydia. I snuck you into Camp Hero. If they had found either of us, we’d both be dead.”

I look at him, surprised. “Why would they kill you? I thought I was the only one in danger.”

“I’m not … supposed to be here either.” His voice is flat, and he rubs his jaw again.

“I thought this was a mission. I thought they knew you were here.”

He faces the front of the jeep, and I wonder if he’s avoiding my gaze. “The scientists in nineteen forty-four don’t know about the recruits. We never travel back to this time period. I’ve been sneaking around, just like you have.”

“But—” I wave my hand up and down, indicating his clothes and his short hair. “You have uniforms. You cut your hair. Where have you been sleeping?”

He smiles slightly. “I’ve been posing as a soldier at Camp Hero. Blending in as much as possible.”

“I don’t understand.” I tilt my head back against the seat. Outside I can hear the crickets chirping, and the long, high call of a bird. It must be getting close to morning. “You said you were always traveling through time. Why don’t they send you to nineteen forty-four?”