Timestorm (19 page)

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“I know.” She took a step closer to me. “Grayson said your dad told her everything. How did she take it?”

I had to work hard to keep my voice steady. “Not well.”

“I can imagine.” Holly let out a breath. “How did she take it the first time?”

“The first time…” I picked the stones back up and tossed another at the water, watching it hop twice before vanishing. “She was told things were bad, but they would fight it and fighting it would probably make her very sick. She wasn’t told she was going to die. Today, my dad said those exact words to her and I don’t know how he did it. How can he sit next to her and watch? I must be a self-centered bastard to be out here and not in there.”

“You probably are,” Holly said. “But if you think it’s more noble to head back in there and talk about dying, then that’s what you should do.”

The word “noble” struck a chord in me and I turned quickly to Holly. “That’s it!”

I dropped the rocks back into the grass and walked toward the technology building. Holly had to jog to catch up with me. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m getting some food and water and stuff,” I said, feeling as confident as Courtney had sounded in the woods. “You know, to leave in the field for Dr. Ludwig’s rejects or whatever Blake called them.”

“Right now?”

I shrugged and kept walking, increasing the length of my stride. It felt good to have something important to do. “Yeah, right now.”

“Can I come with you?”

I stopped for a second, turning to Holly to see if she was joking. She wasn’t. I could tell by her expression. “Um … okay. We’ll be able to bring more stuff if there are two of us, right?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “But just so you know, I still hate your guts.”

“You aren’t the first girl to tell me that.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DAY 14. LATE AFTERNOON

Weighed down with supplies, we were fifteen minutes into the woods before I spoke again. “What do you miss most from 2009?”

Only the sound of dried leaves crunching under our boots answered me as Holly shifted the heavy weight of her backpack. I tightened my grip on the straps of my own pack and wished she wouldn’t be pissed off if I offered to carry the load for her.

She looked sideways at me before answering. “I don’t even know where to start. Coffee? Real food besides fish and those disgusting meal bars, jeans that actually fit me? Having more than one bra? My mom…”

I remembered her standing in that hellhole of an apartment that Marshall had given me while I held her at gunpoint, shocked to find out Holly had become part of the CIA and had broken into my place on an Eyewall mission. She’d pleaded with me, thinking I was about to kill her, to let her call her mother …
I just want to hear her voice,
she’d said.

I wanted to reach out and touch her arm or take her hand, but I could already sense her shrinking away from me as if she’d said too much. “Remember that night I caught you snooping around my apartment?”

“I remember,” Holly said, not letting an ounce of emotion leak through her voice.

“Did you mean it when you asked to call your mom? Kendrick and Stewart were convinced that was code for something, like you were trying to get help from Eyewall in case they happened to be listening in.”

“Nobody was listening in.” Holly kicked some dirt up with her tennis shoe. “I was sure you were going to kill me and yes, I wanted to call my mom.”

There were so many things I wanted to say right then, so many important and probably extremely sappy things, but I didn’t because it wouldn’t have the impact I wanted it to have.

“I miss Central Park.” I used my foot to force a broken tree branch out of our path. “The 2009 version. I miss thinking the world is much smaller.”

“Me, too.” Then with another glance in my direction, she added, “I’m sorry about Courtney. This must be so hard for you to go through all over again.”

I adjusted the straps on my very heavy backpack. “It’s different this time, though.”

“How so?”

I watched Holly’s face carefully for any sign of sarcasm or anger, but she looked fine. Curious, even. “I wasn’t there the first time. I was so scared. Not just scared for Courtney, but scared of watching someone die, scared of realizing my own mortality. I know it’s selfish—”

“You were fourteen,” Holly said, as if this excused everything.

“Yeah, true. But then I went back to see her not too long ago and I watched it happen.” I let out a breath, fighting off the emotion threatening to take over. “It was a half-jump so it didn’t change anything but I needed to be there.”
And you were the one who helped me see that,
I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “I realized something after that. I think when you’re actually about to die, you accept it. You’re not afraid anymore. That fear of death is the strongest of any fear and it’s also a gift. It means it’s not your time yet. And when it is my time, I’ll know and I’ll stop being afraid. I’ll stop wanting to fight it.”

“So like, if a bullet hit you in the back of the head in the next five seconds, you’d be ready for that?” Holly asked, her eyebrows arched, her voice skeptical.

“I’ve thought about that,” I said carefully. “Like the people who die suddenly in an accident or something.”
Like Mason blowing up.
“I have a theory if you want to hear it…?”

Holly shifted her body so she faced me more than the path. “Okay?”

“I think time slows down. Like you’re dying quickly to the people around you or even instantly, but in your mind, it takes longer for it to happen. And it works the other way, too. Like with the terminally ill, like Courtney. You’re probably mostly gone before you’re actually gone in the physical world.”

Holly turned her eyes back to the path in front of us. “And then what?”

I laughed under my breath. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“But you think it will be easier?” she asked. “With Courtney this time?”

“Not easier. Just that I’ll be focused on being sad, on grieving, and less on fearing my own mortality. And I’ll be sad for my dad this time. Before, I couldn’t shake the thought that he wanted it to be me instead.”

“That’s not true,” she said right away. “You didn’t see him when you were—”

“I know.”

“I like your dad,” Holly added. “He makes me wonder about my own dad. I’ve never met him and it never seemed like a big thing, but now … now I kinda want to know more.”

“Have you asked my dad about that?” She shook her head. “You should. It’s possible he might know something.”

We had reached the edge of the forest now and both of us stepped into the brighter sunlight and examined the field between here and the tents. We left the clothes, blankets, stacks of meal bars, and all the water we could carry halfway between the tents and the woods.

The second we got into the woods, Holly stripped off her backpack and rolled her shoulders and neck out. “At least it’s a lighter load on the way back.”

Without thinking about it, I stepped behind her and started rubbing her shoulders with both my hands. She stiffened immediately under the weight of my touch, but I didn’t let go this time. “What can you possibly gain by being stubborn right now?”

She looked over her shoulder at me, eyes narrowed, but must have had no argument to win over mine because she relaxed under my hands and stayed put.

“Jackson?”

I ran my thumbs along her shoulder blades, carefully working over all the places that I knew were sore on me from carrying that bag. “Yeah?”

“Lonnie wants to take Emily,” she said, letting all the words out so quickly I knew it must have been something she wasn’t supposed to tell me. “When we escape and most of us jump back to 2009, Lonnie is going to a different year, with Blake and Grayson, and she says Emily will fit in better there and be easier to hide.”

My hands froze on Holly’s shoulders. I wasn’t sure what to feel at that moment. Emily was tied to me in this way I couldn’t explain and yet … “If they think she has the best chance of surviving with them, then I guess … I guess that’s good.”

Holly stepped out of my reach and started moving forward again. “I thought you’d be upset. With what’s happening to Courtney and everything. Plus, she seems really attached to you.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” I joked.

Before Holly could respond, I felt something in the air shift and panic churned in my veins. “Oh shit. Not again.”

The last image I saw before the metallic scent filled my nostrils was Holly, walking backwards, away from me toward a tree, her back hitting it as she slid down to sit on the ground.

It felt like the forest floor was being pulled from underneath me and I fell so fast, the blur of Holly’s body below me, out of my reach.

Unlike the last time we got hit with memory gas, I knew what was happening right from the beginning, but all I could feel was the falling sensation and that’s why it took me so long to react. Finally, I fumbled for my shirt, pulling it over my nose and holding my breath as the world swirled below me until it changed to the green and brown and black of the woods.

I shook my head, trying to turn the world right side up again. The first thing I saw was Holly, still sitting on the ground soundless, knees pulled to her chest, face pressed into her knees, her entire body trembling.

What did she see?
Was it Adam?

“Holly?” I approached her slowly, remembering how she’d yelled at me the last time. She didn’t respond, but I could see her back rising and falling with each deep breath. “Holly…?”

I touched her back, barely resting a hand on it, and she didn’t move or lift her head. She was lost in something, somewhere I couldn’t bring her back.

All I could think to do was sit down on the ground beside her, waiting for her to snap out of it. Slowly, with several instances of hesitation, I put my arms around her, pulling her all the way against me while she kept her face pressed against her knees.

After several long minutes, her muscles relaxed, her breaths got a little bit deeper, and she leaned into me, her arms dropping from her knees.

“Don’t move, okay?” she whispered, without lifting her head. “I feel really nauseous. It’ll pass, I’m sure. Just don’t move.”

I froze, not even allowing myself so much as a wiggle from one of my fingers. Sweat trickled down her neck and through her hair. Her skin felt clammy under my fingers. Eventually, she uncurled her legs out in front of her and they overlapped one of mine. Her cheek fell against my chest and her eyes opened.

“Better?” I asked, and she nodded. I pushed the sweaty hair off the side of her face and tucked it behind her ear.

Her eyelids fluttered shut again. “I thought I was going to puke a few seconds ago and now I feel like falling asleep. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I pressed my face against the top of her head, closing my own eyes and holding on to the fact that she was here, in my grip, not free-falling ahead of me. If I didn’t let go of her, I wouldn’t have to face that memory a second time, even if the gas did hit us again.

“For someone who was just acquaintances with another version of me,” Holly mumbled into my shirt, “you seem very comfortable cuddling up to me. We’ve ended up like this, how many times now? I haven’t seen you having hug sessions with anyone else.”

I was too relieved to hear some semblance of normal returning to Holly’s voice to worry about covering up my behavior. I rested my chin on the top of her head. “I do this with everyone in private. I cuddled with Stewart for an hour yesterday and then Mason this morning.”

She laughed. “Now I know you’re lying. Stewart is the least cuddly person in existence and Mason … well, I don’t think he’s exactly your BFF right now. And I would totally move if I could. It feels like I’ve just finished a marathon. Plus, I’m freezing.”

I pulled away from her a little and lifted her chin, examining her face carefully. Pink now covered her cheeks and the sweat was gone. I picked up one of her hands and felt it shaking in mine. “Have you eaten anything today?”

She sat up straighter, eyebrows lifting. “No. I haven’t actually.”

“You look dehydrated. Feverish, too.” I pulled the remaining meal bar from my bag along with a bottle of water. I opened the water first and handed it to Holly, who was now leaning against the tree again. She took several long sips and then handed it back to me.

“Have
you
eaten anything today?”

“Not much,” I admitted, taking a long drink before holding up the meal bar. “Should we split this? It’s protein-flavored. Hard to resist.”

Holly nodded, wrinkling her nose. “It’ll be a miracle if I can manage to choke down half of it.”

“Me, too.”

“Jackson!” a voice called.

Holly and I both squinted into the nearly dark trees before jumping to our feet.

“Holly!” a second voice called.
Blake.
Of course he was the one to go searching for Holly.

I rolled my eyes in her direction. “Your BFF is here to save you from me.”

She mustered some strength despite not looking too well at the moment and shoved me hard enough to cause me to stumble into a tree as Dad, Blake, and Mason appeared in front of us.

Dad’s dark hair and forehead were covered in sweat and his face reflected that of an extremely pissed-off agent. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“You can’t leave without telling anyone,” Mason added, though he didn’t have any of the edge that Dad had in his voice.

Blake’s eyes bounced between me, Dad, and Holly, then he nodded toward the path ahead. “Want to walk back with me?” he said to Holly, who scrambled to his side, following quickly, probably wanting nothing to do with this domestic dispute.

“You go, too, Mason,” Dad said, his eyes still focused on me.

Mason threw a glare in my direction and then jogged to catch up with the other two. I dropped my gaze to the forest floor and kicked a few sticks. “What’s his problem?”

“Mason?” Dad folded his arms across his chest. “He’s speaking on Courtney’s behalf. She’s pissed off at you for getting everyone worried.”