Chapter 19

The silence extends, permeating the office, despite the ragged sounds of our panting breath and the creaks of the walls as they begin to crack. The silence is a living thing that rears its head and threatens to suffocate us.

To suffocate me, along with my withheld tears.

“You’ve got it wrong,” says my handsome, spandexed liar. “Let me get you out of here and I’ll explain.”

He goes to grab me, but I slap his hand away, pushing myself away from him as best as I can. Beside us, there’s a snap and a whole chunk of the wall just falls off, an empty husk of the support it once was.

“If you can explain, you can explain now. So what if we die? We’ll just reset a second later?”

I’m propelled against him and into his arms with breath-stealing force. Clamped in his arms, he takes off flying through the flotsam that fall off the wall and float around us in terrifying, gravity-defying swirls.

“As someone who dug out your dead body yesterday and had to live with you being dead all day,” he snarls. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that happen any time soon.”

Out into the foyer and wrapped together, we fly faster than he’s ever flown with me. The air whistles its wail in my ear—a sound so shrill and lurching it could almost be a real scream. Grant—or whatever his name is—makes a beeline for the broken window. Objects sail out of our way, tossed aside like dust on a shoulder, as we go.

My heart races. Despite the fact that I know I’ll just come back, the very core of me distinctly does not want to die. I close my eyes and trust that Grant will get us out of here. I just breathe in his scent and feel his warmth against my cheek until it’s over.

We’re barely out into the pouring rain when the building sighs its death rattle and collapses into rubble. It’s a sight that never ceases to stun me into breathless awe, even after experiencing it from the inside.

Grant, or maybe Zagreus, whatever his name is, isn’t looking at the building. His furious eyes are trained intensely on me. In a way I haven’t felt since high school when I skipped prom to secretly study, I know I’m in trouble.

Whatever. He’s in trouble too. He lied. I died. We both have hell to pay.

“Let me go,” I say through clenched teeth.

“No.”

My nostrils flare. No one tells me ‘no’.

“I’ll scream.”

He huffs a humourless laugh. “Good! That’d at least show a modicum of common sense. I mean, what were you thinking yesterday? Trying to get out through the stairs? Did you not think that I’d come for you?”

“You? You’re who I was trying to get away from!”

Grant recoils. There’s a raw confusion and hurt in his eyes that tugs at my heart. Damn those beautiful eyes.

“Why would you want to get away from me?” he asks in a voice too small for the man I see in front of me.

“Because you lied!” I explode. “You lied about everything! I know for a fact that you don’t live in that apartment. You work for Zagreus Hart and probably are him. I don’t think you being here is as much as a coincidence as you played it off to be. The only truth here is that I know nothing about you. I may want you, but I don’t trust you.”

I’ve taken down corporations with meticulous facts and a biting tongue. I’ve pulled out the bottom ace on houses of cards. I’ve had grown men weep on the witness stand as they realized it was over. Every single one of those verbal victories left me flush with pride.

Here and now, the subtle flinch from him devastates me.

“You’re right,” he says finally. His voice breaks as does my heart. Even though there’s nothing more that I love than being right, I really didn’t want to be.

“But not about everything,” he adds several limping heartbeats later.

“What am I not right about?”

He shakes his head. “Not here.”

Despite myself, I crack the beginning of a smirk. “Always with the secondary location…” I mutter.

His mouth forms a sad imitation of a heartbroken smile. “Promise not to chop you into bits until after we talk it out.”

If this were any other time, I’d storm away. I’d slap him with a protection order so fast his head would spin. I’d bare my teeth at him through a fierce red lipstick and sling litigation at him until it buried him out of my life for good.

Except we’re in this fucking time loop.

And, you know, floating 30-40 stories in the air.

Besides, unless I want to live my life in terrifying chunks of twenty minutes, I’m stuck with him. The fact of the matter is that I can’t get out of the building in time. Even if I were to run down the stairs perfectly, which is a stretch in itself, I wouldn’t be able to get out and out of the fall radius in time. If I can even get out. There was all that fumigation equipment stacked perilously by the door. There’s a good chance I’d be blocked in even if I made it to the ground level. It’s a terrifying thought that I push away lest it paralyze me completely, but I’m stuck in a time loop. One that becomes even shorter unless I find a way to play nice with my possible nemesis.

This is it. The circle of my reach doesn’t get any bigger. It can only get smaller. Terrifyingly smaller.

There’s no point in playing out a long-term strategy if tomorrow continues to dance just beyond my reach.

“Fine,” I seethe. “But if you do chop me up into bits, I’m going to find the nearest letter opener tomorrow and stab you when you save me.”

He nods.

“In fact, I might just do that anyways for all the lies.”

He nods again. “Whatever you want.”

It’s a casual line that’s usually thrown around without a thought as to what it means. Not from him. I have no doubt that he truly does mean whatever I want. The way he cradles me against his body as we fly, away from the ocean this time, tells me that he really would let me stab him or any other punishment I could dream up.

His heart plods steadily on in my ears as I consider that.

If he’s less nefarious than previously thought, then why all the lies?

Not that I suddenly believe him to be good. He admitted to lying. I know he’s been hiding things. It’s just that my head and heart are warring as they scream at me what to think of him. And every second that I spend in his arms knowing that he’d never let me drop, my heart screams louder and louder that he’s good.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

I had kind of assumed that he’d be taking me to my apartment, but we’re not even remotely going in that direction.

He sighs a defeated sigh. “To my place. My real place.” He pauses. “We’re just going to have to be quiet so that we don’t wake my mom up.”