“Oh.” That made sense. “You didn’t make me cry. It’s been a…”
“Rough day? I know it has been, and I know what I said about not completely trusting you didn’t help. I didn’t … mean to do that. And I do trust you, Evie. It’s just that your relationship with Sylvia complicates things. We just have to figure out a way to work with that.”
A knot formed in my throat. If I was being honest with myself, his lack of trust wasn’t so much to do with me but came into play when my mom was involved. “I know. It’s just … today was scary, and there’s a lot going on in my head. All day, actually. It’s why I was in the library. It’s why I was trying to distract myself.”
“From what?”
Dragging the remote over the comforter, I thought about what Zoe had told me on Sunday as I placed my head back against the headboard. Words I needed to speak crowded my throat, but I didn’t want to give voice to them. I felt like once I gave life to the creeping thoughts and suspicions, I couldn’t take them back.
But I needed to.
“I talked to Zoe yesterday, and she said some stuff that made sense.”
“Zoe making sense? Never.”
My smile was brief and my stomach full of knots. “Like, it’s weird that Mom gave me Evie Dasher’s life,” I whispered, staring at the slowly churning ceiling fan. “I think she did it because she just missed Evie—the real one—but what she did wasn’t fair.”
Luc was so quiet, so still, I had to look at him. He was staring at me, pupils slightly dilated.
“It wasn’t fair to me at all. I had a life. I had friends,” I said, thinking how what Zoe had said was so full of truth it hurt. “I had friends that were my family. I had memories, and it just wasn’t right.”
His eyes closed, thick lashes fanning his skin. “No. It wasn’t.”
I swallowed hard. “Why didn’t she just let me become me? Why make me become someone else?”
He turned his head away, throat working. “I don’t know, Peaches.”
“I started to text you yesterday, because what if that wasn’t her reason? What if I’m just being willfully naïve? You don’t trust her. She did work for the Daedalus. What if there was a different reason?” The knot in my throat swelled, threatening to choke me. “Zoe told me something I can’t get out of my head. She said that you took me to the Dashers around June and I wasn’t seen again until I went to school, which was in November. And I don’t know why that’s bothering me so much, but it is.”
Luc’s eyes opened and his lips parted, but he didn’t say anything.
“Is it true?” Wetness gathered on my lashes as I stared at his profile. “No one saw me during that time? Not once?”
He dragged his teeth over his lower lip, and unease built as several moments passed. “I didn’t see you. No one did. I…” He looked over at me, placing the tips of his fingers against my cheek. “I don’t think you stressing yourself out about this is going to do you any good.”
“But—”
“There are a lot of things that are unexplained. Things I don’t know the answers to, but right now, don’t go down that road.”
My gaze searched his. “What if I want to go down that road? Like, I want to run down that road?”
“If you want to, you’d have to go down it with her, but I want to be there if you do. Okay?” Luc asked, voice soft as his thumb moved along the line of my jaw. “I need to be there.”
“Okay,” I whispered, unsettled.
Feeling him lean in, I tensed and then, a heartbeat later, I felt his lips brush the center of my forehead. “Now, let’s just try to relax and see what’s on the TV.”
I wasn’t sure how I could ever relax again, but I nodded, watching him pull away, and then I picked up the remote. I turned on the TV and started mindlessly flipping through the blurry channels.
“Stop,” he said. “It’s Dee.”
Luc was right.
She was on the screen, along with Senator Freeman, who looked seconds from blowing a major blood vessel along his temple. “President McHugh is within every right to repeal the Twenty-eighth Amendment.”
“You’re saying he’s empowered to strip the rights of citizens of America?” Dee challenged. “Once he starts with the Luxen, who’s to say it stops there?”
“Luxen are not American citizens.”
“The Twenty-eighth Amendment says differently,” Dee corrected him. “What the president wants to do is unconscionable—”
“What the Luxen have done to our planet is unconscionable, Ms. Black.” The senator shook his head. “Luxen have killed indiscriminately, and now there is evidence suggesting that your kind is carrying some possible virus that’s not only infecting but killing humans. What do you have to say about that?”