I’ll never know the things she knows.
I lower my body, squatting in front of her, and I want to touch her face.
But I don’t. Instead, I choke out, “What happens when I don’t know where you are?”
She sits there, her face barely visible behind her hair, but I see more tears spill.
“I like you,” I tell her. “Everything has changed for me.”
I can’t go back to my friends and live like none of this ever happened. And my heart hurts, thinking about her out there, living as if I never existed. Will she forget me?
“What would’ve happened if you’d needed me last night?” I ask.
She can’t just go out alone. If they’d caught her, I would’ve never found her. She’d be gone. At the bottom of the lake, or in a lonely lump of wet earth out in the middle of the woods that no one ever found, because no one would look for her.
I don’t stop myself. I take her face and bow down, pressing my forehead to hers. “I won’t stop you from doing anything, no matter how much I hate it,” I tell her. “But you have to tell me what you’re doing.”
Her body shakes a little, but I don’t hear any sounds as she cries.
“I can’t help you if I can’t find you.”
I blink away the burn in my eyes. I’ll be damned if I let that piece of shit erase her like she doesn’t matter, or use her like she’s a commodity. I don’t know if we’ll win, but I can make sure she’s not alone anymore.
I dive in, tucking her head into my neck, and she starts crying harder. But she wraps her arms around my waist, hanging on, and I tighten my hold.
We stay like that for only a minute before she calms again, and I have a feeling those tears were a long time coming.
She sniffles, pulling back and wiping her face. “Those windows aren’t big enough,” she says, tipping her head back. “You need a skylight in here.”
“Why?”
“I like to look up,” she says. “When things hurt.”
The stars. Astronomy.
I break into a smile and stand up, an idea popping into my head.
I hold out my hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” She takes it, and I pull her up to her feet.
Keeping her hand in mine, I pull her after me. “This is worth the risk.”
“What is this place?” she asks.
I feel my way up to the control booth and turn on the system, an atmospheric sound drifting loudly out of the speakers. A tinkling starts next, and I turn down the volume, loading the screens.
“Hawke?”
“Stay there,” I shout down to her.
She stands in the middle of the dark aisle, and I see the domed ceiling fade from black to purples and blues, the background music beginning.
The theater lights up, casting a glow over her, and I look down, seeing her eyes tilt up and her mouth fall open.
Leaving the booth, I walk down and lead her into the chairs, both of us taking a seat.
But I don’t think she knows I’m here anymore. She gazes up at the fake sky, stars you can only see out in the middle of nowhere, lighting up the night. The image rotates in a circle, but it feels like we’re the ones moving, and she watches. Her mouth sits open a little, and I don’t think she blinks.
“Have you ever been to a planetarium?” I ask her.
She shakes her head, and I smile, because she looks like everything just changed for her. Like she’s starving and there’s a feast.
“Look.” She shoots up in her seat, pointing. “That’s Sirius. It’s the brightest star.”
“Right, the Dog Star.”
She twists around, taking everything in. “Yeah, because it’s part of Canis Major. We can only see it right before dawn, but you can see the Milky Way really well if you get far enough away from all the light pollution.”
She rises, looking at the screens behind her, too impatient to wait for them to rotate to us.
I laugh quietly.
“And Betelguese.” She points. “Orion will be over our heads in a few months.” She points again. “And there’s Mars. It’s visible a lot. Can you imagine what it’s like there?”
“Cold.”
She sits back down. “Quiet,” she says instead. “Mountains of rock and sand dunes, winds and storms and ice…” She continues staring up at the sky. “None of it we can touch, just look at.”
She smiles, and my chest tightens a little. She looks so amazing right now. Peaceful. I suddenly wish I could put that skylight in the hideout.
“There are so many stars,” she whispers. “So many suns. And so many with their own solar systems like ours.”
I pull my eyes away and slouch in my seat, resting my head on the back of the chair. “What’s your favorite part of astronomy?”