Chapter 524 | One More Time

Chapter 524: 524 | One More Time

The cafeteria thinned out as morning classes pulled students away in waves. Jordan dragged himself toward the door with the enthusiasm of a man being led to execution, Javier trailing behind with his notebooks clutched to his chest like holy texts. Belle packed up her laptop with the care of someone handling nuclear launch codes, which in her mind they probably were.

"Vault," she said without looking at me. "Before Friday. I mean it."

"Yes, mother."

"I will end you." She snapped the laptop case shut. "Also Aurora texted. She wants you to know that Vermillion Dawn’s lead scout watched her demonstration this morning and quote, looked like someone had shown him God, unquote. Her words. She’s insufferable when she’s winning."

"She’s insufferable when she’s losing too."

"True. But this is worse because she’s right to be smug." Belle stood, smoothed her uniform, and fixed me with those amber eyes that saw through every defense I’d ever tried to build. "Eighteen days. Don’t waste them."

She left, and I was alone with Naomi, who hadn’t moved her hand from my thigh through the entire conversation.

"She’s scary," Naomi said.

"She keeps me alive."

"That’s why she’s scary." Naomi leaned into my shoulder, her pink and black hair brushing my neck. She smelled like jasmine and the ocean, like a beach I’d built from her memories and the sounds she made when I found the spot behind her ear that made her forget how to breathe. "Walk me to class?"

"I have nowhere else to be."

"Liar. You have everywhere else to be. You just like me better."

"Guilty."

We stood, and she threaded her fingers through mine like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was. Six weeks of gates, blood, death, resurrection, and four women who’d chosen me with their eyes open had a way of making the small moments feel enormous. Naomi’s hand in mine. The shell necklace against her collarbone. The way she tilted her head when she was thinking about something she wasn’t ready to say.

The hallway outside the cafeteria was chaos, students flowing between buildings in the eternal current of academy life. Some of them recognized me. The burger clip had faded but not disappeared, and occasionally someone would call out "Milk Man" or hold up a phone with the video still playing. I’d stopped being embarrassed about it around the same time I’d stopped caring what people who hadn’t bled beside me thought about anything.

Naomi walked close enough that our shoulders touched. "You’re thinking too loud."

"Vale broke my nose this morning. Thinking is all I have left."

"He’s going to kill you one of these sessions."

"That’s the point. Then he resets me and does it again." I squeezed her hand. "It’s working. Ranked up Endurance mid-session. B-rank now."

She stopped walking. Her brown eyes, flecked with gold in the morning light, searched my face for something she wasn’t finding. "You sound happy about that."

"I’m happy I’m stronger."

"You’re happy you suffered and it meant something." She started walking again, pulling me along. "That’s not the same thing. You know that’s not the same thing."

"Naomi."

"I’m not finished." She didn’t look at me. "You throw yourself at things because you think you have to. Because you think that’s what makes you worth keeping. And every time you come back with new scars or new stories about how many times you died that morning, you expect me to be impressed. You expect all of us to be impressed."

"I don’t expect anything."

"Liar." She stopped again, this time in an alcove between buildings where the foot traffic couldn’t reach us. Her hand tightened on mine. "I watched you jump off a cliff for Blair. A woman you didn’t even like. A hundred feet into a river you couldn’t see the bottom of. You didn’t hesitate."

"She was going to die."

"So were you." Her voice cracked on the word. "You died. Twice on the transport back. Your heart stopped and they had to restart it and I was standing in a recovery tent watching numbers on a screen and praying to gods I don’t believe in that they’d let you come back one more time."

I didn’t have an answer for that. The truth was I hadn’t thought about it in those terms. The cliff, the fall, Blair’s weight against my chest as we dropped, the impact that should have killed us both. I’d made a choice and then I’d been unconscious, and by the time I woke up the choice had already turned into consequence.

"Naomi."

"I know you can’t stop." She looked at me finally, and there were tears in her eyes that she refused to let fall. "I know that’s who you are. The guy who jumps. The guy who takes the hit so someone else doesn’t have to. I fell in love with that guy, so I don’t get to complain about him now."

My chest did something complicated at the word love. She’d said it before, on a beach made of her memories, but hearing it in broad daylight in a California alcove with students walking past was different. Real in a way that mattered.

"Just." She breathed out. "Just tell me when it’s bad. Don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt because you think I can’t handle it. I’m not fragile. I killed things in that gate too. I watched you fall and I kept fighting because that’s what you needed me to do. So don’t treat me like I’ll break if you show me the parts that hurt."

"Okay." ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

"Okay?" She blinked. "That’s it? No argument? No deflection? No incredibly charming joke that makes me forget I was upset?"

"I’m fresh out of jokes. Vale beat them out of me." I pulled her closer, wrapping my arms around her waist. She fit against me like she’d been designed for the space. "You’re right. I’m an idiot who thinks suffering is a personality trait. I’ll try to be less of an idiot."

"You can’t promise that."

"I can promise to try."