Push

CHAPTER TWELVE

WHEN I GET TO JACKSON’S HOUSE, THE GARAGE DOOR’S OPEN and the garage is empty. Jackson’s black Jeep sits on the drive exactly where Luka and I left it. Was that only yesterday?

I take a deep breath, fortifying my resolve, and stride up the walk to the front door. No one answers my knock. I ring the bell and wait. Ring it again.

Worry uncoils in my gut. Could the Committee have lied to me? Could this be another crazy test? Yes on both counts. My trust in them isn’t exactly intact.

I frown. Wait . . . did they even promise they would send him back? Or did they just imply it?

What if he’s still trapped there? Still being hurt—?

I need to know.

I jog around the side of the house. A quick check up and down the street ensures that there’s no one in sight. I glance at the neighbor’s house. The blinds are closed. No one’s watching me. I don’t even know why I’m worried that someone is. It’s not like I’m going to break in or anything. I’m just going to scout things out.

The hairs at my nape prickle and I spin around, checking behind me. Nothing there. I’m freaking myself out.

I turn back around, unlatch the gate, and duck into the backyard.

I need to see Jackson. I need to know the Committee sent him back. Not just because I need Jackson to be okay, though that’s the biggest part of it. I also need to know that despite the weird shit they did yesterday, the Committee’s still the good guys.

Someone needs to be the good guys.

The backyard is bordered by flower beds, pink and purple impatiens giving their last gasp as the weather gets colder. There’s an apple tree tall enough to get me to the second-story window on the left. Jackson’s room? I have no clue.

Refusing to give what I’m about to do too much thought, I drop my backpack on the ground, leap for the lowest branch, and climb.

Disappointment punches me as I settle on a branch that’s level with the window, and see that it’s not Jackson’s bedroom. It’s a sewing room with a long table pushed against one wall and a smaller table with a sewing machine set at right angles to it. The door to the room’s open and I can see the hallway beyond with its cappuccino walls and hardwood floor. I sit on the branch, deflated. What now? The tree isn’t positioned in a way that I can get at either of the other two windows, and I think that sitting here yelling Jackson’s name isn’t the plan of the century.

Then it hits me. Jackson might not even be here. He’s probably out somewhere with his parents. Would have been nice if I’d thought of that before I climbed the tree.

I’m about to climb down again when a boy walks along the hall, past the open sewing-room door. My heart stops, then hammers into double time. Jackson.

He’s wearing black, wraparound sunglasses, a pair of dark blue plaid, flannel pajama bottoms that ride low on his hips, and nothing else. His skin is smooth over taut muscle, his abdomen ridged, his arms defined. I give myself a second to just appreciate the view.

He has a towel in one hand and he pauses in the hallway as he roughs his damp hair with it. Muscles shift beneath smooth skin. He turns, and I catch sight of the scars on his left upper arm and shoulder, a physical reminder of the Drau that somehow managed to escape the game and follow Jackson to the real world the day Lizzie died.

That’s why I need the Committee to be the good guys.

Because the Drau are bad. Really, really bad. And if one of them escaped the confines of the game, circumvented the parameters the Committee has somehow created, then there’s a chance all of them could get through.

That’s the whole point of the game. To keep them from getting through.

Jackson rolls his shoulders and drops his arms so the end of the towel trails on the floor. He stands with head bowed, like the weight of the universe bears down on him.

I want to lay my hand between his shoulder blades, sooth him with a touch, remind him he isn’t in this alone. I want to wrap my arms around him and hold him the way he held me when I needed it most.

I will him to turn. Maybe I make a sound.

Slowly, slowly, he pivots to face the window.

For endless seconds, he does nothing. Nothing at all. No expression. No movement. It’s like the instant is frozen in time.

My breath rushes out. There’s a ringing in my ears. My entire focus is on Jackson.

His lips shape my name.

My pulse trips and starts.

How many times have I dreamed that Mom isn’t dead, that she’s back, alive, here? How many times have I dreamed about Sofu and Gram?

This isn’t just a dream. Jackson’s here.

He came back.

He’s alive.

It isn’t until my lungs start screaming that I realize I’m holding my breath. I exhale in a rush.

In a second he’s at the window, yanking it open, standing there with his fists curled so tight over the windowsill, his knuckles are white. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t speak. His überdark shades hide his eyes, hide his thoughts. Nervousness writhes in my chest like a downed electrical wire.

“You’re not supposed to be here.” The words are a low rasp.

Not what I expected him to say. I can’t read his tone. There is no tone. No inflection. I shake my head, icy doubt freezing my organs, stealing my words.

He isn’t happy to see me. He doesn’t want me here. Something’s changed. Something’s wrong.

Emotion overload. I can’t deal with this after the roller coaster I’ve been riding since Detroit. I need to get away.

My instinct is to shimmy down the tree and run. Get away. Leave him far, far behind.

My hands won’t obey my thoughts. Instead of letting go, they curl tighter around the branch.

He told me he loved me.

But he doesn’t.

He’s back to being the boy I can’t read, the one who acts like an asshole, a wall ten feet thick between him and everyone else. Including me.

Jackson ducks through the window, clambering out onto another branch, the red and gold autumn leaves shaking free and fluttering down, down. I watch them go because I can’t bear to watch him. Can’t bear to look at his flat expression.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, sounding anything but welcoming.

“Sitting in a tree.” My chin kicks up a notch. “I knocked and rang the bell. No one answered.”

“So you climbed a tree?” His brows lift above the frame of his glasses. “I didn’t hear your knock or the bell. I was in the shower. Answer the question.”

“Yeah, I climbed a tree.”

“Not that question,” he says. One corner of his mouth quirks in the barest hint of the smile. He once told me, There hasn’t been much that makes me smile in a very long time. But you do. So thank you for that.

Where’s that boy now?

I look at the ground, wondering if I can make it in a single leap without breaking a bone. “Back to being an asshole, Jackson?”

“I never stopped. I told you, Miki. I’m not a good guy.”

No shit. He’s the guy who sold me into the game.

And saved my life.

And held me when I needed him.

My feelings for him aren’t confused: I told him I love him, and that’s the truth.

It’s the certainty that loving him is good for me that I’m not sold on.

The branch I’m on dips as his weight adds to mine. I don’t look at him but I know he’s there, right in front of me, way too close. I smell a hint of citrus shaving cream and freshly showered, warm male skin. It makes me want to bury my face in his neck and just breathe. But we’re as far from that as Rochester is from Australia.

He sits there, saying nothing, the inches between us stretching like miles.

This is not the reunion I imagined.

“Look at me.” An order. Typical Jackson.

I raise my chin and glare at him, seeing little reflections of myself in the dark lenses that hide his eyes. He leans closer and the little reflections distort. I refuse to back away. I won’t give him that.

“What did you do, Miki?” He sounds frustrated and torn. “What did you do?” A muscle in his jaw clenches as he reaches out and runs his thumb along my cheek. “You’re crying.”

Perfect. I’m crying. I rub away the tears with the heel of my palm. “I hate you,” I whisper, wishing it were true.

“Do you now?” His smile is hard and dangerous, and I can feel something coiled tight between us. Anger? Yeah . . . but something else, too.

Then he shifts even closer, his palms cupping my cheeks. I should slap his hands away. I should scoot back on the branch. But I don’t. I close my fingers around his wrists and just hold on.

Every cell in my body reacts to him. My lips part. My breath comes too fast.

He lowers his mouth to mine, his kiss both hard and soft, tasting like mint.

He drinks me in, a boy parched, and I am the deep, cool well. I’m falling, lost in him, lost in this, the wonder of his kiss, lips and tongue and the scrape of his teeth.

I want to lean in closer, tangle my fingers in his hair, and kiss him deeper, harder.

Then I remember that he’s kissing me after telling me I shouldn’t be here.

He doesn’t want me here.

I’m about to bite him when he pulls away.

“My being here is so terrible that you just had to kiss me?” Glaring at him, I drag the back of my hand across my mouth. I don’t get it. Don’t get him. His touch, his kiss, tell me I’m the most important thing in his world. His words tell me I don’t matter at all.

Seconds tick past before he clips out, “Yes.”

His answer releases a flood of anger and resentment and, yeah, embarrassment, icy and razor bright. I scoot away, ready to swing down. “Fine. I’ll leave.”

“No, you won’t.” Last word. Some things don’t change.

He catches my wrists and pulls my hands from the branch, sandwiching them between his larger ones. “You were supposed to forget,” he says, sounding like every word is ripped from him, all the emotion that was missing from his voice earlier there now.

I freeze. “Forget what?”

“Me. You aren’t supposed to be here because you’re supposed to have no memories of me.” His lips thin. “I was trying to be the good guy. Not exactly my forte, Miki.”

“Why would I have no memories of . . . ?” I don’t understand. Trying to be the good . . . “No,” I whisper, finally getting it. “What did you do, Jackson?”

“Wasn’t that just my line?” He tips his head back, face to the sky. “What did I do? I think I got played.” He faces me once more. “And here I thought I was being so smart. Not to mention the whole self-sacrificing, nobility thing I was aiming for. I didn’t even give in to the urge to stand up the street and watch your window last night. Didn’t want to jeopardize the Committee’s good will.”

“Watch my window? You were going to do that?”

“Nothing I haven’t done before.”

“Stalker much?” I ask without heat.

“Funny accusation from the girl who climbed a tree to peek in my window.”

His answers are flip, but there’s an undercurrent to every word.

“Why would standing on my street jeopardize the Committee’s good will?”

I reach for his glasses. He catches my wrist, but doesn’t stop me as I push them up onto his forehead.

We stare at each other. His eyes are Drau gray, foreign and beautiful, framed by long, incongruously dark, spiky lashes—Carly would say girl lashes. They’re the only remotely girly thing about him.

“Do you know how I felt when I looked up and saw you sitting out here?” he rasps, ignoring my question.

“Tell me,” I whisper. My chest is tight. I can’t draw a full breath.

His lashes sweeping down, hiding his eyes. “It was one of the best and worst seconds of my life.”

“Best?”

His lashes sweep up and he stares into my eyes. “Because there you were, right outside my window.”

My heart does this crazy little dance in my chest. These were the words I wanted, the ones I was hoping for when I came here.

“Worst?”

He takes a long time to answer, then finally says, “Because there you were, right outside my window.” He turns my hand palm up, traces the tip of his index finger along my lifeline. “You were supposed to forget. But you didn’t. You remember me. And you remember the game.”

“Why wouldn’t I remember?”

Why am I asking? I know the answer even before he says, “When you’re out of the game, you don’t remember the game.” He turns his face away and stares off into the distance. “But you aren’t out of the game, are you, Miki? It was all for nothing.”

He sounds so bleak. I remember him screaming inside my head, his pain and anguish. A chill crawls up my spine.

“I think you have this backward.” I start to pull my hand from his, but he tightens his fingers, refusing to let me sever the connection. “You’re supposed to be the one who’s out of the game, Jackson. That’s why you brought me into it. So you could be free.”

I can’t help the tinge of venom that colors those last words. Now that he’s here, in front of me, safe and healthy and whole, the recollection that he betrayed me in the first place resurfaces. And it hurts.

In that second, I’m furious with myself for fixating on that, holding on to the hurt. How many times has Dr. Andrews told me that one of the roads to happiness is letting go of grudges? Forgiving. Moving on.

“That was the plan.”

“What went wrong?”

His face jerks toward me. “Plans change. Why do you think something went wrong?”

“Because you were in Detroit. And I was already team leader by that point. You should have been out.”

“I asked to go on one last run.”

“Why would you—”

The way he looks at me stops my question cold. He asked to go because of me. To protect me.

“You almost died,” I whisper.

“I knew the risks going in.”

“Just like you knew the rules? You know . . . the ones you broke?”

“Which rule would that be?”

“Drawing my life force.”

“It was either break the rules or die.” His smile is self-deprecating. “Regrets, Miki?”

“No.” I shudder at the thought that he might have died there.

“Then why are you so pissed?”

He’s goading me. I can feel it. I won’t give him the win. I force my tone to stay calm and even as I say, “I’m angry with you for bringing me into the game and then not getting out, not being safe, away from all of this. For wasting your chance. And I’m angry with you for not telling me the truth, for not warning me about the consequences of what we did.” I would still have made the exact same choice, but I wouldn’t have gone in blind. “You knew you’re not allowed. They told you that after . . .” My words trail away. I don’t need to remind him how his sister died.

But he says it for me, repeating a fragment of the story he told me once before, his tone hard and liquid-nitrogen cold. “You can say it, Miki. After I killed my sister. After I made like a Drau and sucked the life out of her, changing my con from red to yellow and hers from yellow to red. I traded her life for mine.”

There’s the Jackson I know: moody, bossy, cocky, a little scary, and chock-full of self-hate. And even though I haven’t forgiven him for what he did to me, I can’t bear to see him suffering.

It’s one thing for me to be pissed at him, something else entirely for him to be so angry with himself.

“You were twelve years old, Jackson. It was your first mission. You were dying, terrified. She told you to do it, that it would be okay. She was your big sister. You were used to believing her, to doing what she said. Why would that time be any different?”

“You think that excuses me? Cuz I sure don’t. I killed my sister and then I got hauled in front of the Committee, warned that if I ever did the Drau thing again it would be game over. Then next chance I get, I do the same damn thing and almost kill you.”

“But you didn’t do it willingly. I made you. I forced you. I—”

“You offered it, Miki. Dangled the hope of survival in front of me, but I’m the one who grabbed hold and hung on. None of this is your fault. It’s on me. It’s all on me. And the worst thing? I fed off you like fricking Dracula, knowing that you might end up just like Lizzie.” He snaps a half-rotten apple off the tree and lobs it hard against the patio. It splatters, leaving bits of white and brown and red dotting the stones. “I keep telling you I’m far from good, and you keep ignoring the message.”

“I think my therapist would say you have a really bad case of survivor’s guilt,” I say.

Jackson barks a laugh, then stares at me, shaking his head. “How do you do that? Make me laugh even when I feel like total shit?” He pauses, then says, “You’re like my personal dose of happy.”