Paul paces in front of me, his footsteps loud in this small, dark cell. “Someone else has told you about me. There’s no other way you could know that.”
“Who knew that, besides you? Nobody, I bet. You don’t open up to many people.” Which means any people.
He takes a step backward to consider me from a different angle. “What else do your ‘instincts’ tell you about me?”
I remember the things I shouted after the last dimension’s Paul. They were too intimate, too exact. This time, my answer will be simple. It will be honest. But it will still be some of what I love about him.
After all, a splinter of my Paul is within this man, even now.
“You like facts. You want to be objective. So sometimes people assume you’re cold, but you’re not. Not at all. I think you feel more deeply than most people ever do; you just don’t know how to show it. You always feel—out of step. You’re not like the people around you, and they know it as well as you do. And you think it’s because something’s wrong with you, so you retreat deeper into the background. That just means people don’t get to know the real you.”
Paul takes one step backward. I think he doesn’t know whether to be moved or frightened.
“You’re lonely,” I say, more softly. “You’ve been lonely so long I think you’ve forgotten there’s any other way to be.”
He breathes in deeply. By now the way he looks at me reminds me more of my own Paul—that mixture of uncertainty and awe I remember from our first days together.
Is that part of his soul shining through? Will he save me after all?
I lean forward, willing him to understand it’s okay for us to be close. “You want a family. Not your own—a real family, made up of people who take care of each other. And when people are scared of you, because you’re so big, it kills you a little inside. Because you can be so gentle. So kind.”
“You don’t know me,” Paul says, as if by pronouncing the words he can make them true.
“I wish you could learn how to show more people the real you. If you could, nobody would ever be scared of you again.” Nobody could help but love you, I want to add. But that’s a step too far.
After a moment, he laughs, a hard, strange sound. “You learned all this already?”
“First impressions can tell you a lot.” I smile. “So, what do you see when you look at me?”
I’m not expecting much of an answer—but I get one.
“You’re insecure,” Paul says flatly. “So you exaggerate your knowledge or emotions to draw attention you think you won’t get otherwise. You have genuine talents, however. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be willing to put yourself forward. Why they’re not enough for you, I don’t know. You’re sophisticated for your age in some ways, naive in others, which makes me think you went to one of the experimental schools—a Waldorf school, maybe—or you could have been educated at home by intelligent people. You come across as a normal young girl, but when angered, I suspect you’re dangerous. I say that even though I’m the one with the gun.”
His little joke gets lost in all the rest. I’m too astonished, too hurt, by this bald accuracy. Naive? Insecure? Is that what my Paul thinks too?
The last part is the only one I can bring myself to talk about. “Dangerous?”
“You’re calm under pressure. Calmer than you should be.” Paul’s gaze rakes over me, as though his perception alone could scour me raw. “Maybe you did reach out to me by accident. But now you taunt me with this life I can never have—that’s either courage or madness. I don’t know which. All I know is that you’re not an ordinary girl. You’ve seen things others haven’t. Done things others couldn’t.”
I feel like I’m going to cry, but I won’t. Not in front of him, not now.
He sees my weakness, but doesn’t spare me the last: “You think your specialness makes you invulnerable. It doesn’t.”
With that Paul walks upstairs. His only goodbye is the door slamming shut.
18
DESPITE MY EXHAUSTION, I LIE AWAKE FOR WHAT SEEMS TO be a long time.
Paul thinks I’m pathetic. Ridiculous. Naive, and proud, and a hundred other things I never wanted to be.
Maybe that seems like a stupid thing to worry about, compared to the fact that I’m being held captive by armed mobsters. But I was relying on my knowledge of Paul to protect me here, and now it feels like that shield is gone.
He saw more in me after one day than I saw in him after months of his practically living at our house. Of course I already knew Paul was perceptive. One of the reasons I fell for my Paul was because he saw through all my defenses. Somehow he saw the real me, and he loved what he saw.
This Paul looks at me and sees weakness. Immaturity. Even danger.
Okay, I did set out to kill you once, but I had a good reason. Doubt he wants to hear that.
Whatever he’s seen, he doesn’t like it.
Maybe it was that splinter of my Paul inside him that knew so much. But that would be even worse. Does my Paul think all those things too? He can’t. Otherwise he couldn’t love me.
I imagine his soul within this Paul’s. If they influence each other, it won’t only be my Paul affecting him. Maybe this Paul’s contempt will carry over. Maybe my Paul will begin to think of me as insecure and arrogant. Maybe he’ll never see me the same way.
Even if I can put the three parts of Paul’s soul together again, he might never be the same.
Then I hear something from above—a low, heavy thud. Another. Like thunder, but not—
I jump as I hear loud popping, over and over, super fast. My first thought is of one of those little bundles of fireworks—but I know better. It’s gunfire.
Oh God, oh god ohgodohgod. What’s happening?
Forget what Paul said about the cot. I kick at one of the legs, and it collapses. If I can pry one of the poles free, that would at least be a weapon. Even with my hands tied, I can probably manage that.
The door swings open. The sound of gunfire goes from loud to deafening. I push myself into the corner, like that’s going to do any good. Paul comes downstairs toward me.
“Come on!” he shouts, grabbing my wrist. His grip is too tight, and the raw stripes on my skin beneath the zip tie sting. It doesn’t matter. I follow him, stumbling up the stairs.
I scream over the sound, “What’s happening?”
“You shouldn’t be here!”
Not an answer. But I agree with him.
None of the shooters are visible in the dark concrete corridor, but distant sparks suggest ricochets. The gunfire echoes so that the sound doubles on itself, disorienting me.
Paul pulls me forward, and we turn a corner—another—and now the fight seems farther away. The roar of guns has muted, only slightly, but enough that my ears stop ringing. Paul opens a door to reveal a large closet. “Get in.”
“What?”
“Get in!” he shouts. “You’re safer here.”
“How?”
Paul’s hand fists in my sweater. “My father would kill you rather than let you be taken. Do you understand?”
I wish I didn’t.
Terrified as I am, I try to use this moment. “Please. You have to untie my hands. What if someone else comes for me?” I hold up my bound wrists. “Please.”