Escape Read Free

a very real possibility that he was in fact dead and that the compound was nothing other than a purgatory of sorts—some halfway nightmare place he’d been consigned to until they’d made up his room for him inheaven. But when he’d opened his eyes and seen Gaia’s face just inches from his own, sprawled out in the dirt by that highway. . . that was the first time he’d truly believed that he wasn’t dead. That was when he knew she was no longer the imagined Gaia of his dreams or his memories. She was the real Gaia, with that lightly freckled, delicately chiseled face that no memory could possibly do justice to. Every time he saw her again, it was like waking up from a dream.
    â€œAre you okay?” Gaia whispered, closing the door behind her and locking it.
    â€œI’m fine,” Sam replied. “Why?”
    â€œYou just looked weird. I thought it was your back again.”
    â€œNo, my back is fine,” Sam assured her. “No pain today. No pain at all.” Sam had paused for a moment to breathe her in completely, when he suddenly realized that Gaia was the one who looked strange. Every muscle in her face had tensed up, not to mention her fidgeting fingers and her tapping right heel. “Are you okay?”
    â€œNo,” she said absentmindedly, looking back toward the door. “No, I’m not.”
    Sam was struck by a powerful impulse to wrap his arms around her. So he slid a pair of his wrinkled khaki pants on over his boxers and sat down in the chair next to the bed.
    This was basically the system he’d been using since being hidden away in her apartment. It was an incrediblysimple system, really. Every time his body ached to get closer to her, he stepped farther away. Because he didn’t know what else to do. Because there was no book called How to Come Back from the Dead and Rekindle a Romance. Hell, Sam wasn’t even sure there was a romance to rekindle. Things had been such a disastrous mess between them before he had. . . “died.” They’d had nothing but miscommunication and arguments for weeks, all thanks to the torture Josh Kendall had put him through. Gaia and Sam had broken up with almost nothing left to salvage of their relationship. But now. . .
    Now Josh was dead. Now Loki was a vegetable in some hospital bed somewhere—talk about poetic justice. Yes, they were both basically dead, and Sam was alive. Now had almost nothing to do with then. It was as if the earth’s clock had been set back to before Sam’s “death.” And as far as Sam was concerned, if they could set the clock back to before his death, well, then why not set the clock back just a little further? Set it back to before Sam had ever met Josh Kendall. To before Gaia’s uncle had begun to sink his claws into Sam. Set it back to when he and Gaia were just in love. When there was nothing dangerous about being in love.
    The only question was, did Gaia want to set the clock back that far? Even if she did want to, was she ready to? Sam couldn’t tell. He could certainly tell thatshe was maintaining a certain degree of distance from him, but she could have been doing it for so many different reasons. After all, if you’d already seen someone disappear, it must be awfully hard to believe they might not disappear again. You couldn’t have love without trust. And how could you trust a man who’d al ready up and died on you once?
    All Sam knew was that he wasn’t going to rush anything. He was prepared to carry on in this isolated, untouched, infantilized, incubator-prison world of awkwardness. Just as long as he saw her every single day.
    â€œWell, what’s wrong?” Sam asked. “What’s going on?”
    â€œIt’s my father. . . ,” Gaia began, and then she trailed off. From out of absolute nowhere a tear had appeared on her cheek. She dumped her bag on the floor and crouched down