It was Griffin whose loyalty I suspected now.
Was it possible she’d been the one responsible for betraying the Blackwater recruiters all those years ago as a means to get to the top of the pecking order? Was anyone really that narcissistic and power-hungry?
Cold dread settled heavily in my stomach at the very thought.
I prayed I was wrong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN A PLACE LIKE BLACKWATER, WHERE NO ONE really slept, there was always activity. So by the time we’d reached the heart of the camp, the darkness that stretched far into the desert had been replaced by strategically placed floodlights that made it almost as bright as daytime.
It was as if night never even existed.
When we reached the cafeteria, Nyla dragged me to a halt. “When Dakota brings your friend out, you’ll join them and she’ll take you back to your tent.” I assumed Dakota was the girl who’d shuttled Natty away after our showers.
“Don’t worry, I’ll work this out.” Simon was quiet when he spoke. “You won’t have to stay under guard much longer. I promise.”
I was just about to tell him I wasn’t ready for him to go, not quite yet, when Griffin’s voice pierced my newfound calm seeing Simon again had given me. “You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“Are you kidding me?” I exhaled dramatically before facing Griffin. I felt like a kid caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I hoped this didn’t mean I’d lose the small freedoms I’d been allowed so far.
Griffin emerged from the tent maze, her attention not directed on me or Simon, but on Nyla. She looked thoroughly hacked. “I knew when I couldn’t find her”—she indicated me when she said that—“that he’d be involved.” This time she gave just the slightest nod of her head toward Simon. “But I never suspected you,” she reprimanded Nyla, her eyes narrowing, and she looked dangerous when she said it. The kind of dangerous that made my skin pebble all over with stiff goose bumps.
“Griffin, don’t blame her. This was all my idea.” Simon stepped in front of Nyla to explain, and I was thinking it wouldn’t matter what he said because Nyla had betrayed Griffin—a real betrayal, not the made-up kind she’d accused Willow of, either. There was no way she was letting Nyla off the hook for this.
But then something happened, and suddenly none of those things mattered.
Suddenly everything changed, at least for me they did.
It was the laugh that did it.
I had to reach for Simon in order to stay on my feet, because all at once my legs were unreliable, like I was standing on stilts I had yet to master. The sensation of guilt over getting caught with Nyla and Simon turned to something else entirely as it spread, prickling my skin everywhere and making every tiny hair on my body stand at full alert.
My heart stopped—like stop-stopped—and I waited for it to start again, the same way I waited to hear that sound, the laugh, for what seemed like forever and a day. And when I finally did, when I heard it, my heart not only started to beat once more, it pounded.
Thud-thud, thud-thud, thud-thud . . . beating so freaking hard I almost gasped.
Simon looked down at me, and I wasn’t sure if I saw sadness in his copper eyes, or if he was asking for an explanation I couldn’t offer, while inside hope was struggling to the surface.
All around us, people like us, other Returned, were doing the things they did—training for whatever Griffin told them they were training for, running in their symmetrical clusters, talking to one another, eating, and some of them, somewhere, were probably even managing to sleep.
Yet I was here, living in my own world. Trapped in a bubble. Caught between states of disbelief and hope so overpowering they threatened to smother me.
So far, all I had was that laugh, but it wasn’t enough to prove anything.
I took a step forward because I needed to know if it was him or if I’d only imagined it.
I turned toward the sound, but one of the floodlights was shining right in my face, and it was blinding me. All I could make out were several hazy outlines. It was enough to know that there was more than one person, and that they were almost to us now.
But I no longer cared about anyone else, because when the shadowy figures became clear, my grip on Simon’s arm tightened.
I saw him then. Undeniably.
I saw the way his green eyes squinted and his dimple creased his cheek as his eyes fell on Griffin.
“Tyler.” I croaked the word, and it barely made it past my lips, but it was the sweetest, most magnificent word I’d ever uttered, and suddenly the past twenty-three days melted away.
The last time I’d seen him, he’d been covered head-to-toe in pustules that had made it too painful to even touch him. He’d been blind and taking his very last breath.
This Tyler, though, the one standing before me now, was so incredibly-breathtakingly-irrefutably beautiful all I could do was stare. I took him in, and I felt myself come alive. It was as if I had just been returned all over again, seeing him standing there, alive. Whole.
Safe.
He stopped where he was, his feet planted on a patch of dry grass. There were so many expressions that passed over his face in those split seconds that there was no way I could catch them all. I totally understood how he felt. It was exactly what I was feeling too, finding him here of all places—confusion, shock, doubt, curiosity, relief.
“Tyler,” I said again, only this time it was louder as I let go of Simon, and I knew I was for sure going to cry in front of everyone.