The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us 3)

I was a terrible person.

I opened the door all the way, and he hesitated, then came inside. I glanced down the hall and locked the door behind him.

“Worrying about Anya, or something else?” I said quietly, trying to make up for what I’d just been thinking.

“That. And everything I told you in the tunnels. And—”

“Flashbacks from the hospital?” I asked, remembering my hunch. “Or from other stuff?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, actually. And—”

“What?”

“You.”

I was quiet. Yes, we’d been friendly earlier, but I didn’t want to hear that he was feeling this way because of anything to do with me. I didn’t want to feel better knowing he was in my room right now. I didn’t want to be looking at his mouth and realizing I’d been looking at it all day. I didn’t want to need him, even if it was just for purposes of distraction. I didn’t want him to need me at all.

“You make me feel too many things,” he said abruptly. He crossed to the window, pulling back the heavy curtain to look down at the street. “I had gotten good at blocking it all out. And ever since you got here, you’ve made me feel all these things, and some of them aren’t good.”

I couldn’t do anything but blink at him, taken aback. I felt my heart pounding in my bullet wound.

“I don’t mean it’s your fault.” He dropped the curtain and paced in front of the carved wooden armoire, both his hands in his hair. “I don’t know why I said that.”

I stood in the middle of the room, my feet cold on the brick floor. “But some of them are good?”

I didn’t know why I’d said that.

Stellan stopped pacing and looked up. He crossed the room in two long strides, taking my face between his hands, obviously warring with himself. The side of him that had nuzzled into me in the hospital because someone was showing him a tiny bit of kindness. The side that had been a huge pain since Jerusalem. The side that, when he couldn’t sleep, had decided the thing to do would be to come to my bedroom.

He let out a long, shaky breath. “Yes. Some of them are good.”

My hands found his chest. It was just about the hardest thing I’d ever done not to reach up and kiss him.

And then it wasn’t, because I was doing it. I was stretching up on my tiptoes and pulling him closer, and he responded so quickly, I knew he’d been about to do it himself if I hadn’t. There was no should-we, shouldn’t-we, no trying to pull away, no trying to stop.

That kiss for the Circle hadn’t counted. This, as far as my body could tell, was the second time we’d ever kissed. More deliberate than the first time. Much more complicated.

I wasn’t sure who led us to stumble across the room and onto the stiff sofa, and it didn’t matter. I didn’t know how I ended up with my knees on either side of his hips, my hands running through his hair, damp and smelling of unfamiliar soap.

I let myself get lost in it and my focus narrowed down: his lips—his hands—my skin. Just like it had after the bomb in Jerusalem: live-survive-escape. Just like after my mom—

Screams. Thundering of a stampede of footsteps out of the room, but too late. The metallic smell permeating that room, hands slick with blood.

The memory broke and I was left blinking at Stellan’s concerned face.

I pushed away. Stupid. What did I expect would happen if even thinking about kissing him triggered it?

His eyes shuttered. He dropped his hands from where they were tangled in my hair. “It’s okay. I’ll leave.”

I couldn’t even pretend. That’s how much of a lie it would have been. “No. Don’t.”

He rested his hands by his sides, his face wary, confused. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I rubbed both hands over my face. “I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

He gestured for me to go on.

“All the stuff I told you earlier. It doesn’t just make me feel weird about Lydia and Cole and my mom . . . It’s all tangled up in you. Us. Not that there is an us. I don’t mean—” I felt myself flush. This was a ridiculous conversation to be having anytime, but it was especially mortifying while I was straddling him. I continued in a rush, “Just the first time we did this, it was only a few days later—” I shrugged helplessly.

He linked his hands on top of his head and leaned back into the sofa. “Are you saying you think our kissing each other that night had something to do with what happened?”

“No. Of course not. I mean, not exactly,” I said, because he was right. That was crazy. “It’s just that if I’d been paying more attention those days”—I tried to explain—“or if I’d let my mom persuade me to leave the Circle . . .”

“Is this why—I thought—” Stellan’s hands moved tentatively back to my thighs, his thumbs making circles. “When we kissed at the Melechs’. Or when we were dancing, or anytime I hold your hand. You tense up. Is it because you associate that with . . .”

So he’d noticed. Of course he’d noticed.

I shrugged. But then I whispered, “I don’t know. Maybe. Yes.”

He looked off into the dark over my shoulder. “I’ll stop kissing you if you want. It doesn’t mean I have to leave. We could just talk.”

My fingers clenched in his shirt. My nails were ragged, one of them torn at an awkward angle. Every time I moved my left arm, my shoulder burned. I was exhausted. I should just go to sleep. I shouldn’t want to do anything that made me feel this panicky. What I should want and what I did want were annoyingly at odds right now. “No,” I said in a tiny voice. “Don’t. Please.”

His lips twitched up. “So are you using me for some kind of desensitization therapy, then?”