Page 62 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

HER

W ell, it was late November again, and this was college now.

Forget the frat parties and coordinated pink dorm furniture I’d imagined at a simpler, sillier time.

When I wasn’t poring over my notes for biochemistry or behavioral psychology, it was now clandestine abolitionist meetings, long hours in the science library, and aprons sodden with spilled vanilla milk.

But also late nights in the apartment guzzling bubbly, attempting to learn to cook (Rebekah wasn’t much better, to my relief), and watching movies—not all of them intellectually deep—with Rebekah.

Three mornings a week, I took the Red Line to the South End, where I learned to wash away blood, dry tears, and never ask.

Most of the time, I left feeling powerless in the face of the kind of injustice it felt impossible to ever move the needle on, but to be fair, so did everyone else there, and when I went home on the subway, I felt both supremely alone and profoundly tuned in. And I didn’t regret a thing.

One night in November, we watched a live news feed on Rebekah's laptop while curled on the sofa, one in which her mother, all poise and polish and pantsuits, declared:

“Struggling families deserve support as much as the rich. A home helper, a caregiver, a strong set of hands. And slaves deserve to live stable, calm, industrious lives. Lives that prevent tragedies like the one in the mine in Pennsylvania. My plan ensures dignity, security, and order—for everyone.” Bunched on a set of bleachers behind her, a crowd of faces, adults and children, hanging on her every word, jiggling signs reading: Vote Elizabeth Roth for Senate — A Slave for Every Family!

Rebekah watched in silence, her expression unreadable.

“You okay?”

She didn't look away from the screen. “You ever feel like you’re a ghost in your own life?”

Later that same night, out on the balcony, I passed her the joint. She passed me her sweater. We didn’t talk about the speech, but it hung between us anyway, just like the cold, and the smoke curling into the dark.

“I didn't think this was how it would be, either," I said. Rebekah closed her laptop and passed back the joint—which, unashamedly, really did help my anxiety more than anything else I’d tried—and we both watched Brighton, its lights bouncing off the weathered brownstone, hidden lanes and alleys twisting away toward the river, hiding its murky secrets and revealing its ceaseless brilliance.

Rebekah exhaled, and I nudged her shoulder with mine. “Hey. You’re right where you’re supposed to be. We both are. Maybe it’s not perfect, but you said so yourself. What we’re doing—it matters.”

It was a lie. Because Rebekah and I, we were just the same. I’d thought he was the ghost.

But maybe I was. Because here I was, reaching for something I couldn’t touch, haunting a life that wasn’t mine anymore.

Because whenever I had a blank, a field, a void—whether on an electronic device or in my own mind—I entered it in: my eternal question.

My god particle, my universal story. Sought it, dreamed about it, ached for it, closed my eyes and grew toward it.

While drawing a clumsy heart on top of a cappuccino or while jerking my lolling head off the open pages of my textbooks.

In every empty moment of the day, and in all the hollow spaces of the night.

Where are you?

“That reminds me,” said Rebekah, and I raised my head with a start. “Rowan from the clinic asked about you the other day.”

“The med student?” During breaks while volunteering, I’d chatted with him a bit, mostly about the clinic. Mostly.

“Yeah,” said Rebekah. “He’s cute. And he cares. He’s not just virtue signaling, like some of them.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “You’re right. But?—”

“It’s okay,” said Rebekah, handing back the joint. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

And we both turned back to the view.

The front door was stuck again. I shouldered it open, juggling two iced lattes and a bag of dry noodles, the kind Rebekah pretended to turn up her nose at but always slurped up anyway when we were too tired or lazy to cook, which was often, even though we both said we had to learn.

“Bex?” I called, kicking off my shoes.

No answer.

Then I saw the chain on the table.

Heavy, scuffed metal. Thick links. The kind you attach to a slave's restraints to drag them along.

I froze, one hand on the coffees, the other on the bag, and just… stared.

“Lou.”

Her voice came from the sofa. Low, steady. The way she sounded when she was trying not to lose it.

I turned.

Rebekah sat ramrod straight, fists clenched on her knees. Beside her was a boy.

No, not a boy.

A young man.

As a teen, I'd only seen him from a distance a couple of times.

But here he was, still in gray detention scrubs, larger and stronger and taller than I'd pictured, muscles tauter from years of hard labor, his hair longer, thick and dark and tangled.

His face ashen and bruised, his expression thunderous.

The kind of furious that comes from being pushed past breaking again and again.

From expecting to be dead long ago and half-resenting that he wasn't. His ankles were chained, the cuffs clearly tight enough to bite into his raw skin.

He had red marks on his neck and face, ones I recognized now—they'd collared and muzzled him at one point, too.

He was still breathing raggedly from whatever ordeal he'd just been through.

All in all, he resembled a rabid animal about to be put down, except—his eyes.

In fact, it was only his eyes that I’d had right. Golden green, like dappled leaves in summer sunlight. Bex had described them perfectly.

The bag of noodles hit the floor.

No one moved.

“I had to,” she explained. “They were going to terminate him. Publicly. As an example after the uprising in the mine.”

“Does your mom know about —”

“She gave me the money,” she said. Money ?

Then I remembered watching Rebekah get ready that morning, more conservative than usual in her tweed jacket and tortoiseshell hair clip, saying she had to attend an economics lab downtown on “corporate procurement models,” which I realized now was her euphemism for a discount slave auction at the detention center.

But bored already and rushing off to class myself, I’d thought little of it.

“But how?—”

“After I fed her some bullshit about how executions are barbaric and that showing mercy to the ringleader of the uprising would boost her progressive image.” She took a deep breath.

“And?”

“And that I could reform him. Turn him into a good slave. One who can be given to a family in need.”

A slave for every family. It seemed that in the two of them, I was looking at the pilot program. But for some reason, when I looked at them, none of the words that came to mind were dignity, security, or order .

More like chaos .

Meanwhile, his lip curled. “She bought me.” His voice was low, but not quiet. “That’s what you people do, right? Throw money at a problem to make it go away?”

“I saved you,” she snapped. “The least you could do is?—”

“Be grateful,” he finished, jerking his chains dramatically. “Right. Although I can’t help but think gratitude might come a little easier if you weren’t the one who got me thrown in there to begin with ?”

I swallowed hard and glanced again at the shackles she hadn’t taken off him.

She followed my gaze. “I don’t have the key,” she said apologetically.

“She doesn’t want the key,” he said, as a slow, sardonic, almost satisfied grin spread across his face. “She’s afraid of me. Afraid I’ll take my revenge .”

“Shut up,” she seethed at him.

“Yes, miss,” he growled at her.

With that, she rose and stepped between us. “Louisa,” she said with a resigned flourish. “Meet Riven.”

He nodded at me. “Charmed,” he said. “And don't call me that.”

Much as the idea of forcing them to share one bed their first night delighted me, in the end, I let Riven have my room.

Most nights, I didn’t sleep there anyway, because going to bed felt like giving up.

Instead, I lay on the wicker balcony sofa, furry blanket draped over me, got high, and watched the stars go blue.

Maeve was right. You were supposed to be here, at the end. And in the beginning. And in every line in between.

If Rebekah's had returned, against all odds, even vengeful, even as her enemy—then so could mine.

So could all of them.

I recited it again. My litany. My paean. My matin and my evensong. My list. My lost.

Max Langer.

Ethan Wainwright-Phillips.

And—