Page 66 of Never Lost (The Unchained #3)

Amid a sudden gust of snow, he reached for one of my curls and gently tucked it behind my ear, talking over the noise of the wind.

I swallowed, throat tight.

“Do you understand that none of this would exist without you?” he said.

“Our company wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be here.

Your dad wouldn’t be here. And we wouldn’t be here,” he added, still puzzling with my curl as if it were much more than a curl.

“It was you, Lou. You changed everything. For all of us.”

Tears blurred my vision again as I gazed up at him, hardly able to believe he was real. That any of what he was saying was real. Not me. Not Loulou, not privileged, naive, spoiled, ignorant— “I was just trying to do the right thing.”

“And I’m no expert, but I think that’s what bravery is.” He drew me closer, enveloping me. I inhaled him—I wasn’t sure whether it was my memory or his stop in Phoenix, but I could swear he still wore the trace of desert sage on his hair and clothes and lips.

After a long moment, he pulled back slightly, and as we walked, my head swirled, and I kept glancing over at him, drinking in the sight of that expensive coat hugging those broad shoulders.

He caught me looking and grinned. “I know. It’s surreal, isn’t it? No chains.”

I poked him. “ Not what I was thinking.” It was, actually, although maybe not quite in the same way.

He stared at the ground for a long second. “I wake up and feel them on me,” he said softly. “Most nights, in fact. And I still feel—” He swallowed. “Well, a lot of things I wish I didn’t. And that I’m afraid I’ll never un feel. And that it’ll never be easy.”

“Me too.” I bit my lip, looking away as he quickly rolled back his coat sleeve to reveal the number that used to be his name. Softly, I closed each one of my fingertips over it and squeezed. “You and I wouldn’t know what to do with easy.”

“Damn. That’s where I got that line. I knew it sounded familiar.”

A handful of snow flew past my face, and up ahead in the streetlight’s glow, I spotted a small group of children giggling and flinging handfuls of loose snow at each other—probably slaves, judging by the way they muffled their laughs and averted their eyes when they saw us coming, then darted into an alley without another word as if they hadn’t meant to be seen enjoying themselves.

“Milagros told me light is never lost,” I said. “So even when things feel useless, and impossible to ever fix,” I said softly, “Every single little thing we do is helping fix it for them. Someday.”

“Someday soon,” he said. “Thanks to you and your dad.”

“And Ethan,” I added, my throat tightening. “I hope. Someday soon.”

Shai’s eyes widened at the sound of the name. “Did you?—”

“Not yet.” I shook my head. “Still looking. Erica and Rebekah and Basia are all helping.”

“You’ll have my help, too, you know. We’ll find him,” he said, a statement of fact.

I swallowed and nodded. “Only Max knew for sure. And now?—”

“Ah, of course he did,” Shai said, shaking his head with a rueful laugh. “We still owe that man more than we can ever repay. I owe him more.” He looked up toward the sky. “And, Max, if you’re listening, I hope you enjoyed that because it’s the last time you’ll ever hear me say it.”

“Well?” I asked. “What are the chances he was listening?”

“From the sky? Unless he’s tailing us with a surveillance drone, almost zero, I’d say. I expect we’ll hear from him when he makes another fortune down in Rio Dulce. Or loses one. Or dies for real in a shootout with guerillas. It’s wide open.”

We continued our languid stroll, arms wrapped around each other, glows of headlights cutting through the falling snow as we crossed into the park, our footprints the only disturbance in the path stretching away into a tessellation of naked maples. “So now what?”

“Well,” he said, taking a deep, rattling breath.

“Now that I’m in Boston, I have a few things on my list. Look for a place to rent.

Enroll in university and start working on an actual degree.

I just applied, and I’ll start in the spring.

I think I could probably finish by next spring, but you know,” he added wryly. “They have their own timelines.”

“And the tuition?”

“Also the VC funding, at least for the first year. The university said I would qualify for a scholarship, but I told them to give the money to a former slave who doesn’t own a company.”

“Which school?” I wondered.

“One of the ones across the river. You’ve probably heard of it,” he said modestly.

“Any particular reason?”

“Well,” he said, “that brings me to the rest of my list.” He tugged me to a stop under a lamp, its soft yellow glow illuminating the funneling snow.

“See, there’s this girl I’ve been thinking about a lot in the past year.

Like, every goddamn day as it turns out.

” He seemed to alternate between gazing into my eyes and running his thumb against the fabric of my white wool coat as if to anchor himself to me.

“Whose dad, the day he picked me up from the airport in Phoenix, happened to casually mention that she goes to another school right down the road from here.”

I anxiously worked my hands inside his coat, finding warmth against the solid planes of his chest, that inverted V-shape of which I could see all the luscious contours in my mind’s eye. My heart pounded, anticipation rising in my throat. “And what are your plans for this girl?”

“Well, for one, I want to take her out on a date. The ridiculously clichéd kind where I pick her up at her door and bring her flowers. Where we go to dinner and I pull out her chair. Someplace in public where I can stare into her beautiful eyes for as long as I want and not give a fuck about who sees. Where I kiss her good night at her door and text her the next day. The kind I’ve always heard about. ”

I blushed, ducking my head. He tipped my chin back up with a gentle finger. Tears pricked my eyes. “That sounds perfect,” I whispered, practically vibrating.

“And then,” he continued, pulling me closer, “I want to spend every moment I can with her. Making up for all the ones we weren’t allowed.

Helping her study and bringing her coffee, not because I was ordered to but because I want to,” he added.

“Taking her on adventures where we don’t have to lie and scheme and dodge death.

Unless, of course, she wants that kind of adventure, because we can have those, too,” he added with a troublesome gleam.

“And then,” he continued, his voice dropping low in my ear, “I want to make love to her. Slowly, tenderly, worshiping every inch of her gorgeous body the way it deserves to be worshiped. No more counting clocks or banging on intercoms. I want to take hours, days even, to teach her things she’s never even thought of and learn everything that makes her gasp and moan and come undone in my arms.”

“Shai—”

“I know, but wait. Let me get this out, yeah?” He forged ahead. “I know she’s changed a lot, too, in the past year. So before any of that, I want to meet that girl and get to know her, too, and maybe—maybe, while I do that, she can see if she likes this version of me.”

I cocked my head. “What do you mean, this version of you?”

He blinked, and now it was his turn to be tongue-tied. “Well, I just thought that—well?—”

“Fucking hell, Shai, this is you,” I exclaimed. “This is the first time I’ve ever really met you. The you that I met over a year ago, well, it wasn’t really you . I mean, it was, but—well, you know what I mean.”

“Manny said I didn’t know how to be a person,” he blurted out, all of his silver-tongued romantic composure melting away in an instant. “And he was right. I didn’t. Or at least, I didn’t know the kind of person I wanted to be. And maybe that’s still true.”

“Why?”

“Because—” he stopped, shaking some hair out of his face in frustration.

“I know it’s ironic, but because there was freedom in that, Lou.

The only freedom I ever had. They told me I wasn’t a person, so I said, fine.

If I didn’t have a name, I’d never have to answer to anything, or anyone—except for my family, and once my sister was safe, I figured I never would again. ”

“But why did you want that?”

He sighed dolorously. “Maybe because—because—I’ve done a lot wrong.

I’ve lied. I’ve stolen. I’ve fucked up and fucked over.

I’ve hurt people. All for what I thought were the right reasons, but, well…

we know that’s what everyone thinks, yeah?

And so maybe I was afraid that if I chose to be a person, nobody would like that person.

Maybe even that I wouldn’t like him.” He looked down helplessly and kicked a thin, snow-dusted branch out of the way in torment.

He’d made biochemical breakthroughs, mounted reckless gambits and bold rescues, endured sadistic abuse, torture, and rape—and this was what the poor guy was struggling with: talking about himself. “Or that?—”

His voice was raw, breaking open like an old wound.

“Or that what?”

“That you wouldn’t like him.”

This actually stopped me dead. “What?”

“That if you—if you said my name, if you made me a person—that you wouldn’t like the person you made.”

“But—”

“Look, let me try to explain. You were the only person who ever made me feel like I was worth more than just my brains, more than just my schemes, more than just surviving.” He raced on ahead.

“And I was terrified of what that meant—that if I let myself love you, I’d have to learn how to be more than that.

I’d have to be someone who knew how to love, how to be loved.

I was afraid of what that would make me.

What it would take from me. What it would demand of me. I was afraid of you .”