She puts her hands up to stop my apology. “Locke, I’m fine, but I can’t take a chance on getting caught here in a freak early freeze. They still can’t predict these things precisely—the weather can have a mind of its own. And Kayla does need me, but for another week or two I’ll be all right.” Her sky blue eyes fix on mine for a few seconds before she turns and goes into the kitchen, and I feel a strange twist in my gut. It had always been Jenna I loved. It was Jenna I was trying to hurry and live for, to catch up to her three lifetimes.

I walk to the kitchen doorway and watch her. She rinses a few dishes by hand, out of habit I suppose. Some things from our past we just can’t leave behind. Her hair is still the beautiful silky blond it always was, still seventeen on the outside, even though there are lifetimes hiding on the inside. She’s still the Jenna I always loved.

I walk up behind her and touch her arm. She turns to look at me. She would never let me kiss her before. Will she now?

“Jenna…”

She looks at me, confused. “What is it, Locke?”

I step closer to her, looking at her face, her eyes, her lips, all the memories of Jenna that I held on to when I was trapped in that hopeless world for so many years. For decades. Every eyelash that I counted to keep from going insane. Her hands, the slant of her nose, the way her hair fell across her shoulders, the glimmer of each blond strand in my imagined sunlight, the sound of her voice, every ripple of laughter I ever remembered played over and over again to mask the screams of Kara. Every memory of Jenna that helped keep me alive.

“I have to know, Jenna. Once and for all.”

She exhales a slow deep breath. “Yes, I think you probably do.” She reaches up and touches my cheek, pulling me closer, kissing me. Her lips linger on mine. I feel their softness, her tenderness, her warmth.

Slowly, I pull my lips away from hers.

Jenna.

But the reality isn’t the same as the dream. It’s different now. She’s not the same girl I knew. I hear her words again … None of us are who we once were. How is it that she knew this all along, but I didn’t? I do love her, but not in the way I thought I did. Not in the way I had always imagined. Our lives race past me. All the times before. All the times with Kara when we were three. We held hands. We crossed a line. We made one another braver. All the things that Jenna meant to me at a certain time in my life.

I search her face, not knowing what to say. “I—”

“I know. I love you too, Locke. There’s a bond between us that won’t ever be broken. But I don’t love you in the same way I loved Ethan.” She squeezes my hand. “And you don’t love me in the same way that you love Raine.”

I close my eyes. Hearing her say it out loud unhinges something inside of me I had locked away. I was afraid to even think it or believe it, much less say it. I have nothing to offer Raine. No life. Not even—

I blink, not sure I can even say it now. “Raine’s not like me. She’s different.”

Jenna shakes her head, biting the corner of her lip. She knows exactly what I’m talking about. “There’s nothing wrong with different, Locke. Get over your BioPerfect. Get over the technology. Get over it. Focus on what you have. She’s like you in the ways that matter.”

I see Raine’s eyes, glistening, looking into mine, wondering if my world could be her world. I remember the ache of wanting it to be so but saying nothing, hurting her, pushing her away with my silence.

The way I love Raine.

I need to tell her.

True Character

Wispy clouds cross the moon, thick cottony threads trying to become more, a new season trying to make its way into Boston. How many times did I ignore these subtle clues when I lived here before?

Raine is like me in the ways that matter. I learned that detail by detail, night after night, hour after hour, as one conversation rolled into the next, as time got away from us because we always had more to say. The devil isn’t in the details. Raine is. She’s every detail that inhabits my waking hours, and my sleeping hours too. Every step, thought, and breath of my day leads back to her.

As I pass the park, it’s quiet. Whatever Security Forces crawled through it yesterday are gone now, and any evidence they found was packed up with them. How much of my BioPerfect did they scrape up from the ground in the park? How much did I leave behind, dripped in a blue trail through the tunnels?

I’m making it, step by step, block by block, standing straight, not hunched, counting my breaths until I see Raine. My hair is perfectly tousled over my eye to cover a cut that the paint wouldn’t, my clothing loose and baggy to cover bandages, no excuse in mind yet for the gashes on my lip and cheekbone that still show. But none of that really matters to me now as much as seeing Raine and telling her the things I should have said before.

I’m early. A full forty minutes early. If the Secretary wants to haul me off to his office for another impromptu grilling session, I want to make sure there’s still time to talk alone with Raine before the others come.

This time when I step out of the elevator, I’m greeted by Raine.

She looks at my face and then down at my hands, registering how much I’ve healed in just one day. I see the distance in her eyes. She wants to ask about my rapid recovery but then that would mean she cares. She’s still angry. “Why are you here so early?” she asks instead. “I haven’t even—”

I kiss her. She hesitates for only a second. “Someone might see—” but then her fingers are sliding along my chest, wrapping around my neck, sliding behind my head, through my hair, pulling me close. My hands gently cup her face, Raine, pulling her closer, sorry that I ever pushed her away, but finally that’s what I have to do again, and I pull back. She takes a deep breath, her cheeks flushed.