Chapter 80 80
Annabeth's POV:
I finished packing. Zipped the bag. Looked around my room one more time at the desk where I'd spent hundreds of hours studying, the bed where I'd had the nightmares, the window I used to stare out of wondering why my eyes did weird things in the dark. The closet door was open and I could see my blue dress, the one I'd worn to some school dance sophomore year. It still had the tag from the dry cleaners pinned to the hanger.
I turned off the light and went downstairs.
The kitchen was empty. Kaelen had left a note on the counter in his terrible handwriting: "went to grab stuff from the house, back before 8, don't leave without me", with a smiley face that looked more like a deformed potato. I almost laughed.
He'd gone back to his place, the one Marcus said was compromised, to get whatever he had left there. Clothes, probably. Maybe things for Marlen and Lucian that weren't in the motel bags. I didn't love the idea of him going alone to a house the Order knew about, but he'd been doing this longer than me and he knew how to be fast.
He was back by seven-thirty. I heard his car pull up and then the front door, and he came into the kitchen with a backpack over one shoulder, slightly out of breath, smelling like cold air.
"Anything?" I asked, meaning trouble.
"Nothing. In and out, five minutes." He dropped the backpack next to my duffel. "Got Lucian's charger from his room, some of Marlen's stuff. My place looked the same, just... empty."
He didn't say more than that and I didn't push it. He'd cleaned up the food from earlier while I was upstairs, put the Tupperware in the fridge, wiped down the counter. Now he was leaning against the sink with his arms crossed, and when he looked at me it was the way he'd been looking at me since the porch on Thanksgiving. Like I was something he couldn't believe was real.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No." I dropped the bag by the door. "My aunt cried. I made my aunt cry on the phone and then hung up on her."
"You didn't hang up on her."
"Fine, I said goodbye and then hung up, which felt exactly the same." I rubbed my face with both hands. "Is this what it's always been like for you? Every time you leave somewhere?"
He was quiet for a second.
"Yeah. Pretty much."
"How do you do it?"
"You don't get used to it, if that's what you're asking. You just get faster at packing."
I laughed, this short, not-really-funny sound. He unfolded his arms and held one hand out toward me. Not grabbing, not pulling. Just offering.
I crossed the kitchen and took it. His fingers closed around mine, warm the way they always were, and he tugged me closer until I was standing right in front of him, my sneakers touching his boots on the kitchen tile.
"Hey," he said.
"Hey."
"We're going to be okay."
"You don't know that."
"No. But I'm saying it anyway because it's what you need to hear right now, and honestly it's what I need to say." He brought our joined hands up between us. "I've run from six different towns in five years. I've packed bags at midnight and driven until the gas ran out and slept in the car with Marlen and Lucian in the backseat. And every single time I thought, this is it, this is the one where we don't make it."
"Kaelen—"
"But we did. Every time." He looked at me and his eyes had that gold ring, the one I could only see when he was feeling something strong. "And this time is better than all of those because this time I have you, and you're the scariest person I've ever met."
"I'm scary?"
"Annabeth, you set a man on fire with your bare hands during a rescue mission. You terrify me."
I smiled. A real one, not the kind I'd been faking all day. He saw it and something in his face softened, this tension he'd been carrying since Marcus showed up melting off him.
"Come here," he said, and pulled me into his chest.
I went. Pressed my face into that spot between his shoulder and his neck where I fit perfectly, which was ridiculous and cheesy and I didn't care. His arms wrapped around my back and mine went around his waist and we stood there in my aunt's kitchen holding onto each other while the clock on the microwave ticked toward eight.
I could feel his heartbeat against my cheek, steady and strong and a little fast, and through the bond there was this warmth that wasn't just temperature. It was him. All of him, everything he felt, pouring through that connection we shared.
I tilted my head back and kissed him. Just once, firm, my hand on the side of his jaw. Not a goodbye kiss. More like a this-is-what-I'm-fighting-for kiss, the kind that says I'm here and I'm not going anywhere and if the Order wants me they're going to have to go through both of us.
He kissed me back the same way. Solid. Certain. His hand on the back of my neck, his thumb tracing that spot behind my ear that made my knees do stupid things.
When I pulled back his eyes were open, gold all the way through now.
"Promise me something," I said.
"Anything."
"When this is over, when we're done running and the Order is gone or dead or whatever has to happen... take me somewhere boring. Like, incredibly boring. A strip mall. A Denny's. One of those towns where nothing ever happens and the biggest news is someone's dog getting loose."
He laughed. This real, surprised laugh that I felt in his chest under my hands.
"A Denny's."
"With the sticky menus and the coffee that tastes like sadness. I want to sit in a booth and argue about pancakes and have the most boring, uneventful, completely normal Saturday morning of my entire life."
"I promise," he said. And the way he said it, quiet and serious underneath the laughing, I believed him. "Denny's. Sticky menus. Bad pancakes. The whole thing."
"Good."
"Can I get a Grand Slam?"
"You can get whatever you want."
"Even the milkshake?"
"Kaelen."
"Right. Serious moment. Sorry."
I pressed my forehead against his. The bond hummed between us, warm, solid, steady. Not the bleeding-wound thing it had been a month ago, not the terrifying wide-open flood from the porch. Just this constant low current that said I'm here, you're here, and that's enough.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn't look at it but we both knew who it was.
"Eight o'clock?" I asked.
"Yeah."
I stepped back. Picked up my bag. Took one last look at the kitchen, the fridge with the takeout menus held up by magnets, the chipped coffee mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST NIECE that Sarah had bought me as a joke, the window above the sink where she grew herbs that she always forgot to water.
"Okay," I said. "Let's go."
I walked out the front door and didn't look back. Not because I didn't want to, but because if I did I'd see the porch light my aunt always left on for me and I wouldn't be able to leave.
Kaelen locked the door behind us. The spare key went under the mat where it always lived, just in case. Just in case Sarah came home and needed to get in. Just in case we came back someday and needed a way inside.
Marcus's car was already running at the curb, headlights off, engine idling. His silhouette behind the wheel, still and patient and probably calculating seventeen different escape routes in his head.
I got in Kaelen's car. Passenger seat. My bag in the back. The dashboard clock said 7:58.
Two minutes early. Marlen would appreciate that.