Joan Undone

Chapter 46

My friends eventually retreat to their beds, exhausted by the day. My face is tight and sore, which keeps me awake.

I head to the bathroom to get my first good look at my wound. A long, red gash extends from the corner of my right eye down to my jaw. The skin is puckered and pulls down on my eye.

My chilly fingertips feel good on my tender skin. It feels profoundly right to have a permanent mark from the worst day of my life on my face, to remind me every day of the people I've lost and the mistakes I've made. An echo on my face of the scar on my heart, which goes much deeper and hurts so much more.

"You're beautiful," Justus says softly, and my eyes move from my reflection to his.

He watches my reaction. Until now, I hadn't thought about whether this scar makes me ugly. Somehow, I can't see it that way. It tells a truth about who I am and where I've been.

"It suits me."

Justus steps directly behind me and wraps his arms around my waist, his eyes never leaving mine. "I'm not going to pretend anymore."

I turn in his arms so that I can stare into his eyes for real. Even a reflection doesn't do them justice.

"I'm in love with you, and I'm not going to move on."

I want to give Justus his words back, but they are not entirely true. "I'm in love with you, too, Justus. I'll never feel for anyone else the way I do for you. But I think I loved Nic, too, and didn't figure it out until I lost him. Maybe in time, at least a part of my heart would have moved on."

Justus puts his forehead on my shoulder, so I can't read his eyes or expression. "I know why you loved him. He was so much more than I gave him credit for. I think you should know how he died."

My hands shake with anticipation and fear. "Tell me."

"After I helped my dad release the gas in the Chrysalis, I left to join the Evolved police when they went in after you. But two of Crew's Deans found me in the street and hit me with something hard. I blacked out and woke up in this run-down office inside the Space Needle. Crew had tied a plastic wire around my neck and would pull me along with him like a dog. It was embedded with lasers, like the whips the police officers use. At night, he'd tie me up in his office."

My eyes jump to his neck. There is a faint pink line that the incubator couldn't fully heal. "He tortured you."

Justus doesn't look up. "Crew would punish me by activating the lasers in the cord around my neck, which hurt worse than anything else I've ever felt. Rob and Joseph and some of the others liked to keep it primitive. One night when Crew wasn't around, they beat me so badly that they broke some of the bones in my hand and ankle. I wanted to die."

My breath catches in my throat, and I squeeze him closer.

"Yesterday morning, Crew came for me, and I thought he was finally ready to kill me. By then, I didn't want to live. He told me to take off my shoes, but my hand was useless and my ankle was broken, so I couldn't manage it. He told someone else to do it. I thought it was one of his team, but it was Nic. I thought he was betraying us all. That he was the spy Elizabeth warned us about. I screamed at him. Spit in his face."

My whole body goes tense, and I suck in a breath of air like I'm about to be dunked under water.

Justus's breathing is shallow. "But then he asked me to take care of you. And to let you take care of me. I didn't understand what he was doing until he put my shoes on. Then I knew he was taking my place. I started fighting him. I swear to you I would never have let him die for me. But Crew injected me with something, and I was knocked out within seconds. When I woke up, Mason was driving me back to the Lab in our van. I failed you, and Nic, and myself. He's dead because of me."