Page 63 of The Last Love Story

A sharp gash cuts right over his lip, drawing blood.

The tip of his tongue darts out, licking the trickling red drop as he slowly turns back to look at me, his expression flat, even as the skin pinks with my force. The rest of his face goes sickly pale.

My chest heaves with rage, hurt, and—though I don’t want to admit it—fear.

He’s right. If I can’t convince Callum, our democracy is dead. What if I don’t mean as much to him as I think? As I hope?

How much of how I feel about him is based on memory? On the story I wove out of desperation? If he doesn’t feel about me the way I feel about him, we could all die.

“Three days,” Hux says finally. “The Machs will give you three days to convince Callum to defect. Or we kill President Graves and anyone else who gets in our way.”

Hux doesn’t move his face, but bounces his eyes to Uriah, who I feel behind me.

“Lyceum agrees to the terms,” Uriah booms. There is a murmur of agreement and the sound of boots and shuffling on concrete—the meeting is adjourned. But neither Hux nor I move.

“Anyone?” I whisper through clenched teeth.

Hux’s eyes flicker, but he blinks the emotion away. “Anyone,” he answers finally, and I understand what he means.

Even me.

My room feels even more empty without my books, but I can’t be alone with my thoughts, so I finally give in and turn on the screens. There’s no way to turn on just one, and I’m not going to call for help. With my luck, they would send Hux.

I look down at my hand, the one that slapped him. As I stretch and flex my fingers, the diamond glitters obscenely.

I can’t get the sight of Hux’s angry expression out of my mind. The way he shoved himself to his feet when I stepped onto the creaking scaffold, like he was stopping himself from rushing toward me and checking to see if I was okay.

Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I’m trying to balance out thegood kissercomment by pretending he cares in ways he doesn’t. Maybe that’s been our relationship, these past eight years. Me finding hints and clues that he cares about me, and him telling me, time and time again, that he doesn’t even want to be my friend.

I shut my eyes and make myself breathe.

“At the top of the hour,” comes the AI broadcaster’s voice, “our main story is the attack on Callum Graves and his fiancée, Ripley Hart, as they surveyed the ravaged Alaskan coastline in search of the last wild polar bear on the planet, Marcy.”

There are shots of us, and I watch myself lean against him. My hair gets in my face, and I push it away. This was the moment I was telling him aboutThe Lord of the Rings.I was so self-conscious about talking too much that I didn’t really look at Callum. But now I can see him, eyes dancing as he watches me ramble.

I step closer to the screen, entranced by him. By how he looks at me.

He reaches up, pushing my hair behind my ear. I didn’t even realize he did that—I must have been talking about Weathertop or something and was too lost in the story to notice.

But the way he looks at me—how did I not notice?

“The two lovebirds were seen holding each other as they watched the hopeful scene of our beautiful and brave Marcy, no doubt talking about how future policy changes could save our wildlife. With President Graves expected to announce massive environmental initiatives at the Union Conference next week, there’s no doubt much for the couple to discuss—”

The camera zooms in on my face, just as Callum and Inearly kissed, and from this angle it looks like our lips are meeting, and on screen my eyes are fluttering closed as if in ecstasy. If Callum looks lovesick, I look terminal.

I hit the button on the table next to the bed, letting the screen go dark.

Propaganda princess,Hux’s voice echoes in my ear.

I fall into the bed and stare at the ceiling and try to ignore how my fingers keep flexing, trying to rid themselves of the electric-like buzzing that’s been humming under my skin since my skin touched his.

Chapter 15

I don’t know if there’s a good time to find out you’re claustrophobic, but there’s definitely a bad time. And it’s right now, as I’m about to be loaded into a submarine in front of a wall of cameras.

We were up before dawn again. I thought maybe the PR team would give us a breather after our literal assassination attempt, but it seems that the Union Conference waits for no one. Kaleb and his team primped and prodded me while I was still blinking sleep from my eyes, chugging down a coffee that was shoved into my hands by an unknown force. Then we were in a hovercopter, dropping down onto the cement face of a helipad that rests on top of a research rig off the coast of Vermont.

It’s not until I’m leaning against the rusted orange metal bars, frigid air whipping against my navy windbreaker, that I fully realize what we’re doing. Below us, riggers andengineers prep a giant metal tube, its back just barely cresting the blue-gray water.