The clock by the bed read 2:00 a.m. when I finally sat up in my hotel room, rolling my head to stave off the whisper of a headache. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't turn off my brain.

I walked over to the window, pulling the curtains aside to provide a view of the woods behind the hotel, illuminated with an eerie glow by the full moon deep on the horizon. A flash of yellow eyes met mine, some night creature prowling the woods, looking for its dinner.

But it was gone before I could make out its form in the shadows.

I wanted to talk to my brother, to ask his advice. But he was asleep in his old bedroom, with Piper by his side, five floors above my head. Mom and John were up there too, in their own room. I didn't want to risk texting him, lest the sound reverberated through the open floor plan and woke the wrong people.

Because I knew now what I had long suspected. I didn't trust my mother to help me. Alexei was already putting his plan into motion; he'd already approached Jin. And if I wouldn't help him build the ICDs, then it wouldn't be hard to find somebody else to do it—not now that Alexei had all the information he'd gathered in the future.

In her letter to me, Mom had called Alexei her "friend," and that meant he was John's friend too. I knew John was susceptible to that charming Russian, with his money and his power. John had always been the first chess piece to fall. It was funny to think how much Sage and the others had worshipped him in high school. They'd all looked up to him, followed him anywhere. Sage especially. I couldn't blame her. She'd been a kid at the time—a kid with a crush. I blushed, even now, standing alone in that dark room, remembering what that was like.

But when push came to shove, John turned out to be the weakest one of them all. He'd handed the keys to Down World to Alexei, enamored by the idea of who he could become with all that power. He'd sold out his friends. He'd betrayed Sage, with my mother's help.

My mother—who had become Alexei's lover in the dark world under the lake. She saw what he was, and she went to his bed anyway. She went to his bed because of it.

I wouldn't trust them now. Not when Alexei was at it again.

Could I stop him now? Tonight? Before it was too late? Sage said Adam had been arrested breaking into the botanic gardens. I knew which ones she meant—the gardens were an estate with a large house in the middle that was almost like a castle. A rich man had originally owned the property, and in the world under the lake, that man had been John.

So maybe in this world, that man was Alexei. That would explain why Sage had a drawing of a large garden in the room below her restaurant. Maybe she'd been doing her own work to stop Alexei. Maybe I wasn't barking up the wrong tree by going to her after all.

The gardens weren't far away; they would be the perfect location for Alexei to stay near my mother, near enough that they could rendezvous at night at a place she could easily sneak off to. A place like...like the lake cabin.

I thought of the smoke rising from George's chimney. Someone was in there right now, plotting. Someone was making the wheels turn. What if it was him?

I looked to my left, to the room next door where I knew Kieren was sleeping. I threw a sweater on over my T-shirt and slipped my feet into my sneakers. Then I headed into the hallway, my arm braced to knock on his door.

But I stopped before I could do it, and my hand fell gently by my side instead.

I sighed, letting my head bob with indecision. It was the middle of the night. If I knocked on Kieren's door, he would think it meant something else. Something I wasn't ready to give him. Something I didn't know if I'd ever be ready to give him again.

And yet I hesitated. It was like I could feel him through the barrier, not just of the door but of the time that we had lost. I could feel the pull of him. And suddenly I could have sworn I heard the floor creak on the other side of the door.

I backed away, stumbling over my own feet. And I headed to the stairway and tripped down the flights toward the lobby.

I was outside before I'd really finished formulating the thoughts. The night air was crisp and sharp, slapping my cheeks like a wake-up call. And my feet made their own way toward the woods, the blue rays of moonlight tickling the ground and making a patchwork of shadows in the dirt. The path had been cleared since I'd last been here. It was wider and flatter. And yet I still tripped over stray rocks and tree roots.

As I approached the lake, a heard the mourning cry of the loons that made their nests in the trees by the water. Their sad lament echoed against the lake's edges, against the wall of trees. And against the wooden frame of George's cabin.

I would simply look in the window. That's what I told myself. If Alexei was in there, I'd come back in the morning with Kieren and Robbie. I'd come back ready to confront him. The light was on inside, a fluctuating shadow telling me that somebody was indeed in there. Someone was rustling about.

I tiptoed toward the yellow glow emanating from the window, remembering the first time I had approached this house with Brady in the world below. How scared we'd been. Just kids.

How George had greeted us with a shotgun to the face.

I swallowed down my fear. It was too late to back out now. I had to know the truth.

Ducking down below the window with my back pressed against the wall, I took a deep breath, steadying myself. Then I spun slowly and inched my head up from the neck, my eyes straining to focus through the window as I took in a man hunched over on a stool by the small fireplace, his muscular back to me, working intently on something I couldn't see.

I craned my neck to the right, as though I could somehow see through him to make out what he was holding in his hands.

And that's when I stepped on a twig, the crack of it clicking in my ears like a gunshot.

The man whipped around, his eyes landing on me.

And I gasped so loudly I almost thought the sound had come from somewhere else.

It wasn't Alexei sitting by the fire.

It was Adam.

**

I stumbled away, my feet knocking into each other. The world seemed to be spinning in slow motion, but then at the same time, it was moving too fast. I tried to focus on my feet beneath me, tried despite myself to focus on something that I could identify as true—the dirt beneath my feet, the lake glistening to my right. Night creatures prowling in the dark. Cicadas chirping on the water.

I didn't make it two feet before I heard his voice.

"Marina, wait," he pleaded from the doorway before closing the distance between us.

"All this time..." I muttered. My head was still spinning.

"Wait, please. I can explain."

"Explain?" I exploded, turning to him, taking in his furrowed brow, his shoulders rounded up by his ears like he was about to face a wrestling opponent. "I have been looking for you everywhere!"

"I was going to find you."

"When, Adam? When were you going to find me? Did you know I was here?"

"Yes."

"And you didn't come to the hotel? You didn't let me know you were safe?"

He buried his head, his fists clenched in front of him. Whatever he had been working on inside was still buried in the deepest part of one of his palms, but I couldn't see what it was.

"I went through the door. I followed you," I continued.

"I didn't want you to do that—"

"I thought you were dead!"

He bit his lip, unable to meet my eye.

"Say something."

"I can't—I was going to tell you. I wanted to tell you everything."

"Then tell me everything, Adam. I've been through hell and back."

When he continued to stare down at his hands, I felt a burst of renewed anger seize my body. It made its way to my fingers, which curled up into fists of anger. I pushed his massive chest away from me, and it was like slapping at a concrete wall. Still, I couldn't manage to make the anger subside. I pushed him again. And again.

He didn't move. I knew I wasn't hurting him, I couldn't if I tried. But he let me hit him. He let me keep hitting him until the tears were dripping down my face, splashing into the dirt at my feet.

Finally, I stopped. I tried to gather my thoughts, my feelings. I tried to make the tears stop forming in my eyes. "Did you ever care about me?"

He looked up at me, fire brimming in his eyes. His mouth clenched into a tight knot, and I thought he might explode.

"Did you?" I asked again.

"You know I did."

"Then why? Why did you leave me in Amalia's house? Why didn't you come back?"

He shook his head, the words lost somewhere in his throat.

"I should have never trusted you," I whispered, inching away from him and tripping towards the path that led back to the hotel.

"Go, then," he said behind me. "Go, walk away. Go back to Kieren, Marina. It's what you always wanted anyway."

I whipped back to face him. "I left him to be with you!"

"That was your first mistake, then."

"You bastard."

"That's fine. You can hate me now. It's fine."

"I do hate you!" I screamed, surprised at the ferocity in my own voice. It was like every emotion I had been fighting for the past several weeks had all been locked in a strange hold inside my chest, and now they were exploding. "I hate you!" I screamed again.

"Good!" he shouted. His eyes were blazing into mine now. "Good, maybe hating me will finally solve it."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I can't help you, Marina. I've tried everything I can think of—"

"What—"

"I've been through every portal, every goddamn version of our town I can find."

I shook my head, not able to keep up with what he was saying.

"I'm done!" He finished, his arms blasting out to his sides like he was throwing away something toxic that had been burning his skin. "I have been trying to save your life since I was seventeen years old. And everything I do just makes it worse!"

I couldn't seem to catch my breath. Everything was still spinning around me. The air itself seemed to cleave to my chest, pressing down like gravity, threatening to suffocate me.

"What are you talking about?" I finally asked.

Adam's face softened. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. The other still grasped something by his side. His shoulders slumped with the weight of his admission. He looked up at me with the saddest eyes I'd ever seen. I didn't know he was capable of looking so defeated.

"I told you," he finally sighed between strained breaths. "I've been through every door."

"Including Tomorrow?"

He smiled, shaking his head. "It was the first one I went through."

"So you know about me?"

His head tilted at an odd angle, and he looked at me as though I were a wounded puppy he'd found on the street. After a beat, he swallowed down whatever he was planning on saying and simply nodded instead.

"Since when?"

"Since the beginning," he admitted. "Since I first met you. It's..." he shook his head, steadying his voice. "You're why I came back to town. I thought maybe, if you and I were friends, I could keep you away from Jin-Soon. I could stop it from ever happening. The war, your death, all of it. I didn't know you. You were just a picture on a bunch of posters all over town in the future. A picture of a beautiful dead girl. But I studied you. I found out who your mother was, and I went through Yesterday to meet her. I thought maybe I could plant the seed with her to raise you somewhere else. To protect you. And instead I met Jenny. And, well, I was young and easily distracted. And the war seemed so far away. I got caught up with Jenny and I just thought, well, that girl in the posters can wait."

I shook my head, trying to put everything he was saying into context. My mind replayed every conversation we'd ever had. It had all been a lie—or maybe not a lie, but just a shadow of the truth.

"So it was all bullshit?" I asked.

"No," he shook his head.

"You never cared about me at all."

"That's not—that's not true—"

"It is," I insisted. "Taking me with you to undo the world under the lake—it was all...just to get me on your side."

"It wasn't like that."

"Then what was it like, Adam? Tell me I'm wrong."

He finally looked right at me, his eyes two infinite wells of jade that felt like being stabbed in the heart. "Maybe at first," he admitted. "But not by the end."

"What's in your hand, Adam?"

He hesitated, but then took a step closer. I felt my heart begin to beat faster as he approached, terrified suddenly of whatever it was he was going to tell me next. But he simply opened his hand and showed me.

It was an ICD, cold and clean. Apparently unused. I shuddered to think where he had gotten it from.

"I was trying to figure out how to make it work," he said softly. "I thought maybe...if I could invent it...instead of you," he cleared his throat, his eyes buried in his palm. "Then maybe he wouldn't kill you this time. Maybe he'd come for me instead."

He shook his head, anger simmering just below the surface of his voice.

I stared at my future invention. It looked so small in his strong palm. So insignificant. But I knew better.

"But I can't—I don't understand it." His fist squeezed around the device, as though if he just tried hard enough, he could crush it out of existence. "I just didn't know what else to do."

I wrapped my hand around his, and I felt him shudder at the touch.

"I'm sorry, Marina. I just wanted—"

"It's okay," I whispered.

"I wanted to save you. I've always wanted to save you. Since I first saw your picture in those posters. I just didn't know how."

A flash of his letter appeared before my eyes—the letter in the future where he had told me he loved me. That he'd always loved me. And that he'd wanted to keep me safe.

Maybe things hadn't been exactly as they seemed. But nothing was as it seemed in the portals. Nothing could be trusted. Except what you could see in someone's eyes—what you could feel when you looked deep into their soul, and saw the truth staring back at you.

I took a step closer, so we were near enough to feel the warmth from each other's breath. And I looked into his eyes. "I love you," I said.

His eyes clenched closed with what looked like pain. He nodded. "And I love you."

I stepped into his arms and he held me so tightly I thought he might squeeze me to death. I whispered things to him, not even realizing what they were. Things about the future. Things about the past.

And I kissed his face, and his cheeks, and his mouth, as he picked me up into his strong arms and carried me back towards the cabin.

"No matter what," I whispered to him at last as we entered the warm, safe room inside. As the heat from the fireplace seeped into my frozen back and warmed me down to my core.

"No matter what," he agreed.

And I didn't let myself think about anything else as he carried me to the bed in the back of the cabin, and in the darkness of that small room, there was only us and the last vestiges of moonlight caressing our faces through the window over the bed. 

****

This was a cathartic scene to write, btw. Marina has been through so much. And there's more to come. See you guys next week. :)