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He couldn’t have meant that. Joan shook her head.
‘I want to be with you.’
Joan felt like her heart was being crushed in her chest. All of this was so wrong. He had to hate her. She’d hidden the truth—that monsters stole human life. ‘I’m a monster,’ she said to him. ‘I’m a monster.’
‘I know,’ he said softly. His hand twitched toward her and then back, as if it were killing him not to touch her. But she’d told him not to, and he’d never go against an instruction like that. ‘You told me that,’ Nick reminded her. ‘You also told me that you don’t steal human life. You told me that you love your family even though you can’t stand what they do.’
Guilt sat heavily in the pit of her stomach. ‘I can’t … I don’t understand.’
‘Don’t understand what?’ he said gently.
‘Why you’re still talking to me. Why …’
‘I never want to stop talking to you,’ Nick said. ‘Joan …’ He took a step toward her, and his shoes crunched. He blinked down. Shattered stone lay at his feet. He hadn’t broken the chain itself; he’d pulled the anchoring ring from the fireplace wall, and bits of wall had come with it. ‘What …’ He stared at the chain wound around his arm, tracking it to the ring. ‘I did that,’ he said, but with a lifted note at the end as if he wasn’t sure of it.
Joan saw questions rise up in him. He was silent for a long moment. Then he said, as if feeling out the thought: ‘When we first met Jamie … he was afraid of me. Like you were afraid when I caught that punch. And then we got to the boathouse, and half that room was terrified. Of me. I couldn’t make sense of it. All those people with all those powers, and they were afraid of me.’ He looked down again at the end of the chain, lying loose on the ground. For a second Nick looked scared—and lost. ‘Why were they afraid of me?’
‘Nick …’
He waited, listening. His expression was the same one he’d had outside his house—like Joan was a lifeboat in an ocean.
‘There was another timeline before this one,’ she said.
‘Another timeline?’ Nick’s forehead creased.
‘The Lius remember it, and so do I.’
‘The Lius were afraid of me,’ Nick said, realising. ‘Only the Lius. They knew something about me …’ Joan could see the wheels turning in his head. ‘What did they remember?’ His gaze focused on Joan. ‘What am I?’ His posture was stoic. He seemed braced for something terrible.
‘You’re not a what,’ Joan said.
‘All right, then. Who am I? Who was I … ?’ He stumbled over the words. ‘Who was I in that other timeline? Who was I that people are still afraid of me? That you’re afraid of me?’
Joan couldn’t help but react to that; her breath caught in her throat. He noticed it. Of course he did. It cut through her—the way he was looking at her. Joan was reminded as always of old comic-book heroes who protected the vulnerable and punished those who hurt them. She remembered the relief she’d felt when he’d rescued her from the Olivers that very first time.
‘You were a hero,’ Joan said. ‘Not just a hero. You were a legend. Like King Arthur.’
Nick went to laugh, but the uncertain amusement died on his face when he saw that Joan wasn’t laughing with him. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said.
‘My grandmother used to tell me bedtime stories about you,’ Joan said.
‘People aren’t afraid of heroes.’
It wasn’t funny, but Joan heard her breath come out hard.
For a moment, he looked confused, and then understanding put a shadow in his eyes. ‘Monsters are.’
‘You were a hero,’ Joan said, needing him to understand. ‘You were more than just a hero. You were the hero. People told stories about you. Made art depicting you.’
‘That doesn’t seem like me.’
Joan had never asked that other Nick how he’d felt about it. Maybe he’d found the thought just as strange and alienating. There’d been so many myths about him—adventures, tragedies, horror stories—they obviously weren’t all true.
‘I’m not anything like that,’ Nick said.
Joan had spent all this time thinking of how different he was from her Nick, but now—with him looking down at her, serious and dark-eyed and handsome—she was struck by their similarities. And struck again by the realisation that she’d met him here in this house—in this room. He’d walked through that door into the library, head bent over a book, and when he’d looked up at her, Joan’s heart had turned over.
‘When I got caught by the attackers at the bakery, you came back to help me,’ she said. ‘You could have escaped, but you came back. Your first instinct is to take care of people. You didn’t know why the Lius were scared, but you wanted to make them feel safe. There’s something that’s just good inside you.’
