The City of Crows by Bethany Lovejoy (great books to read .txt) 📕

glass; I knew that he saw beyond me, beyond the act that I had put on. I knew that Leo saw the sheer and terrifying love in my eyes.

19

Empty Goodbyes

Rain.

That’s how it began so it seemed fitting that that would be how it ended. It poured down from the sky and soaked into my bones, soaking through the wool of the flimsy jacket I wore, of my pulled-up hood’s lining. Every single drop could be felt, the cold an inescapable part of reality. That was how it should end, wasn’t it? Me in the rain, powerless, wishing that I was capable of more.

In the bag underneath my arm, glass bottles clinked, courtesy of Yvie since she declared that it wasn’t a good idea to risk me making the potions. There was something else too that she declared, and unlike me, she chose to say it. “You know, I’m tired of you giving up, Lyra.” The look on her face said it all. I couldn’t help it; I was disappointed too. All of this time I thought I was a good person, a strong person. I rolled my eyes at the world around me. And yet, here I was, standing in the rain outside the subway, waiting for Leo to come so that I could push him out of my life all over again. And then what would I do?

A self-sacrifice for his own good, but I doubted he’d agree.

All I could do was hope the potions were strong enough, hope that he wouldn’t feel any pain before it happened. Two weeks, that was all he had, enough time to get some affairs in order but not enough to live a full life. A part of me wished that I’d never agreed to help him, if only because it would have given him more time to come to terms with things. Maybe he would have had time to see his mother before he went, maybe he wouldn’t have wasted every second on a useless witch. I thought again of the girl in the portrait near the door, she may have been married, but maybe if he told her then she would have agreed to spend time with him, let him be by someone who he once loved. Leo didn’t deserve to be alone.

I huddled further into my coat at the thought. A part of me was afraid that he wouldn’t even show up, that instead he’d choose suffering over saying goodbye. But I knew Leo, and I knew that he wouldn’t be able to stay away. He would come, he wouldn’t leave me waiting for him. Rowan told me that I didn’t want to sell my soul, but maybe it would have been worth it if it was for Leo.

I tried to brush the hair that was plastered across my face out of the way, hoping that if I willed it to, the rain would stop. The amazing thing was that, almost immediately, it did. For a moment, I thought that somehow, I’d done it, my face turning towards the heavens as if a miracle had occurred, but then I opened my eyes.

“Hi,” Leo’s voice breathed, and I began to wonder if it was still the rain splattered across my face or the tears falling from my eyes. “You should really put your hood up, Lyra, you’ll get sick if you sit out in the rain like this,” his voice was just a murmur, almost inaudible.

I gripped the fabric of my coat between my fingers, staring back at him. Any noise I could have made, any words I could have said, didn’t come to me. Instead, I stared helplessly, watching as the rain cascaded over us and down the side of his transparent umbrella, soaking the cement beneath my skin.

You forget how someone looks in the seconds that you don’t see them. In my head, Leo’s dark eyes, the full apples of his cheeks, and his wavy black hair falling just slightly into his line of sight; handsome, but not impossibly so. They were a lot less beautiful than they were in real life. Looking at him, taking in the slight pink rim of his eyes, redness of his nose, and the place on his lip where he bit down too frequently as of late; it only made it harder. His face was a vision, the sadness that coated it a nightmare.

He waited for a response, when he realized that one would not come, he lowered himself to sit down beside me. A slight splash sounded as he sat on the steps beside me, not even flinching at the water droplets that no doubt crawled up under his coat. “So, two weeks, huh?” He asked, his hand hoisting the umbrella higher over us so that the metal prongs wouldn’t touch the top of my head.

I nodded and, if it was possible to shrink any smaller, I did. My hands buried in my pockets, feeling the glass vials within. My only reason to see Leo, my last reason to see Leo. Once they were gone, it was all over.

He wasn’t offended by my silence, if anything he was emboldened by it. He crept closer, skin just barely against mine as he held the umbrella above us, his shoulders rising and falling with every breath. It was easy for him to sit next to me, even easier to relax beside me. My heart was pounding a mile a minute, but Leo seemed relaxed in my presence; it was unfair. Leo was unfair.

All I wanted was to wrap my hand around his, to apologize and say that I could do better, I would do better. God, if he let me, I would sign the contract. Just stay, just let me stay beside you. I could have cried, I wanted to cry with every fiber of my being. I wanted to let full body sobs rack through my body, I wanted to wrap my arms around Leo and beg him not to go.

Instead,