Always/Never

Chapter 24 / Happy in Your Future

"Miss Lennox," Tanner said as soon as my shoes hit the pavement. His tone sounded a touch too brisk for this predicament, like he was ushering me into a boardroom meeting. He hadn't bothered to drop his briefcase, as though it was some status symbol, and his hands were fused to it for the entire ride here.

I had a lot of questions. All of them revolved around how and why. How had he found where I was? What university I attended? Why had he bothered to come all this way? Why did he think that was a good idea?

I crossed my arms. The wind tunnelled between us like a test tube in a vortex, kicking up particles of dust and fallen leaves. Behind me, Accha met my eyes and pointed, as if to ask if I needed backup. Once I smiled and signalled that it was okay for her to go, Jessamine's car bumped away to the apartment buildings. It didn't disappear so much as it got tinier and tinier, until she climbed out as a blurry figure in the distance.

The last thing I needed for this was to raise Parkland's suspicion.

"What?" I set my jaw. "Why are you here?"

"I've been trying to discern your appearance in the middle of nowhere. To figure out why you wanted to talk to me and warn me about the company, but now I understand."

"Right." What else was there to say to that?

His eyes widened. I still didn't know what to make of seeing him like this, so put together, but so unnerved. When he squinted at me, the crease in his cheeks became more pronounced, and when he lifted his hand to his head, his watch scratched his face. For reasons I couldn't make sense of, he still wore his wedding ring; a gold band that shone through with minuscule lines of diamonds in the sunlight. Maybe it was PR, maybe some habit he couldn't shake.

"Look." He tried to start again but stopped. The slight tremor in his voice broke the words clean through. "Look. I don't know why I believe you, but I do, and now with Parkland, I need you to tell me whether this is it."

"Oh. Like, whether this is the end of Opal Tech."

He shook his head. "Opal will be fine. Horizons will, too. They'll recover because these are situations they can solve, and the fall of one subsidiary is not the end of them. I mean me, Miss Lennox. Marin's been fretting that the board will be involved. If that is true, then I am left with a decision to make as to when I should... leave. If I leave now, I will no longer be able to vote. But if I stay, I may not have anything left."

"The board?"

"Of directors."

"I was expressing surprise, not confusion, Tanner."

"I'm helping you along," he said in a small voice. "What's the turnaround time for your processing?"

I cracked a smile, leaning back. He nodded in the direction of the limousine as though to ask if it would be better that way, but I shook my head.

Eventually, I broke the silence. "I don't know what to say, other than the obvious: this doesn't happen in my memory."

In my timeline. But I couldn't tell the difference anymore. My timeline was practically null, a void, a collapsing star—it may have existed once, but whether it still did was up for debate.

"Oh." Tanner's eyes were downcast. "Are you trying to make sure it does, or make sure it doesn't?"

"I—I don't know. I don't know how it ends. Parkland erased the evidence. The board won't find anything to use against him. It's too late." My sigh caught in the wind, sticking my hair to my face. On the track field, a group of older students walked toward the gusting.

It was the perfect day to go, and I was missing it.

"Why wouldn't they? He's locked out of his accounts, and more likely than not, the FBI will get involved so they can pull everything he's done, including when he was using the—"