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Marc’s fight was over. He’d beaten Harrow and Ammit. He’d killed more people than he even actually knew about along the way. He’d shed the suit for the last time and let Layla lead him, reeling with exhaustion, around the still-hectic streets of Cairo to his hotel, where she’d helped him out of his pink-stained clothes and into a clean black t-shirt and boxer shorts. She had said nothing about the smashed mirror, or the open bottle of booze.
“I’m willing to put all our shit on hold and call a truce for right now,” she’d murmured, carefully spongeing crusted blood out of his hair with a damp cloth. Her expression was fierce and focused. She looked much stronger than he felt. “If only because we’re still married, and you look like you can barely see straight. Everything else can come later. Okay?”
He’d nodded dumbly, and folding away the cloth, she’d told him she would be right back. Then she’d disappeared.
He could remember all of this, but it seemed time was alternately stretching out and contracting, folding back on itself, like taffy. Returning to the hotel had happened in the blink of an eye, but he’d been lying here in this bed now, waiting for Layla to return, for an age or more. Steven had been right there with him, but he wasn’t now. Where had he gone? He’d parted consciousness with Marc at some point. Uneasily Marc thought perhaps he had succumbed to simple exhaustion; but Marc … hadn’t. Couldn’t.
He wasn’t aware that the shower had been running until it stopped and the room was quiet. In a minute Layla stepped out of the bathroom with wet hair, dressed in one of his shirts. She saw him and hurried to the bed, taking a seat beside him.
“Marc. I thought you’d be asleep.”
He shook his head numbly, gazing up at the ceiling. He should have showered. He could feel that all the day’s gore and grime was still clinging to him, in spite of her ministrations. The icy water in the tomb, still freezing his limbs. But he couldn’t get up. His body felt so heavy, so far away.
It occurred to him belatedly that Layla was holding his hand and stroking it, pressing her thumb into his palm, squeezing his fingers. Chasing the ice away. She was a thread that anchored him back to his body. He focused on her hand.
“You’re safe,” she said. And, slightly choked: “You’re alive.”
He was so afraid that, once he closed his eyes, he would open them and find he had never left the afterworld at all. That that beautiful field had crafted just the right scenario in his head that would bring him the most peace: reuniting with Steven, returning to Layla, stopping Harrow, and parting from Khonshu. Marc had never gotten what he wanted without losing something in return. It could never be this easy for him.
Layla climbed fully into the bed and curled up alongside him, pulling his hand into her lap and warming it in both of hers. “You’re okay,” she said. “What can I do that would help?”
He found his voice. It was a hoarse whisper. “Can you stay? Please.” He had no damn right to ask anything of her, and he knew that, but – Steven was gone. He’d been so close for a stretch there that it had been hard to tell who was controlling the body; but now he was gone, and Marc was afraid to be alone, afraid he would find himself in the sands again as soon as Layla left too. Or worse: alone in the asylum in his head. “I know that you –”
“I won’t go anywhere,” she cut him off. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
She had done this for him before, stayed up and held him after a mission had gone sideways and talked him to sleep. But it hadn’t gone sideways. They had won. He thought about this.
“You saved my life,” he said.
He could hear in her voice, when she replied, that she was smiling. “Yeah, Marc. Someone had to save the world.”
He closed his aching eyes and shook his head carefully from side to side. “No, baby. You saved my life way before then.”
Her hand, still stroking his, stilled for a moment. Then she squeezed it again, tighter.
“Go to sleep, Marc.”
“I can’t.”
“You’re free now. It’s over. Khonshu is gone.”
“I know,” Marc said hoarsely. Layla’s gentle fingers tapped the pulse point in his wrist, slid up his forearm and back down.
“Marc?” she said.
There was something cautious in her tone. He opened his eyes again.
“Khonshu is gone,” she repeated. “Does that mean … Steven is, too?”
“No,” he said, and sudden fear made his response too-quick, little cold frissons of anxiety radiating out from his chest. His heart beat momentarily faster. But – no. He took a deep breath. Steven was still there, tucked away, Marc could feel him, just as he could feel that his right leg, under the sheet, was still there and just out of sight for the moment.
“No,” he said again, his heart rate settling into something more normal. “No, it’s …” Another deep breath. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“Okay,” she said. “Then you’re both free. And you need to sleep. I’ll be right here.”
His eyes felt hot and sore. He didn’t deserve her.
“I’ll be here when you wake up. Either of you.”
He closed his eyes.
It occurred to him, before the lapping waves of unconsciousness pulled him down, that his wife still had no idea what Steven was. She didn’t know, and he was going to have to tell her.
*
He went from asleep to conscious in the space of a heartbeat, scrambling upright and almost launching himself right out of the bed. Something was wrong. No alarm clock was blaring, no Khonshu bellowing at him to get up and get dressed for a mission. He swung his head around, trying to figure out what else had woken him. He realized gradually, as the adrenaline ebbed away from his body, that there was … nothing. No alarm. No threat. Something felt wrong because nothing was.
The room was bathed in a soft suffuse light leaking in around the edges of the curtains. It was a deep golden light. He’d slept through most of the day. Layla was curled up in a chair with her feet tucked under her, a book propped open in her lap, looking at him.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, still struggling to make sense of this peaceful scene. He sat up, dragging a hair through his clumped hair. “Just not used to everything being okay when I wake up.” He cleared his throat and looked over at her. “I didn’t get up, right? I was asleep the whole time?”
“Are you worried about Steven?” she asked. “Or blacking out?”
“Both,” he said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “But I trust Steven.” How stupid was it to even fall asleep in the same room as Layla right now? He didn’t even know. He’d blacked out twice in as many days. Granted, he’d been in life-threatening danger both times. But being entirely oblivious to his own body’s goings-on wasn’t really in his wheelhouse. That was Steven’s area of expertise.
Something clicked. On their way to the hotel, Layla had told him about freeing Khonshu and agreeing to serve as Taweret’s avatar. She was an avatar. He couldn’t hurt Layla right now if he tried. The hard knot in his chest gave way. Later he would process what that meant, that she was in servitude to a god just like he’d been, but right now that was the only part he could bring himself to care about.
“Steven was up earlier,” she said, watching him, registering his surprise. “You don’t remember?”
He shook his head. “I think it’s temporary,” he said. “The wall between us, I mean, back up again. I think he needs to … process things.” There wasn’t an inch of his body that didn’t ache, bone-deep. He rubbed at the back of his neck, wincing. “Is this what being fully rested feels like?”
She smiled. “I think what you’re feeling is a consequence of taking a couple bullets, coming back to life, and having a knock-down brawl with Ammit’s avatar in the streets. I don’t suppose Khonshu bothered to heal everything before he left.”
Marc shook his head again. Of course he hadn’t. “So what’d Steven say?”
“Not much of anything,” Layla said. “He seemed out of it. He got up and had a shower and then curled back up in bed. He said he didn’t mind if I left to grab some of my things. I was gone for an hour and he was curled up in the same spot when I got back.”
Marc scrubbed at his face. Clean-shaven. And his tongue didn’t feel like a carpet, so Steven had brushed their teeth. Comforting self-care rituals, things he could do on autopilot to make everything seem a bit more normal while Marc had been way beyond consciousness. Where was he now? Hiding? Was he unhappier than he’d let on last night, given a minute to actually think about the things Marc had shown him? No, Marc thought, probing cautiously. He felt certain he was right that Steven was … processing. And exhausted. He’d used faculties he didn’t even know he had, and he was cooked.
That had to be all it was. Right?
“I think it’s temporary,” he said again, only a little doubtfully. “We worked some stuff out. It was just … heavy. A lot for him to take in.”
She looked at him steadily. “I’d love to hear about it sometime.”
He nodded, wearily, then pried himself up off the bed and started pulling clothes out of his bag. She went back to her book while he pulled on jeans and changed his shirt. He slipped into the bathroom, made himself presentable. His hair was clean, freshly washed, and there was no blood visible on him anywhere. He washed his face anyway. Then he gripped the sink and looked into the mirror.
“You in there, man?” he asked quietly. “You hidin’ from me?” But it was only his wan, tired-eyed reflection looking back.
He left the bathroom, and Layla looked up at him. He swallowed thickly.
“There’s a lot of stuff I can’t talk about yet.”
“It’s too fresh,” she agreed, her face staying casually neutral. “That stuff can wait. For today, whatever you need, I’m here. Okay?”
There was a lot he wanted to say. That he didn’t need her help, which was a lie. That if she wanted to leave he would be fine, which was probably also a lie. That he was so in love with her, so in awe of her that he almost couldn’t bear it. Which she probably didn’t want to hear.
“Thanks,” he went with at last, and cleared his throat. “Thank you.”
She put her book aside carefully. “Do you want to eat?”
He realized, as soon as she said it, how voraciously hungry he was. He opened his mouth to say yes. What came out was, “I wanna tell you about Steven.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Okay.”
“I can’t talk about being dead, or … or the other shit. Lying to you, and pushing you away … Not that, not yet. But I know you want honesty, and I can … I can talk about him. You should know about him.” And it should be now, while Steven wasn’t here to listen to his own miserable story again. Marc nodded, a quick, sharp jerk of his head. “Yeah. And yeah, I’m starving.”
Layla smiled. “They have room service.”
*
Layla called down to the hotel lobby to order for them. She’d shown him the menu and he’d been prepared to say khoshari, the safe option, and then his gaze landed on “American-style beef burger,” and he thought fuck it. He asked her to order the burger, medium rare. Then he started packing up his things, tidying here and there. While he’d been asleep she’d cleaned up most of the damage he’d done to the room, pushed the shattered mirror over to a corner where he could say it had fallen over and broken on its own, and he thought he might get away without a hefty bill for damages at the end of this. (He remembered trashing the room, didn’t he? And if he didn’t, there was only the liquor to blame, right?)
The bottle had disappeared without a trace, and he knew if he asked for it, Layla would give it to him, would wait for him to put it aside again and then tuck it back into its hiding place. That was their song and dance, a pattern they’d fallen into over the course of several years without either of them ever explicitly talking about it. The fact that she was doing it now reassured him.
“How did Steven seem this morning?” he asked at one point, aiming for casual and probably missing the mark. “You sure it was him?”
She shrugged. “He didn’t say much, but his English accent is better than yours, Marc, no offense.”
“Did he seem okay?”
“He seemed …” She paused from packing her own few things, then straightened up and looked across at him. “He seemed really, really tired, like he’d been through hell and wasn’t sure if it was really over yet. Pretty much like how you seemed last night.”
He nodded. That tracked. He really wished Steven would come out from wherever he was hiding, though. He probably hadn’t even meant to surface earlier, had probably been responding to some mundane bodily need like a full bladder that Marc had been way past caring about. He’d done the necessary clean-up for them and then sank right back down into the inner void. Was he having second thoughts? They were free of Khonshu, but did he perhaps want nothing to do with Marc’s life, now that he’d had a few moments’ peace to reflect on the things he’d seen? It would be pretty damn hard to blame him, if so.
Layla was looking at him with some concern. He shook his head. Not ready yet.
The food came, and they had cleaned up sufficiently that the hotel wait-staff who brought it up to them didn’t say anything about the room before he left. They sat down at the table in the corner to eat (overturned desk lamp carefully replaced on its lacquered surface). The burger was a little overcooked, but it was still a burger, and he gave an involuntary groan at the taste of it. Layla eyed him over her bowl of viscous green molokhia.
“I haven’t had red meat in awhile,” he explained, swallowing. “Steven’s vegan, and if he got a stomach bug, or if – if he realized he’d eaten meat, it would have freaked him out pretty bad.”
“You tidied up after yourself pretty well, huh?” she said dryly, stirring her soup. “Keeping secrets even from the guy who shares your body is pretty next-level, Marc.”
He waited till he’d finished the entire burger and most of the fries that came with it, finally quieting the clamour of his aching stomach, before he replied to her.
“Steven is … sheltered,” he said. He kept his voice low, even though there was no danger of being overheard. They were alone. “I know that’s obvious, but that’s the first thing I need you to understand about him. And that … he’s sheltered for a reason, Layla. His life is – was – safe, and normal, and it was up to me to keep it that way. Sometimes it felt like the most important thing there was. He didn’t ask for any of this, and he sure as hell couldn’t have handled most of it. So yeah. I got pretty good at keeping secrets.”
“You could have told me,” she said, matching his low tone. She raised a hand. “I’m not starting a fight, not tonight. Just pointing it out. I could have helped you.”
He was already shaking his head. “That would have meant explaining about him, and I couldn’t …” He trailed off. “I couldn’t,” he finished. “Still don’t know if I really can. I’ve never talked about this stuff.”
“Try.” When he stayed silent, she put her spoon down. Her bowl was nearly empty anyway. “If it’s nothing to do with Khonshu… I keep coming up with explanations, and they all sound crazy to me, and they’re probably not nearly as crazy as the actual truth.”
Marc felt his mouth twist into a smile, even though that word, crazy, gave him a pang. She didn’t know the half of it. “Try me.”
“That he’s an alien,” she said, with a short, sheepish laugh. Her voice was hushed, as if saying the words aloud would give her ideas strength. “That he’s someone who died and his spirit just ended up landing in your body somehow and he has no memory of it. Anything is possible these days, right?” She was quiet for a minute. “It scares me most to think that maybe … it’s his body, and you’re the hitchhiker. That somehow I married a ghost who’s been using some poor, normal, nerdy British guy’s body to do Khonshu’s work.”
His stomach turned over. Maybe he really shouldn’t have ordered meat. Maybe he should have told her to leave earlier. It would have been best. Better than having this conversation.
“Marc?” she said, looking him in the eye.
His mouth felt very dry and his pulse was starting to throb in his temples. He’d scrounged a bottle of beer from the room; he grabbed it now and took a long pull from it. This was the point where Steven would step in, amnesiac, bewildered, before filling in the gaps and gliding, happily oblivious, past the source of Marc’s stress without him ever having to deal with it.
But Steven was still not there.
Layla held her hand out on the table, palm up. She was wearing a bracelet, a golden bangle he didn’t think he’d seen before, that clicked on the surface of the table and made him jump. Then, grateful, he took her hand and laced their fingers together. His anchor.
“It is what it is,” she said, forcing a smile. “That’s what I’m telling myself.”
How did he tell her that he, a superpowered vigilante who communicated with an invisible deity, had no mystical explanation for having an other self? That in this rare instance, the call was in fact coming from inside the house? How did he find the words to tell her how damaged he was?
She was waiting patiently.
“There’s nothing supernatural about Steven,” he started. “He’s just …” He couldn’t do it. “Layla,” he said, and found he had to look down at her hand, still holding his on the table. He squeezed minutely, and she squeezed back.
“I had a bad time growing up.” He focused on her hand, instead of looking at her face. “I had a really bad time. And I guess – I don’t know how it happens, but I guess sometimes when you’re in as much stress, and as much pain, as I was in, and you’re just a kid … you can’t go anywhere. You can’t go anywhere physically. So … you go up here.”
He gestured briefly with his free hand to his head. After a moment of silence had elapsed, he stole a look at her face. Her eyebrows were drawn together in confusion.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He looked away again, drawing a shaky breath. This was stupid. She was going to have so many more questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer. She was going to tell him he needed help. Why had he even started this conversation? His vision was starting to blur at the edges.
She squeezed his hand again, tighter, when she sensed him pulling away, and waited for him to lift his gaze back up to her face.
“Help me understand,” she said, gently.
“I don’t know how it works,” he said, his voice a little more than a rasp. “And I don’t know why it happened. But that’s where Steven came from. No magic. Nothing supernatural. Just a lot of stress, and a lot of hurt, and … he was a way to not feel that. For part of me not to feel that.”
“But …” She was looking at him with a strained, uncertain smile, like she was waiting for the gotcha. “Steven sounds like he’s lived in north London his whole life. He speaks French. He wears reading glasses, Marc. He’s completely unlike you.”
“Yeah … yeah. Yep.” He gazed past her now, at the curtains and the darkening window. He had his elbow propped on the table and the knuckles of his other hand, the one not holding hers, pressed against his mouth now, slightly muffling the words. “He’s always been British. And he had, you know. His own interests. I don’t think we really need those glasses,” he added, uncertain. “I think he just figured it might help his headaches. We get a lot of headaches.”
He couldn’t look at her, so he didn’t know what expression was on her face when she said, “You’re telling me you have a … split personality disorder?”
“They call it something else now, I think. But yeah. Yeah.”
“Marc,” she said, and now he definitely couldn’t look at her face because she sounded close to crying, and that would be more than he could bear. “All this time?”
“Since I was a kid,” he said. It was getting easier to talk as he grew more numb to it. “Sometimes he’d go away for a while. He’s missing a lot of gaps. He fills them in, he’s got a … vivid imagination. But at some point eventually I’d get … confused, or emotional, or I’d see something that reminded me of home. And I’d blink, and I’d be waking up someplace with no memory of falling asleep. Maybe there’d be some new book about Egyptology or anthropology or … or poetry lying around.”
“Oh my God, Marc,” she said, pulling her hand away from his and putting her face in her palms. He found he could look at her sidelong. After a second she dropped her hand back to the table and grabbed his again in a fierce grip. “I’m sorry, it’s just – a lot.”
“I know.”
“He really didn’t know me?” she asked helplessly. Marc shook his head. “But he’s been around this whole time?”
These were easy questions to answer. “Up till now, he was only ever conscious when he was in control. He didn’t know you because he’d never met you. Because …” Was it fair to say this to her? He paused before he went all in. “I wasn’t in pain when we were together, Layla. There was nothing he had to protect me from.”
Her eyes were shining with tears. She nodded jerkily.
“I know it’s insane. It used to be manageable, I had a pretty good handle on it. But over time, at some point, he started having … his own life. A job. Hobbies, a pet. He started taking over more and more, and I couldn’t – I couldn’t let him know it was all fake. And I did, I did feel like the hitchhiker. Like a parasite. He was living a whole healthy, normal life, and I was hijacking his body at night.” His chest felt so tight; the next breath in sounded more like a gasp. “To kill people.”
“But it’s your body, too,” she said.
He shook his head again. “Didn’t feel like mine. Not for a while there.”
“Does he know what he is?” she asked.
“Yeah.” He worked his jaw, trying to decide how much of this part he wanted to tell her. “When we died. I had to show him some … real bad memories. I showed him what a lie he was, that he was something my brain made up so I could feel better about my life. I showed him all that shit, and he still wanted to help me. But he’s been quiet all day, and I don’t know why. I don’t know. Maybe it was too much for him. Maybe …”
“I’m sure he’s tired.” She was recovering now, pushing away her own distress so that it wouldn’t distress him. She was so good. “I’m sure he just needs a little time.”
He nodded. He wanted to say, I can’t live without him. He wanted her to understand that he wasn’t whole without Steven. He was out of words, though. His eyelashes were clumping wetly together; he blinked hard.
Layla got up. She walked around the table, clasped his face in her hands gently, and waited for him to give her a tiny nod before she leaned down and pressed a kiss to his forehead. He closed his eyes, soaking in her love while their temporary truce lasted.
“I’m really glad you told me this. Even if it’s not what I expected.” Her laugh sounded strangled. “But, Marc …”
He forced himself to look up at her. He couldn’t read her strangely determined expression.
“I don’t really know how all of this works, not yet. I’d really like to. But I know one thing for sure,” she said firmly. “Steven is not a lie you made up. He’s as real as you are. I’m sure he’ll get to that conclusion in the end.”
He nodded again. He was spent. Digging this up, talking about it – carving out this piece of himself and presenting it to her – he felt like he could sleep for another twenty hours.
“Yeah,” he managed to say, coughing out a little laugh. “You and him are the realest things I ever had.”
*
Marc had been quiet for a while during the flight to Rome, and Layla was almost too absorbed in her book to notice his sudden flinch and soft “Oh!”
She dropped her book quickly. Steven was looking around, wide-eyed. He saw her and relaxed, giving a short, abrupt laugh.
“I’ve woken up in a lot of strange places thanks to Marc, but thirty thousand feet in the air is a new one for me.”
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Can I do anything?”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Rome,” she said. “I’m getting off there, I was actually in the middle of something before all of this. You’re going on to London. I’ll be headed back to Cairo in a few days to help clean things up there, but after that I’ll come and see you.” Probably to fight it out with Marc and let him know exactly how stupid and selfish he’d been, but she didn’t have to tell Steven that, not right now. They’d helped her save the world from Ammit; the least they deserved from her was a little softness for the moment.
“Okay,” Steven said, relaxing a bit more. He looked around and laughed again, jogging one ankle nervously. “I’ve probably done this a lot, haven’t I? Flying? Stupid to be nervous about it now. Is Marc a nervous flyer?”
She smiled. “No. He’s a restless flyer, mostly.”
He seemed about to say something, and then noticed the gold bangle on her wrist. “Oh, that’s beautiful, Layla. The sa, is that for Taweret?”
“Yes,” she said, turning it over. “I’ve had this for a while, actually. Wearing it now seemed … appropriate.”
“I remember you said you’re her avatar now,” Steven said. “I don’t think Marc knows how he feels about that yet, but I’m glad. Taweret is lovely. Really nice hippo lady.” He was quiet for a minute, his smile fading. “Marc says he told you about me,” he said abruptly.
“Yeah, he did. I hope that’s okay.”
Steven tipped his head back against his seat. “You must think I’m the stupidest muppet alive,” he said. “Big gaping holes in my memory, that’s just fine. ‘What did you get up to in your twenties, Steven?’ Oh, you know, whatever all the other twenty-somethings get up to. Probably worked in a gift shop then too. Couldn’t remember, exactly, but it wasn’t a problem, was it? Lots of people have memory problems … sleep problems …”
His shoulders slumped, and he looked down at his hands. Then over at her, with a slightly pained smile.
“Didn’t have ‘fictitious’ on my bingo card, though,” he said. “That was a bit of a surprise.”
It was an early-morning flight, and the plane was mostly empty. Layla was sitting next to the window, and there was nobody on the other side of Steven, nor in the seats across the aisle from them. The dull throb of the jet engines ensured nobody beyond that would hear them. She wanted to reach out to Steven, to ground him the way she tried to do for Marc, but she wasn’t entirely sure how he’d react to an unexpected touch. So she held her hand out, palm up, on the armrest between their seats. He hesitated for a moment. Then he laced his fingers with hers, the way Marc did. He gave her a shaky smile.
“You’re not fictitious, Steven. I promise you,” she said.
Another miserable little laugh. “I think you’ll find I am. Marc Spector’s got a birth certificate, you see … Steven Grant’s got nothing. He doesn’t exist.”
“He’s sitting here and talking to me, isn’t he?” she said. Steven jerked his head to the side, then back, unsure. “And I don’t think you’re stupid at all. I think you saw what Marc wanted you to see, and you filled in the rest. He said you have a good imagination.”
Unexpectedly, that made him brighten a little. “Did he say that? That’s kind of him, isn’t it?”
“He meant it kindly.” She squeezed his hand, and said, “He was really freaked out that you were gone yesterday. Where’d you go?”
Steven looked down at his lap. “Didn’t mean to go. Well, maybe. I don’t know. I thought maybe the two of you would want some space? And I was … tired.”
She nodded. “That’s what Marc thought.”
“It was a lot to take in.” He chewed the inside of his cheek. “He made me up, Layla. I watched it happen. I thought I had a real life, and all this time I’ve just had … bits of one. The bits he let me have. I don’t want to hear it, Marc!” he said sharply, unexpectedly. His mouth twisted. “I’m fine with it. No, really! It’s bloody – fine. Yeah? It’s fine.” He dragged an impatient hand through his hair. “Just need to … figure my shit out.”
“Take all the time you need to do that,” she said, with the hope that Marc was listening. And though she didn’t know if this was really allowed, she added, “You can call me, if you want. If you need to talk.” A little stupid – if Marc ended up actually wanting to go through with the divorce, she shouldn’t be buddying up to the guy in his head. It would just be more painful all around for everyone at the end of this. But she felt so badly for Steven, who looked so tense and unhappy, and she remembered having the thought before that he seemed younger than her, somehow. Marc had eight years on her, and acted like it, but Steven was more uncertain, and she realized in many ways he probably was younger than she was, based on accumulated life experience. It made her feel oddly … protective, something she didn’t think she’d ever felt around Marc. He’d had an invincible suit of armour for as long as she’d known him (an emotional one too, if she wanted to be fanciful), but Steven was more vulnerable.
These were strange, complicated feelings, not helped by the quick, grateful look he gave her. “Thank you, Layla. Might make Marc jealous, though.” He paused. “That’s – that’s why you kissed me, isn’t it? To make him jealous.”
She had gone in for a kiss because he reminded her of Marc, because he was Marc, right down to the smell of his sweat, and she missed her husband with a deep, profound ache. And because she knew he would kiss her back, and Marc would not; and having Marc pull away from her would have been more than she could bear. Now she felt a bit bad that she had used Steven, worse that he knew he’d been used.
“I kissed you because I wanted to,” she said, which was the truth.
That made him smile again. He really was very sweet, in an earnest, uncomplicated way. She had kissed him because he reminded her of Marc, but at the same time, he was a wholly new side of Marc, and there was something a little exciting to that. She’d never heard Marc enthuse about anything with the wholeheartedness Steven did, and she’d rarely seen him smile without a little shadow of … something in his eyes, like he was worried about who might see it.
She let a few minutes pass, during which Steven explored the back of the seat in front of him and examined the in-flight magazine, and then a thought occurred to her.
“Hey,” she said. “Would it make you feel better, to have your own birth certificate and passport? I know it’s not really necessary, but if you’d like, I could get you your own documents. Fake, but no one would be able to tell.”
This time, the smile he turned on her was dazzling. “Layla, really?” he said, breathless. “I would love to have my own things. I’d be really real then, wouldn’t I?”
She smiled back weakly, not quite sure what was happening in her chest or why there were butterflies in her stomach. She remembered feeling like this when she’d been younger, finding out new things about Marc Spector: the easy way he spoke Arabic, the way he looked first thing in the morning, the way he held his hands before he threw a punch. It had been a long time since she’d discovered a new facet of him and felt this swooping sensation, and she wondered what it meant, that she could be falling in love with him all over again, via Steven. If she ought to feel guilty about that.
But Steven had not come from without. He was a part of Marc. She was allowed to love him, too.
“I’ll bring them with me when I come,” she promised, fairly certain she still had a passport picture of Marc she could use. It would be easy to mail them. But she had made up her mind that she wanted to be there in person when she made Steven Grant smile like that again.