“Baz,” he says. He looks down at me. “You haven’t changed.”
SIMON
Baz is still wearing the clothes he had on yesterday. He’s wrinkled looking, and his hair is stringy. “What?” he says. I think that’s what he says. It’s so loud inside his flat, I can’t hear him.
“What?” I shout.
I can’t make out his next sentence.
“What? ” I say again. “Why is it so loud in there?”
Baz walks away from me, into the living room. He turns down the music.
His arms are folded when he comes back, and he’s sneering. “Oh. Snow.
You’re still here. I expected you to run and hide as soon as my back was turned.”
I lift my chin. “I deserve that.”
“You deserve worse. Why are you here?”
I try to sound more steady than I feel. “I came to tell you something.”
He huffs. “You’ve already told me enough.”
“Baz—”
“Unless you’ve thought of another way to say that you don’t want to be with me.”
“Baz, I—”
Baz keeps talking. His top lip is curled so sharply, it looks like someone snagged it with a fishhook. “Because that would be unnecessary, Snow.
Message received!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Also unnecessary!”
“Baz!”
He shouts at me: “I don’t care that you’re sorry! Do you understand that, Simon? It makes no difference to me whether you feel regret or not! You’re sorry? What do I care? What can I do with that? You came here to tell me you’re sorry?”
“No!” I really didn’t. “Listen—”
“Listen? I have been listening. I’ve spent the last year listening, and you didn’t have anything to say to me. You couldn’t assemble a complete sentence until you’d already left me. And now you’re back to say you’re sorry? Guess what? You already put that in your note. It didn’t matter then either!”
“No, ” I growl. I know it’s a growl because that’s what Baz calls it when I sound like this. I grab him by the front of his shirt. “I didn’t come here to say I’m sorry—I came to tell you that you were right!”
He didn’t even flinch when I grabbed him. He’s sneering down at me like I’m miles beneath him.
“Of course I was,” he says.
He shoves me back and slams the door in my face.
BAZ
I let my forehead fall against the door. I’m panting. Maybe I’m hyperventilating. I haven’t had enough food, water, or blood for this. I can’t get enough air.
Simon came to see me.
After saying he hated the sight of me.
Simon came to say he was sorry.
（Which really is worthless. And more about making him feel better than making me feel anything. And fuck him if he thinks—） He came to tell me I was right …
I open the door again. He’s still standing there.
“What was I right about?” I demand. “And you better make this clear and to the point, for once in your magic-forsaken life.”
Simon looks tired. He’s wearing baggy jeans and a Watford hoodie and someone has spelled his wings invisible—or maybe they’re already gone.
He pushes his shoulders back and points that square chin at me. “You were right, Baz. I never tried.”
SIMON
Baz doesn’t say anything.
I meet his grey eyes. As hard as it is. As hard as they are. As much as I feel like I don’t have the right.
“I’ve just been waiting for you to get tired of me,” I say. “Since the day I lost my magic. Before that, even. I never thought—” I shake my head. “I never really thought this would work.”
Baz is shaking his head, too, just slightly, like he’s quietly rejecting every word. “I thought you’d go down fighting if you believed in something…”
He’s right, he’s always right. I look him in the eye. “I never believed in us.”
BAZ
I didn’t think there was anything left that Simon could say to hurt me …
I was wrong.
I laugh and wipe my eyes. “Seven snakes,” I say. “What a thing to hear.
Fuck, Snow…” I bring my arm up and laugh into my elbow, sobbing.
Simon’s mouth is hanging open. “No,” he says. “I mean…” He reaches out a hand but doesn’t touch me. “What I mean is, as soon as I turned against the Mage, I left the map. It was like I walked right out of the story everyone had been telling about me. I started losing, and I didn’t stop. You felt like something I grabbed on my way down—but I never believed I’d get to keep you. I didn’t get to keep anything … What did I get to keep, Baz?”