“Ella—”
“I love you,” she says. “I’ve always loved you. I’m not going anywhere.”
I take her into my arms then, pulling her tightly against me, breathing in the familiar scent of her. When she’s here, right here, it’s so much easier to breathe. She’s real when she’s in my arms.
“I don’t even know how to thank you for this,” I whisper into her hair, closing my eyes against the heat in my head, in my chest. “You have no idea what it means to me, love. It’s the greatest gift anyone has ever given me.”
She laughs then, soft and gentle.
“Don’t thank me yet,” she says, peering up. “The house still needs a lot of work. The exterior is in pretty good shape now, but the inside is still kind of a disaster. We were only able to get one of the rooms ready in time, but it was—”
“We?” I lean back, frowning.
Ella laughs out loud at the look on my face. “Of course we,” she says. “Did you think I did this all on my own? Everyone helped. They all gave up so much of their time to make this happen for you.”
I shake my head. “If people helped, they did it for you,” I point out. “Not me.”
“They care about you, too, Aaron.”
“That is a very generous lie,” I say, smiling now.
“It’s not a lie.”
“It’s possibly the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”
“It’s not! Even Ian helped. He taught me how to frame a wall—and he was so patient—and you know how he feels about me. Even Nouria helped. Well, especially Nouria. We couldn’t have done any of this without Nouria.”
I find this especially surprising, given her undisguised loathing of my existence. “She pulled this area into her protection? Just for me?”
Ella nods, then frowns. “Well. Yes. I mean, sort of. It’s also part of a larger plan.”
I smile wider at that. “Really,” I say.
Nouria’s involvement—and the involvement of the others—makes a great deal more sense if this project is in fact one small part of a broader initiative, though I keep this to myself. Ella seems incapable of believing how much everyone here hates me, and I don’t relish disabusing her of this notion.
“We’re going to build a campus for the Sanctuary,” she explains, “and this is the first phase. We had scouts do a ton of site visits beforehand; these are the best and most functional homes in the surrounding area, because some of them were used in various capacities by the local sector CCR and her subordinates.”
I raise my eyebrows, fascinated.
Ella never told me about this. She’s clearly been hiding this project from me for days—which is both concerning and not. Part of me is relieved to finally understand the distance I’ve felt between us, while the other part of me wishes I’d been involved.
“So, yeah, we’ve reclaimed several dozen acres of unregulated territory here,” she says. “All of which, up until a couple of weeks ago, were under military control. I figured that, as long as we need absolute security—which might be a while—we can’t live like we’re in prison. We’re going to need to expand the Sanctuary, and give our people here a real, viable life.
“It’s going to be a long road to recovery,” Ella adds with a sigh. “The work is going to be brutal. The least I can do is give proper shelter, privacy, and amenities to those dedicating their lives to its reconstruction. I want to rebuild all the houses in this area first. Then I want to build schools, and a proper hospital. We can safeguard some of the original undeveloped land, turning it into parks. I’m hoping it’ll one day become a private campus—a new capital—as we rebuild the world. And then, maybe one day when things are safer, we can let down our walls and reunite with the general public.”
“Wow.”
I detach from her a moment to look up and down the street, then into the distance. What she’s describing is an enormous undertaking. I can’t believe how much space they were already able to reclaim. “This is a remarkable idea, Ella. Truly. It’s brilliant.” I look back at her, forcing a smile. “I only wish I could’ve helped.”
“I really, really wanted to tell you about it,” she says, her brows knitting together. “But I couldn’t say anything because I knew you’d want to come see the area, and then you would’ve noticed all the building materials, and then you would’ve wanted to know why so many people were working so hard on this one house, and then you would’ve wanted to know who was going to live in it—”