“Gods,” she whispered through her fingers, and when she opened her eyes again, her sight had sharpened. She stared at her letters, spread around her. And she began to gather them up, one by one.
{34}
C.
Iris walked into the infirmary ten minutes later, wearing a fresh jumpsuit and a tightly cinched belt. Her hair remained a tangled, hopeless mess around her shoulders, but she had more important things on her mind. All her letters were folded and in hand as she rode the lift to the upper level.
The doors chimed.
She stepped into the corridor, passing a few nurses and one of the doctors, none of whom paid her any attention, and she was glad for it. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, was about to unfold, but her blood was thrumming.
Her face was flushed by the time she approached Roman’s room.
He was in the same curtained bay and bed. His hand was still hooked to an intravenous tube, and his right leg was freshly bandaged, but he was sitting upright, his attention focused on the bowl of soup he was eating.
Iris stood on the threshold and watched him, her heart softening to see him awake. He wasn’t as pale as he had been the day before. She was relieved that he looked much better, and he swallowed a spoonful of soup, his eyes closing briefly as if savoring the food.
Iris felt the perspiration begin to bead on her palms, soaking into her letters. She hid them behind her back and walked to him, coming to a stop at the foot of his bed.
Roman glanced up and startled at the sight of her. He dropped his spoon with a clatter, rushing to set the bowl on his side table.
“Iris.”
She heard the joy in his voice. His eyes drank her in, and when he made to move—was he truly trying to rise and come to her on one leg?—she cleared her throat.
“Stay where you are, Kitt.”
He froze. A frown creased his brow.
She had rehearsed what she wanted to say to him. How to begin this strange conversation. She had pounded it into her mind the entire walk here. But now that she was looking at him … the words vanished within her.
She held up her handful of letters. And she said, “You.”
Roman was silent for a beat. He drew a deep breath and whispered, “Me.”
Iris smiled, a shield for how mortified she was. She felt like laughing and crying, but she forced them both down. Her head began to ache. “All this time, you were receiving my letters?”
“Yes,” Roman replied.
“I just … I can’t believe this, Kitt!”
“Why? What’s so hard to believe, Iris?”
“All this time it was you.” She blinked away her tears and tossed one of the letters onto Roman’s bed. It was satisfying, to hear the paper crinkle, a distraction from her embarrassment. She dropped another page, and then another. The letters fell onto his lap.
“Stop it, Iris,” Roman said, gathering them up as they drifted. As she carelessly crinkled them. “I understand why you’re angry at me, but let me expl—”
“How long have you known?” she asked tersely. “When did you know it was me?”
Roman paused, his jaw clenched. He continued to gently gather her letters. “I knew from the beginning.”
“The beginning?”
“From the first letter you sent,” he amended. “You didn’t mention your name, but you talked about your job at the Gazette, the columnist position.”
Iris froze in horror, listening to him. He had known all this time? He had known all this time!
“I honestly thought it was a prank at first,” he rambled on. “That you were doing it to get in my head. Until I read the other letters—”
“Why didn’t you say something to me, Kitt?”
“I wanted to. But I was worried you would stop writing.”
“So you thought it best to play me for a fool?”
His eyes smoldered with offense. “I never once played you for a fool, Iris. Nor did I ever think that of you.”
“Were you humoring me, then?” she asked. She hated how her voice trembled. “Was this all some joke to play on the poor low-class girl at work?”
She hit a nerve. Roman’s face crumpled, as if she had just struck him.
“No. I would never do any of those things to you, and if you think that I would, then you don’t—”
“You lied to me, Kitt!” she cried.
“I didn’t lie to you. All the things I told you … none of them were lies. None of them, do you hear me?”
Iris stared at Roman. He was red-faced and holding her letters to his chest, and she suddenly had to add new layers to him. All the Carver details. She thought of Del, realizing that Roman had been an older brother; he had lost his sister. He had pulled her from the waters after she had drowned on her seventh birthday. He had carried her body home to his parents.
A lump rose in her throat. Iris closed her eyes.
Roman sighed. “Iris? Will you come here? Sit beside me for a while, and we can talk more.”
She needed a moment to herself. To process this snarl of feelings within her.
“I need to go, Kitt. Here. Take your letters. I don’t want them.”
“What do you mean, you don’t want them? They’re mine.”
“Yes! And that’s the other thing you lied to me about!” she said, pointing. “I asked you to send my old letters back. The ones I wrote to Forest. And you said you couldn’t.”
“I said I couldn’t, because I didn’t want to,” said Roman. “Did you finish reading my last letter? Although by the looks of it … I don’t think you can even begin to understand what your words mean to me. Even if they were addressed to Forest in the beginning. You were a sister writing to her missing older brother. And I felt that pain as a brother who had lost the only sibling he ever had.”
Iris didn’t know what to do. With her pain or with his and how they were suddenly fused. A warning flashed in her mind; she was dancing too close to the fire, about to get burned. Her armor had been stripped away, and she felt naked.
“Here,” she said, handing him the last of the letters. “I need to go.”
“Iris? Iris,” he whispered, but when he reached for her hand, she evaded him. “Please stay.”
She took a step back. “There are things … things I need to do so I need to … I need to leave.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you, but that was never my intention, Iris. Why do you think I’m here?”
She was almost to the door. She paused but avoided meeting his gaze. She stared at her letters, clutched fiercely in his hands.
“You’re here to outshine me again,” she said in a detached tone. “You’re here to prove your writing is far superior to mine, just like you did at the Gazette.”
She turned to flee but hadn’t made it two steps when she heard a clatter—the sound of a cot creaking and a grunt of pain. Iris glanced over her shoulder, eyes widening when she saw it was Roman, standing on one foot and ripping the intravenous needle from his hand.
“Get back in bed, Kitt,” she scolded.
“Don’t run from me, Iris,” Roman said as he began to hobble toward her. “Don’t run from me, not after what we’ve just lived through. Not without granting me one final request.”