The Corridor (The Corridor Series, Book 1) by A.N. Willis

Author:A.N. Willis [Willis, A.N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw
Published: 2015-06-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

By morning, the ache in my ribs had dulled. I held up my hands, and let the tiny glowing orb of the portal expand within my palms. It was right there. Like it had never been gone.

I sat up and realized that Cohl had already left the cave. It didn’t take me long to find him. He was behind the Barrens’s version of his house, sitting out on the rotten deck. He jumped up when he saw me, as if he’d been waiting for me to show.

“You’re up.” Cohl smiled with his lips closed, and glanced at the ground as he did. He almost looked nervous. “Good timing, I needed to talk to you.”

I swallowed, nodding my head. “Yeah. I need to talk to you as well.”

We’d left so much unfinished last night. But I needed his help. That explained this tightness in my throat at the thought of saying good-bye. Right?

Cohl pushed at a broken slat of decking with the tip of his shoe. “How do you feel?” His voice was quiet, and it seemed like he was really asking something else.

“I’ve got the portal back.” I held up my hands, palms glowing.

“Oh. Good. I guess . . . you’ll want to head home now.”

“Soon. There’s a lot that I need to do.” I explained to Cohl about the second Corridor, and how dangerous it could be to First Earth. As I spoke, I sat on a fallen tree trunk, and peeled strips of its knobbly bark. Cohl sat down beside me, listening quietly.

A splinter from the tree trunk jabbed into my thumb, and I yanked it out. “Ow.”

Cohl took my hand, and held it faceup. He ran a finger over the red mark the splinter had left and looked past me, focusing his gaze beyond my shoulder. His eyes were softer than usual. His irises weren’t truly black as I’d thought before. There were other strands mixed in—dark brown, and gold, and gray—that shimmered like stones at the bottom of a riverbed catching a bit of sunlight.

“I understand why you need to go home,” he said. “But I still don’t want you to.”

My chest squeezed around my heart. “Cohl—”

“Just wait. Let me say what I needed to say.”

I waited.

He let go of my hand, and hunched over with his elbows on his knees. “I’ve had a lot of time to think since I got here. About all the things I regret, moments that I wish I could erase and do again.” He smiled, but somehow he’d never looked so sad. “If we could start over, forget how we met, forget Flinn. Not worry about which Earth we’re from. I know we haven’t known each other that long, but . . . If that were possible, would you want that, too?”

I couldn’t let myself be selfish, or get too attached to these other worlds—or anyone in them—knowing already that I’d have to choose First Earth in the end. What I wanted . . . I didn’t even know what I wanted.

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