Lauren Oliver owns the Delirium series and all of its characters.

"I didn't mean to scare you," Alex says, his voice non-committal, cautious.

"How did you get out here?" I ask, amazed.

Alex smirks. I love his smirk.

"I rode the motorcycle as far as I could go," he says.

Motorcycle. Escape from a window, over a fence. Explosions, fire, blood.

Alex must see my pained look, because he quickly explains. "Just a motorcycle that belongs to a high-up at the warehouse. He helped with my escape… I just owe him one more favor, now."

Alex's escape. People helped with it. And I didn't.

"Lena," Alex says, taking a half-step toward me. His voice now is gentle, and his eyes soften. Besides the smirk, it's the first I've seen of the old Alex. And the first I've seen him being gentle.

But just as I feel a rush of relief; he doesn't hate me, his eyes change to cool again.

"Were you running from me?" he asks.

I'm shaking like a leaf. "Yes. From… From both of you."

Alex's eyebrow raises. "Both of us," he repeats crisply.

"I thought you were dead."

"Are you disappointed?"

A sob works it way through my throat. "No!"

Alex takes one more step, until he's completely out of the fringe of trees. "Is it okay if I kiss you?"

No.

Why no?

Traitor.

You love him.

I try to remember the beautiful pressure of a different word on my tongue, a better word, from happier days.

"Yes," I whisper.

Now Alex is so close, so close I could touch him. I could touch him. I never thought I would touch him again. I never thought I would hear his voice, even if the music has gone from it.

His hand brushes against my cheek roughly, examining my face like something mysterious. He places his hand on my back, such a familiar feeling, but one I had lost to the fog of broken memory. Alex kisses me, and my heart hammers to the beat of hysteria. And his eyes, his long-lost, beautiful, burning eyes, are twin pools of deliria.

When we pull apart, I'm breathless. The empty cavity in my heart that opened after Alex 'died' burns with heat and I feel euphoric. He's back. And I still feel it, all of the passion. I didn't fall out of love, and we can fix everything I thought was broken.

"What about the poster boy?" Alex asks me, again not his usual self. I imagined him speaking lightly, casually, easily… Like we had kissed in the dappled sunlight of 37 Brooks, where nothing else mattered.

Well… Actually, I hadn't ever imagined Alex talking about me and another guy.

"He's not a poster boy. Julian just ran away with- Ran away from it all. They almost killed him."

"You were going to say 'ran away with me', weren't you?"

"I need to apologize, Alex. I… I didn't look hard enough for you. I mean, I didn't look at all," I murmur, a tear gathering at the corner of my eye. I risk glancing up at his face, which is unnaturally blank. "I didn't know to look. I thought you were dead. I didn't give up on you, I swear, I just didn't know there was any other way…" I hate his blank face, his hard eyes. Why does he still look like this, after we just kissed?

I speak frantically, praying his expression changes. "But, but Julian, he… And I, we met because I was helping the resistance. And the only reason I lo- I loved him, Alex. I mean, I do… I never stopped loving you. But I thought, maybe, you would want me to be… Happy. After you died. Or I thought… But you're more important, you always were. I didn't stop thinking about you, even after Julian and I."

"How have you been?" Alex says simply.

All I can do is stare at him, wide eyed. "What?"

"How have you been? Have you been happy?"

The question feels like a blow, and sounds like the cruel tip of a Scavenger's knife.

"I nearly died," I spit at him, unaware of the origin of my sudden fury. "I nearly killed myself. Some days I didn't want to get up, just go through a tunnel, because I knew you were at the end of it. Some days I ran, I ran until I was bleeding and I did it because I wanted to see YOU! ALEX!" I scream his name, without meaning to.

"Are you happy with him?" Alex's voice is low, and calm, and harsh.

"Yes!" I scream at him. "Yes, I was happy with him! But I needed you, Alex, I wanted you so badly I cried, I cry all the time. WHERE did you GO!"

I remember, when I still thought that love was an evil word, I was sometimes scared of Alex. I would get scared of the revolution in his eyes, the bravery and the power in his voice, the pure danger of everything he stood for.

But when Alex pushes on my shoulders now, it's a different type of fear. A chilling, desperate one. His voice is a growl.

"I was in the Crypts, Magdalena. I was in that hellhole every moment you were living in some homestead and running your little marathons and cooking meat over a fire. When you were going on missions for the resistance? While you made promises to the Cureds' bitch? I was in the Crypts, back in Portland, and I was carving the word love in stone with my fingernails until they broke off, because I remembered you, and I thought that you were trying for me, I thought you were going to be happy to see me. I thought it was worth living."

I'm sobbing so hard I can't see. "I wanted-" I gasp, but I can't finish because Alex tightens his grip on my shoulders.

"I wanted, too. I wanted a toilet, because there wasn't one, or even a bucket in Ward Six. I wanted food, but I didn't get any. I starve? Oh well. I was almost blind, because, did you know? There's no light in the Crypts. None at all. And every moment of HELL was like ten days. I told myself that it was bearable, because I thought of you. Lena at the Governor, Lena at the house, Lena at that party, Lena in the water, Lena with an injured leg."

Alex spits out each of my favorite memories and mocks them in a singsong voice, twisting them and making them nothing.

"But I was lying to myself. None of that shit worked. It just made me more crazy. You'll be happy to know, Lena, that your face didn't inspire very much hope."

I shake harder, no longer sobbing, just terrified. I try to back away from him but his grip hasn't loosened.

I don't know how I have the strength to speak, but somehow I do. "Alex," I plead, my voice breaking on that beautiful name. I can't reconcile it with the boy in front of me.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you had to live there, I'm sorry you had to suffer so much. I'm sorry you thought I didn't care about you, but I did. Every… Every moment. In the beginning, it was the same for me, Alex, I swear."

His eyes cloud with a million emotions at once. "And now…" His voice is so quiet, it breaks my heart.

"And now you're back. It's a gift, something I couldn't believe. And anything I wanted to have with Julian was a way to forget the pain of losing you, it could never be the same as you."

Finally, Alex releases my shoulders and turns sharply back towards the trees.

"Yeah?" He says, voice thick. I can't tell what he's thinking or feeling with his back to me.

"Yeah," I whisper.

More abrupt movement, and I find myself kissing him again, forcefully, his hands holding me there, with no escape.

But I feel as I should, following the rules of first love, and I don't want to.

He pulls back, looking at me questioningly. "You have the right to punch me right now."

"What?"

"I should have asked… I mean, to kiss you."

I'm struck with loss because of the absurdity of it. "No, I wish it wasn't like that. We should be… You didn't have to ask permission back in Portland. When we were… Boyfriend and girlfriend?" The term sounds so shockingly normal I giggle.

I always do that at the most inappropriate times.

"Things have changed," Alex says, sobering me.

So many things have, even if I manage to let go of Julian and Alex manages to let go of his suffering and anger.

"Everything has," I agree. "Except for this."

I return the action, and it's like the old days where we kissed more than we talked.

Almost.

Thank you for reading PLEAAASE review! :)