Chapter 30 #2
Our breaths mixed. I held the beast back for a moment longer as the flames dwindled. I knew ghosts lurked in the smoke, waiting. I opened my eyes to find Tristian staring at me. His lips brushed my forehead. I shivered at the feeling as he withdrew, pulling away from me and leaving me empty.
He pushed himself off the bed. I was paralyzed between demanding that he return and being thankful for the space, unsure of what to do in the aftermath, how to put back the pieces he had dismantled—if I even could.
He made his way to a desk, grabbed a cup, and took a sip. I pushed myself into a seated position, my eyes scanning the room.
It was simple: the bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a chair.
Papers, journals, and files were stacked neatly on the desk, a small picture of a woman and child next to them.
Unit Seven’s insignia was pinned to the wall, the stitching of this one haphazardly done, as if done by an unskilled hand, the edges frayed.
The stars varied in size and accuracy. His pack hung over the chair.
A door stood to the right of the desk, and what looked like a small bathroom sat beyond.
It was a comfortable room, but there was an air of neglect to it.
Tristian offered me the cup silently. I wondered if he was worried that talking would destroy this.
“Thanks,” I murmured, taking the cup. Tristian nodded as he opened his wardrobe. He tossed a shirt onto the bed as he grabbed his pants and pulled them on.
I grabbed the shirt. “I probably shouldn’t take your clothes with me.
People would know…” I trailed off as he looked my way, hurt brimming at what I had revealed—that I wouldn’t stay.
I couldn’t. My heart ached horribly. The room suddenly felt too full with everything we hadn’t said while our bodies came together.
“Right,” he told me as he bent down, grabbed my discarded items, and laid them on the bed carefully, my weapons among them. He made his way to his desk, leaning against it, hiding the papers and photo.
I slipped on my clothes, but as I placed my pistol and knife back in their home, Tristian broke the silence. “They’re your father’s, right?”
My hand stilled on the handle of my knife. My thumb brushed against the EC there. I nodded.
“He taught you everything? Was he in the military?”
I closed my eyes, begging the ghost to leave me be. I had just been naked before him, vulnerable and exposed…Yet my words still caught on my tongue, threatening to choke me.
“He was in the Army. Special Forces. Retired before my younger brother was born, but he never really retired. He trained me so he could go back.” I barely got the words out. “He died fighting in the war.”
“I’m sorry,” Tristian said, two words that both of us knew did nothing to ease the pain.
“It’s what he wanted,” I found myself saying. “He taught me so he could go fight and I could defend my brother and sister. I wondered for a long time if he knew what he asked of me. He did and he did it anyway.”
I met Tristian’s gaze. Emotion brimmed in his emerald-green eyes.
He didn’t offer platitudes. Instead, he turned.
He held out the small photo on his desk, offering up his own grief.
I took the old photograph; it was bent and creased.
A woman with his hair sat on a beach. A boy no older than eight sat next to her, a huge smile surrounded by chocolate curls, the child carefree and innocent. “That’s me and my mom.”
I glanced between the photo and the man before me. I could barely see the happy child in his features now. “She’s beautiful, your mom.”
“She was the very best. It was always just the two of us,” Tristian confided.
I glanced up. “Your father?”
Tristian crossed his arms as he shook his head. “He ran off while she was pregnant. She said I was better off not knowing him.” He cleared his throat. “What happened to your mom and siblings?”
I couldn’t meet his gaze. The beast sank its claws in.
“My mom was—she was always sick. She died when she heard about my dad. My brother, he”—I took a steadying breath—“he was killed by an intruder. I couldn’t stop the bleeding.
It’s what made me freeze in the House. The hostage, I saw that night.
My sister died when we got here. I had waited too long to come.
” I shook my head, unable to look at him.
“I made the wrong choices. I failed them.”
Tristian shifted, but when I looked up, he remained by the desk, his arms at his side. I handed him his photo, the papers coming back into view. Tristian opened his mouth like he might say more, but I cut him off. Too exposed.
“What’s the illness doing to supplies?” I asked, sloppily changing topics.
Tristian didn’t push. He placed the photo down, leaning against the desk again. “Depleting them quickly. I have yet to get a report from Kumar. He was too busy tonight.”
“What are we going to do about it? Shouldn’t we be above?
” I asked, this conversation safer—impending doom easier to talk about than myself.
“Patrick said going above isn’t a priority, according to Burdon.
” I held back the hatred as acid burned my throat at the name, at what she had done to Tristian.
“Lyssa is wrong.”
“And the weather—do you believe it?” I asked simply, but something in my tone must have given me away.
“Raven or Eagle?” Tristian asked me.
“Both.”
Tristian sighed heavily, the entire expanse of his chest deflating. “They’re lying about the reports. We confirmed it. Rumi got into the observatory. It’s clear above. Patrick has been going through old logs trying to figure out for how long it’s been going on.”
I should be shocked that we were being lied to. I wasn’t in the slightest. Only angry that we still clung to the things that had destroyed us. “So why aren’t we above looking?”
“Because I haven’t been given the opportunity to get you all above safely.”
“Do you see that changing?”
Tristian sized me up, a lightness in his gaze, as if my questions, my interest, eased something in him. “I plan on making sure it changes.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell the unit soon. I won’t bring them with me if I fail.” There was no room in the statement for questions. “I’ve been delayed with all the names that hit the death roll.”
“What names?” Did he know about the names Rumi had asked me to find, or was this something different?
“The ones from the Observatory team.”
I blinked, confused. “What?”
“All but two of them have gotten this illness. Most have died.”
My mind tried piecing everything together. It was strange that the entire group responsible for the weather had been hit the hardest. “Are you trying to figure out why?”
“Among other things. It’s part of why I’ve been staying here. That, and I needed space,” Tristian admitted.
Needed space from me.
“I should go,” I said.
Tristian didn’t move. I didn’t know what to say, how to voice anything that had shifted between us. The air that always grew thick now pulsed as everything we had done, instead of said, took life.
As I grabbed the door handle, there was a sudden movement.
I turned, Tristian before me, his hands finding my face gently, hesitation there as if he hadn’t just been inside me.
A part of me was desperate to rip our clothes back off.
Take him to bed again. To lose myself in the feel of him over me, in me.
To release all the things that now ran rampant in my chest. To say with my body all things my tongue refused to admit.
His lips met mine; the kiss was delicate and fragile. It cracked the thing in my chest that a man of his strength could be such a thing.
“Stay,” he urged against my lips. “Lie a little longer.”
I urged my body to run away, but my feet didn’t move. My hand cupped his face. “Tristian.”
“We can both just lie.”
But we couldn’t. I couldn’t. Sooner or later he would see it, the things I couldn’t fix in me. My eyes burned as I pulled away. Tristian’s hands hung in the air as he broke before me. I added the destruction to all the other things I had ruined.
What could I give him had the world not taken away my innocence, if I were whole? In another world where war didn’t strip me of my humanity, would I have stayed? Would I have ever pushed him away? Would I be worthy? Would I tell him that I loved him?
I knew what I harbored. I knew how destroyed I was. I couldn’t burden Tristian with it. I wouldn’t ask him to carry it. It was more than that as my family’s faces swam before my eyes. The ones I cared about had a way of dying while I was stuck ruining myself trying to keep them alive.
“You don’t want that,” I muttered.
“What if I do?”
I stopped as I pulled the door open. The beast rushed to the surface. I didn’t stop it. “You don’t.”
I entered the hall even as everything in me screamed to go back—to stay until I erased the brokenness I had just caused. I set off through the dark, quiet tunnel, refusing to give in.
I was almost to the main tunnel when sure footsteps sounded.
I slowed but didn’t stop. Almost certain it would be the man I had just left behind, I listened, but it wasn’t Tristian—the cadence was off.
I kept my movements casual as my hand found my knife.
The steps halted. I turned, drawing my weapons.
Kaleo’s dark eyes ran over my pistol and knife as he chuckled ten feet from me.
He scanned behind me as if looking for someone.
“Looking for a bed to warm in? Jaxon claimed it was your favorite pastime.” He winked at me. My gaze flickered behind him, giving me away. Kaleo looked behind his shoulder at room number nine. He turned back, grinning broadly. “It’s frowned upon, fucking your commander.”
“Doesn’t seem to have stopped you.”
“Guess that’s just another thing we have in common.” Kaleo shrugged. Anger lanced through me. I had nothing in common with the man before me. “People talk in bed; I enjoy the information. Something tells me you aren’t fucking him for information, though.”
I turned, walking away from him, my weapons still in my hands.
“You’ll be his weakness,” Kaleo called after me. “She will exploit it until he crumbles. She’s watching him. She hasn’t forgiven him.”
“She should be begging for his forgiveness,” I snarled, whirling around. My hand tightened around my knife.
Kaleo sauntered closer, a mere foot between us. He didn’t draw a weapon, like I wasn’t even a threat. “Does he know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I turned away.
“She thinks it’s only him,” Kaleo claimed behind me.
I froze. “Only him?”
“Can’t even admit it to yourself, can you? That you care for him. Another thing.”
“You’re wrong.”
“Sure. His unit might have his back, but Burdon isn’t the only one who wants to see him fall. There are others waiting.”
I stopped, looking over my shoulder. “Right, there’s you. Still trying to finish the job you started with the Angels.”
“I do hate leaving things unfinished. I see you’ve had some history lessons since we last saw each other. Hades should be thanking me.”
“Thanking you?”
“For taking his old job beneath Burdon. It has its perks. She’s rather feral behind closed doors.”
Disgust sat heavy on my skin. I turned, putting space between us.
“I’d watch your back,” Kaleo said behind me. “Angels have a way of losing their wings around here.”