THIRTY-FIVE #2
My stomach twists violently, because I forgot about that. A little slash low in the wood. A sign to myself that I had checked the room and cleared it. A stupid little system built out of panic and a blade far too big for my hand.
“You knew I was alive.”
“I knew you might be,” he says.
“That’s a convenient little difference,” I mutter, and his breath catches.
I pull my hand away, and it actually hurts. Good. Maybe the pain will do something useful for once.
Maine lets me take it back without chasing it, and that almost makes it worse.
“I found one of Dad’s private notebooks hidden under the loose floorboard in his office,” he explains, and my eyes snap up.
“What?”
“I didn’t know what half of it meant. Not back then. But I knew enough to recognize your name,” he tells me.
A cool chill crawls over my skin. “My name?”
“Not all of it. Initials. Date of birth. Blood type. Scent response notes. Omega stabilization schedules.”
My pulse trips over itself.
Dad’s kitchen table charts.
Mom rubbing his shoulders.
Maine stealing pens.
My drawing monsters in the margins until Dad laughed and said they had very good clinical instincts.
That memory suddenly curdles like spoiled milk and I ask, “He was studying me?”
Maine shakes his head too fast, and then he winces like he realizes what he’s done. “No, not like that. Not Vector. Not NOVAC after it went all to hell. He was trying to save you before there was anything to save you from.”
“That’s a very pretty sentence for something very ugly,” I point out.
“I know.”
“Stop saying that,” I snap and he closes his mouth.
Good.
I stand, and my knee instantly hates me with a burning passion. That’s just great. It can go ahead and form a shitty little support group with the rest of me.
Maine tries to sit up, but I point a warning finger at him. “Move and I’ll let Ellis staple your shitty personality shut while she’s fixing your stitches.”
He stops and I pace two steps away. Then I pace two steps back.
The room has grown too small. The air feels too full. My hair is down, my bandana is loose, my brother is actually alive, and my father might have loved me with a shitload of paperwork I never understood.
Amazing.
Just a normal Tuesday, then.
“I found the notebook,” Maine says carefully, “and then I found a transmitter frequency written inside the back cover. It led me to a field relay. The people there knew Dad’s name.”
“Haven Ridge.”
“Eventually, but not at first. There were smaller groups. Research teams. Supply lines. People trying to keep bits of the old work from turning into weapons,” he says.
“And you joined them.”
“I traded what I had for a chance to keep looking for you.”
I laugh, and it sounds bad even to me.
“You kept looking by not coming back?” I ask bluntly.
Maine’s face shatters around the edges. “If I thought Vector was tracking marker-positive Omegas, if Dad’s work was real, and if you were alive and carrying any of it in your blood, then going back to you with people watching me could have led them straight to you.”
My anger goes still. It doesn’t disappear. It never will. It simply sits and listens while baring its teeth.
“I thought staying away might be the only way to keep you hidden long enough to find something useful,” he explains. “Blockers. Stabilizers. A way to shut the marker down. Anything.”
“You thought wrong,” I tell him.
“I know.”
My stare cuts into him suddenly.
He swallows hard. “I’m sorry.”
I hate those words just as much, because they’re too small. They’re basically a Band-Aid pressed over a severed limb. Like a single stitch trying to hold together a body that has been split open.
“You missed six years.”
“I know.”
“You missed Mom dying.”
His face twists in pain.
“You missed me burying her.”
That’s a lie. I didn’t bury her. There wasn’t time or strength or safe ground. I left the bathroom door closed and ran before the smell became a part of me forever.
My words hit their mark anyway.
Maine looks like they cut right through him.
“You missed heats,” I say sharply. “Blockers running out. Men trying to buy what they thought I was. Zeds in stairwells. Winters. Blood. Learning which roofs held weight and which canned foods make you throw up less. You missed me turning myself into someone who wouldn’t even look twice at.”
My fingers find the loose bandana at my throat. I don’t pull it back up, and that feels pretty important.
“You missed all of it.”
Maine’s voice is barely there when he says, “I did.”
“And now you’re here,” I mutter.
“Yeah.”
“And I’m supposed to what? Be grateful?”
“No, Kota.”
“Then what? Forgive you?” I push.
“No.”
“Understand?”
His eyes lift to mine then, and there’s the brother I remember. Not in his face, but in the way he takes the hit and doesn’t even attempt to duck. “No. You don’t owe me understanding.”
And you know what? I fucking hate that answer. I wanted something worse. Something I could strangle with my bare hands.
The door shifts and I glance over at it.
Kaito stands just past the crack, not looking in fully, but not looking away either.
Fletcher is slightly farther down the hallway, arms crossed and body angled toward Hale.
Xeon is watching the corridor and Ewan is sitting on the floor with his back pressed against the wall and his headphones in his lap rather than wrapped around his neck like usual.
They’re giving me space, not absence, and there’s a very big difference. Hell, my chest even hurts with it.
Maine notices where I’m looking but this time he doesn’t ask if they’re mine. Check that out. More growth. Incredible. Five stars for him.
“They kept you alive?” he asks eventually.
I look back at him. “They tried.”
“That sounds like you made it hard on them,” he calls me out.
I shrug a shoulder. “I’m a delight.”
His mouth wobbles before he says, “I can see that.”
Silence follows again, but a little less sharp this time. Not softer, just tired and weighted down.