Chapter 16 Talon’s Past
How much would you give to keep Rhea by your side, Talon?
The thought keeps bouncing in my head as I stare at her ceiling.
Hard to measure. Harder still when she’s lying right next to me, her head tipped back, mouth parted, fingers still loosely clutching the used bandage she peeled off me two hours ago and forgot to throw away.
She must have fallen asleep after taking care of my wounds.
It’s nice.
I got taken care of by someone, and I didn’t wake up alone.
A big part of me wants to give a bone and a half just to keep feeling like this. Like I’m worth something for someone. But another part, the one that thinks rationally even under all the lust and greed, knows exactly what I’m doing.
I’m using her.
Here, right now, lying on her couch.
I am using her.
Rey’s people have as much claim to that shitty, mildew-perfumed bar she drags herself through every night as Fisher has to me. Which is to say: absolute ownership. They have the power to crush her without blinking. They would, too. For sport.
And I’m letting it happen by staying.
If I gave even half a real damn about her, I’d get up right now—walk out, slam the door, and make it look like she was never tied to me in the first place.
I’d spin some rumor about Rey’s boys being high as hell and dragging some poor girl into a fight she never meant to be part of.
It would stick long enough to protect her. It would get them off her back.
Eventually, it would smooth over.
But I don’t get up.
I stay.
Because the truth is—how much would I give to keep Rhea by my side?
Not the right things.
I slide an arm under her shoulders and draw her closer. She shifts in her sleep and makes that soft, half-formed sound, somewhere between a sigh and a tiny wound opening, and fuck… she’s warm. Too warm. Warmer than any girl I’ve ever touched.
“Rhea,” I whisper into her hair. “Wake up.”
It’s still half-dark outside, that pre-dawn gray space where people either vanish forever or get found. If she were to leave town, this—right now—would be her window.
“Talon?” Her lashes lift. She sees me, really sees me, and concern is the first thing that rises in her eyes. “You need water? More meds?”
Just concern. And care. And trust.
And it hits me so hard in the chest I almost flinch.
She’s so good to me.
I crave it. I fucking hate it.
Your grandmother would be disgusted with you, Talon. She’d fucking despise you right now.
The thought tunnels straight through me. Shame slams into the same ribcage-space where the longing lives, and the two grind against each other until it hurts.
For one second, I actually want to change course.
And that’s enough.
“No,” I say. “We need to, uh… we need to talk.”
Concern shifts into alertness. She pulls herself up, peeling her body from mine, taking the warmth with her. Cold settles in its place immediately. Her hair falls forward in this messy curtain and she looks… soft. So soft it’s almost obscene.
My resolve shudders.
How much are you willing to give just to keep the light on, Talon?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“What is it?” she asks, tucking a leg beneath herself. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and I catch the still-healing split across her knuckle from the night with the broken glass.
You could have prevented that cut.
“We need to talk,” I repeat. I need to say something, anything. If I stop pushing the words out, they’ll just clot and rot in my throat, and I’ll let this—this…leeching off of her—keep going.
“About what?”
“About you leaving,” I say. I try to soften it with a charming smile. It feels like I fail, but I don’t. My face still moves the way it always does. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what a girl like you is even doing here and—”
“No.” Her chin lifts a millimeter.
“Hey, hear me out, honey—”
“Don’t call me ‘honey.’” She frowns. “You’ve never called me that before.”
She’s right. I never have.
“I’m trying to make this easy,” I say instead. “You should be on the first bus out. Head north, lose your phone, change your name. New place, new job. Somewhere with clean air and no men like me.”
“I don’t want clean air,” she says. “And I don’t want men like you, plural. I want you.”
That lands where it shouldn’t. I sit up too fast, stitches yanking fire through my side.
What is she saying…?
We’ve never been this explicit before. I knew she liked me, or thought I was hot, or felt sorry for me, or… something. But for her to want me…?
Her gaze locks with mine. It’s unflinching, clear, and brutally sincere. There’s not one ounce of bullshit in it.
“I…” I break away, glance at the wall, the floor, anywhere that isn’t her. “Come on, you can’t mean that. We’ve known each other for, what, five minutes?”
I hear my own voice and hate it.
I’m a jerk.
I’m such a jerk.
“I mean it,” she says. “I knew what you were the first night. I’m not stupid.”
“That makes one of us,” I mutter.
“Don’t turn me into some dumb girl, Talon. I’m serious.”
That’s exactly the problem.
She is.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and stand too fast. Pain rips white-hot through my flank. Good. I need it.
“You should go,” I say. “You openly spat in Rey’s crew’s face. There’s no going back from that. They do awful things to people who don’t fall back in line.”
“You didn’t fall in line,” she counters. “What about you?”
“I’m with Fisher, Rhea. That’s something else entirely.”
“Well, then I don’t see why I wouldn’t be with Fisher, too.” She tucks her hair behind her ear with those smooth, disastrously gentle hands. “Better that than leaving.”
The image of her on those docks hits me harder than the pain ever could. Her, smelling rot, surrounded by men who’d tear at softness like hers just to see it bleed. I see Baker’s hands on her, and something animal surges up my throat.
“Absolutely not,” I say.
“Talon.”
“Rhea,” I warn. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” A faint smile ghosts her lips. It’s not coy, nor manipulative. God, I wish it were. It would be so much easier then. “I’m not an idiot. I know what I’m choosing.”
I can’t do this.
I really fucking can’t.
“There’s nothing for you to choose here,” I snap. I turn on her too fast. I probably just tore half my stitches open, but I don’t stop. “You want to choose me? Well, I don’t choose you, for fuck’s sake.”
“You don’t mean that,” she says simply.
“Christ, Rhea—” I rake a hand through my hair, pacing two steps and back again like a trapped animal.
“Just… leave. You think you know me, but you don’t.
You think this—” I gesture between us, sharp and ugly.
“—is something worth bleeding for, but it’s not.
I’m not worth shit. I wouldn’t tell you that if it wasn't true.”
“I make my own choices.”
Oh, god help me.
“You’re going to regret this,” I mutter, though it’s more to myself than her.
“Then I’ll regret it,” she says. “But I’m staying.”
I turn away before she can see it. The break, the want, the part of me begging her not to stop choosing me…. Before she can read the truth I’ve been drowning beneath:
That I want to take everything she’s offering.
I want to be selfish so badly it scares the hell out of me.
It’s only the last shreds of discipline that drag me toward the door instead of back to her.
I shove my boots on, ignoring the sting in my stitches, and reach for my bloodied jacket.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Work,” I bite out. “Fisher’s got me running something.”
Her mouth parts, like she wants to beg me not to go. But she doesn’t. She just sits there, her back straight, hands resting in her lap like she’s holding herself together.
I almost look back.
Almost.
But I don’t.
I slam the door behind me instead.
“They kick you out of that flat of yours, man?” Baker shouts from the docks, voice cutting over the groan of steel cranes and the slap of water against the hulls.
He’s got a cigarette glued under his lip, smoke curling into the morning fog, and that stupid grin plastered across his face I don’t have the patience to entertain.
He knows I wasn’t home last night.
Two options: smile, play it off, keep the mask up… or tell him to fuck off and avoid chewing through my own tongue. I go with the latter, because something tells me if I lean into banter, I’ll end up breaking my stitches till the end by putting my fist into his teeth.
“Shut it, Baker,” I growl, stepping off the slick pier and onto rust-stained concrete.
He laughs, loud and careless. “What’s gotten you so sour, huh?” He closes the gap in a few long strides and matches his walk to mine. “Went by your place. It looked like you hadn’t slept in it. Don’t tell me you tried for some pussy last night and it finally didn’t stick.”
“If that were the case, I’d be back there now,” I say.
“Ah, right. Forgot you don’t do the whores after. It’s either an organic bitch or your hand.”
Rhea’s words ring in my head.
I don’t see why I wouldn’t be with Fisher, too.
She knows nothing about this world.
“Why were you looking for me?” I ask.
“Fisher told me to fetch ya.” He takes a slow drag and blows the smoke in my face. “Seemed urgent.”
Ah, fuck. News travels fast enough; I’d hoped they’d wait until the sun properly woke up, but Fisher must already know. Or at least know enough.
“Where is he?”
Baker jerks his chin toward the warehouse—the same one my grandmother always tried to keep me away from.
Not a place where a piece of paper can survive, Talon, she’d say, swatting my shoulder with a dish towel as if that alone could change the tracks of my life.
And in life you need a lot of papers. Back then it meant homework.
School books. Permission slips. But she was talking about all the rest of it too.
Money, ownership, legitimacy, a name that could buy you passage instead of suspicion.
She wasn’t wrong.
In here, anything softer than steel just soaks up the damp and rots.
Too bad there’s no other way for me anymore.