Chapter Thirty-One #2
“I’m sure they were firing blanks. Though how they had that much powder to burn...” He shakes his head. “TNS made us use that shit sparingly. It’s possible to melt down bullets and cast more, but a lot harder to manufacture proper, modern gunpowder.”
“Probably should have thought of that when we were still there.” I had my suspicions back then, but it seems so obvious now that it was part of the manipulation. The Grand Astrologue excelled at the theatre of fear.
Eventually, I get to the end of the story.
Our escape. How my father died protecting me from people who wanted to hand me over to be someone’s teenaged wife.
Sid’s grip tightens around my shoulders.
I tell him how the day we broke out of the compound, my dad held back the guards so Mum and I could keep running.
Curtis managed to squeak past too, tying his fate to ours for a few years.
I go all the way to the end, describing our time in the wilderness. And finally, I reach the second attack.
“When I really think about it, I’m not even sure it was TNS,” I say.
“Just… people with guns. April and I managed to avoid the whole thing. Sometimes I think… TNS wouldn’t have killed Mum.
She wasn’t that old. Early forties. Young enough that someone might have wanted her for…
you know. But if Astolia found them, and me and April weren’t there?
They would have wanted to punish her. They would have… ”
“Kayla.” He wraps his other arm around me.
I cling to him, my eyes screwed shut as I go on.
We’re getting to the worst part. The bit I’ve never said out loud, not even to April.
The death I can hardly acknowledge. “April and I got away. We lost most of our supplies and almost starved, but we made it. But… only us. A couple weeks later, I miscarried.”
The hand stroking my hair goes still. “You were…”
“Just a couple months. Curtis knew, but no one else. We were trying to find the right moment, because we knew my mum wasn’t going to be thrilled when she found out.
A pair of stupid teenagers, thinking we were old enough to…
” I swallow hard, but there are fewer tears to repress than one might think.
It’s always been the thing I couldn’t cry about.
There was no one to share it with. No way to connect to the life I lost before it ever began.
“I wanted that baby, Sid. I know it doesn’t make sense.
I couldn’t have kept me and April alive while pregnant.
It was all for the best, but I wanted it.
I wanted some piece of him. Of them. Of what we lost. It didn’t seem fair that I couldn’t even save the life inside of me. I couldn’t do anything.”
“Fuck.” He doesn’t say much, but it’s enough. I’m so unaccustomed to sharing the story, I don’t think I could have listened to comforting sermons on the topic anyway. “I wish—I wish I could fix it for you.”
Something between a sniff and a laugh emanates from me as I shift in his arms to lean against his side. “It is what it is.”
“Have you talked to anyone about this?”
“That’s literally what we’re doing right now.”
“I mean like counselling.”
I wrinkle my nose. “You mean like a… therapist?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
I’ve read about them in books. They were something of a fixture in pre-Quake communities. But I can’t picture what they did or how it would help. I barely managed to talk about this with Sid.
“It’s not like you have to do it tomorrow,” he says, sensing my hesitance.
“But therapy helps more than you think. I had to do it when I came here. It’s mandated for former TNS members; part of the rehabilitation program.
I fought against it for the first few months, but eventually, stuff they said started to break through.
If nothing else, it helped me figure out how to keep going. ”
“I can’t tell anyone, Sid. I didn’t mention Astolia on my papers. I’ll get another demerit.”
“Therapists have to keep patient confidentiality.”
“And you believe them?”
The silence that follows reassures me he’s not foolish enough to trust a promise blindly. “I think so,” he says, lukewarm but hopeful. For all his crabbiness, Sid is inherently optimistic.
“I’m not telling anyone.” Sid opens his mouth to argue with me further, but I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. Telling you was bad enough.”
“How are we going to expose what’s going on in Astolia if you don’t say anything about it? I can’t go up to Council spouting a bunch of hearsay.”
I spring away from him. “You want to tell Council?”
“Well, we should, shouldn’t we? If there are people suffering there—”
“You can’t. If they figure out I’m here, they’ll come for me and April, or Council will send us back or—”
“Kayla, they won’t.”
“I have demerits! If I get more, they’ll suspend my sanctuary papers and then—”
“You’re my wife!” he shouts over my panicking prattle. That word reverberates through my bones. “If you don’t want to say anything, that’s fine. I won’t make you. But they can’t carry you away, because you’ve got a legal right to be here. We’re married and—”
“Are we?” I thread my fingers through his, taking his left hand, then his right, in mine. It feels like the right moment. I’ve spilled my guts about Astolia. The only lingering question is whether he’ll stand by me. “Are we really?”
He struggles to clear his throat. “I… I don’t know.”
“You know all the worst parts of me, Sid Charles.” I let my voice drop, low and husky, no longer trying to mask my desire. “Do you still want me?”
He leans in and rests his forehead against mine, so tantalizingly close. “More than anything. But what if—”
I’m done with the what ifs and maybes. This time, when I kiss him, there’s nothing left to restrain me.
Speaking about Curtis severed my last tether to him.
For years, the memory of being loved sustained me, but it’s not enough anymore.
I need this. Like air and water and food, this is essential to my survival.
Sid pulls me into his lap and I let my body melt against his.
My mouth roves over his face, kissing his jaw, his cheek, his uneven nose.
I want to be touching all of him. The clothes separating his skin from mine bunch uncomfortably between our bodies.
I snake my hands beneath his coat, then find my way to the hem of his shirt to touch his stomach.
He growls as he moves to kiss my shoulder, and his own hands find their way into my blouse.
Buttons pop and he digs his thumb into my navel.
A whimper escapes me. I go back to his mouth for more, but a second later, he breaks away.
“We—we need to…”
“Please don’t stop,” I beg. None of my demons can threaten me when he’s holding me and that makes his touch the most precious medicine I’ve ever tasted. “I’m sorry about before. You were right. I was scared, but I’ve always—”
“I mean…” He clears his throat, struggling to regain control. “Maybe we should… take this inside?”
“What? Oh!” I push against his shoulders, stunned. I’ve always fumbled my way into intimacy without thinking about any kind of preparation like setting. Curtis was a summer child’s romance, but maybe I’ve grown beyond that now.
“You know…” A small amount of Sid’s chest hair pokes above the neckline of his shirt, and I tug at it playfully. “I’ve never done it in a bed before.”
“Holy shit.” He lets out a nervous laugh. He’s flushed from his forehead to his neck. “Well… I’m excited to be your first for something.”
He tries to ease me off his lap so he can stand, but I tighten my legs around him, so he rises with me clinging to his body like a possum to a tree. He scoops an arm beneath my ass so that I can hang on him more comfortably, then gives me a withering look. “Kayla. We can’t walk in like—”
“Like what?” I ask, right before cutting him off with a kiss. Despite his protests, he leans in, mouth open and wanting. This man is helpless against me and I love it.
He could probably carry me up to the apartment like this, but eventually, I concede and straighten so that my feet hit the ground.
I almost tip over when I touch earth, as if I’ve been in a canoe on the ocean for too long and forgotten how to stand without the sway of his body to anchor me.
An anxious bubble forms in my chest. Standing on my own two feet reminds me how frightening the world beyond him is.
Astolia and everything it represents is closer than it’s ever been.
I grab Sid’s hand, dragging him towards the house. As we draw closer, I spot James coming over the hill. I drop Sid’s hand. It’s not that I’m ashamed to be with him—but whatever is happening between us is so new and tenuous, I don’t want anyone’s input on it yet.
James’s gaze flicks from my red eyes to the open buttons on my shirt.
He smirks in a way that says we haven’t fooled him one bit.
“Carlos wanted someone to grab you two for dinner. But… Kayla, I can see you’re still upset about whatever it was and Sid…
you’ve got a lot of files to go over, I guess? ”
“Go jump in the sea, James.” Sid grabs me by the shoulders and steers me up to our apartment. I’m trembling with a mixture of horror and laughter as we get the door open.
“Oh, you’re welcome. No need for gratitude at all!”
“Wait, James!” I place a hand on Sid’s arm, halting him. “Is April down there?”
“She came down a few minutes ago, yes.”
“Tell her everything’s okay, all right? I’m lying down, but… everything’s okay.” Is that true? I can’t tell. I’m not interested in dragging us off this farm anymore. If anything, this is the one safe place left in the world.
“I’ll keep her away as long as I can.” He winks, and I am equal parts relieved and mortified that a secret like this is in James’s hands.
He disappears into the kitchens. When I turn back to Sid, there’s a thoughtful pinch to his brow.
“You sure you want to do this?”
I grin, remembering the morning we left for our wedding. “I’m not the one who is going to back out.”