Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Early afternoon sun shines through the windows, illuminating Weston’s room before I wake, the anticipation of finding Sig and telling Weston the development rushing through my veins.
The other side of the bed is already empty.
I don’t know how long he has been gone, despite possibly being awake all night waiting for me to return.
I wish he wouldn’t have, because I don’t need to be wondering if there are other reasons besides not trusting me to return.
Sig is walking down the hallway toward me as soon as I emerge from the room.
“Hungry?” she says as she turns down the steps to the second floor.
“Starving,” I say and take the steps close behind.
We walk through the doorway into the seemingly empty mess, and I startle when I see Weston sitting alone at a corner table, the plate in front of him almost empty.
“Oh good, you’re here Cap,” Sig says.
This is it.
My stomach tumbles as the moment I’ve been waiting for approaches. Telling Sig made me nervous, but once it finally happened, it felt easy. Telling Weston feels different, like he will be able to see through my motives the second I utter the words.
I still have to try.
Following closely behind Sig, we fill some plates, then weave through the mess toward Weston’s table.
“What’s up, Sig?” he says, as she drops into the seat in front of him. I slide in next to her, trying not to look as anxious as I feel.
“We need to talk to you,” she says.
He leans back in his chair, draping his arm over the one next to him. It’s almost as if he’s trying to put as much space between us as possible, not acknowledging me until his eyes flick toward me quickly before returning to her.
“Both of you?”
“I need to talk to you. But she needs to be here too,” she says.
“I’m listening,” he rumbles.
She leans over the edge of the table, lowering her voice despite being the only ones in the room. “Remember what we were talking about before? About the thing you said no to?”
“I’m not sure why she needs to be here to continue that conversation, Signee.” A flicker of anger is his only tell before his face falls back into the stoic mask he wears daily.
“Trust me, Cap, she does. You remember, right?” she urges.
His eyes don’t leave her as he answers. “I do.”
“I need you to reconsider.”
“I’m not changing my mind, Sig,” he says.
“I think you might.” She looks at me, her eyes shining full of hope that what I have to say will change his mind. “What did you tell me last night?”
His stare slowly shifts to me, as if he’s having to pull it away and it isn’t going without a fight.
I squirm in my seat, readjusting and clearing my throat before I speak.
Getting him to understand the risk of inaction and ignoring time is crucial to getting back to Dane, and I’m already going in at a disadvantage. He doesn’t want to change his mind.
And he’s a stubborn asshole, so I really need to convince him.
“The dust is almost gone.”
Weston’s eyes flash to Sig before settling back on me as he shifts forward in his seat, leaning his distracting forearms on either side of his plate.
I have his attention now, his desire to pretend I’m not part of this conversation disintegrating quickly.
It’s the next part that is the most important, more so than the dust being almost gone.
The next thing I say should convince him, because it is the true deciding factor for all of us being stranded on Dawnlin for a timeless eternity.
I hold his gaze as I say firmly, “Dane doesn’t know how to replenish it.”
Tension pulls between the three of us as the words settle. Weston’s face hardens and a muscle in his jaw ticks as we sit in silence, waiting for him to say something.
“How do you know this?” he says, his voice gruff, his words cut short.
“Dane told me,” I say and shoot him a look, “before you took me.”
That probably wasn’t the smartest way to answer, at least for the progression of my plan, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to take a stab at him, reminding him of what he did, the life he upended, and the risk that he potentially put everyone in.
If I hadn’t been captured, if I had been back at camp, I may have been able to help Dane find an answer by now.
The reality of being trapped here may have just been a fleeting worry if we discovered how to replenish the dust. Since Weston captured me, though, Dane’s focus has been entirely on getting me back.
I hope he realizes how much his actions have affected his goal.
Weston breathes through his nose and his eyes fall down to the table.
“See, Cap?” Sig says, pushing harder, taking her opportunity to make him see the urgency. “We need to do something now.”
Ignoring her completely, he looks back up at me, his teal eyes piercing. “What made you tell Sig?”
The question catches me off guard. Why does it matter what made me tell Sig? Why is he not focused on the actual information? Is this a test of some kind, trying to feel me out to see if I’m telling the truth?
“Huh?” I say. I can hear Edmond in the back of my mind, scolding me for my very unregal response.
“You’ve been here for weeks. What made you tell her? Why bring this up now?”
I shrug. The last thing I want is for the conversation to feel planted, but just as I expected, he seems wary.
I hate how much he can read me, like he knows my every move.
It’s almost as if we’re using the same arsenal of tools against each other with every battle that we fight, and waiting for the other to surrender first.
“Sig and I were talking as we searched,” I say.
I refuse to give him any details about the rest of the conversation.
He doesn’t need to know I asked if he was with anyone, or has ever been.
I can’t even believe I asked it myself, and I try to ignore the little feelings the question still stirs up deep inside me.
I continue, “I told her I’d already made peace with living on Dawnlin, especially after being denied the healing waters, because the dust is almost gone, anyway.”
Sig leans farther over the table, inching closer to him, but he’s still staring at me, trying to read me. “If we don’t send her now, Cap, it’ll be too late.” I’ve never heard Sig sound this desperate, not even when they spoke about this before.
“Send me where?” I ask, looking between them to prevent holding any eye contact that might give away that I already very much know where Sig wants me to go.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Weston says, finally breaking away from me and looking back at Sig.
“What are you talking about, Cap?” she says, her hushed voice cracking with her attempt to keep from yelling.
“It doesn’t, Signee.”
She slams her hands on the table, the bang ricocheting off the walls of the empty room.
“Bullshit it doesn’t! We always thought we had a chance, that time would never run out.
It’s running out, Cap. She’s our last chance.
Whether that fits with all your other…” She pauses, and he tilts his head slightly, and I watch another one of their silent conversations happen before my eyes.
“Motives,” she says finally. “It’s all moot.”
“Enough, Signee,” he snaps. “I said it isn’t happening. That’s an order.”
“You can’t make that choice for the rest of us,” she says, her eyes turning to glass and her voice quivering.
Sig is always strong, Weston’s second in command of everything, and while she sheds the responsibility when she’s relaxing with the rest of us, it’s back on in an instant if she’s needed.
I’ve never seen her this vulnerable or upset, and I can’t help but wonder who is waiting for her back home.
But it is obvious she and Weston don’t see eye to eye.
“I’m the Captain. I have to make the best decision for everyone on this ship. Everyone, Sig.”
She sniffs slightly, then clears her throat. “I hope you know what you are doing.”
He stands, his chair scraping the wooden floor behind him, snatching his plate from the table and stepping away before stopping next to her. “I’m having hope.”
Without another word, he storms out of the mess, his plate clattering in the return before leaving Sig and me sitting in silence.
“I really thought he would listen to you,” she says finally, dropping her head into her hands.
“He never listens to me,” I say. “I’m not sure why this would be different.”
She gives a half-hearted chuckle, before leaning back in her chair and staring down at her untouched food. “I think he’s afraid.”
Weston doesn’t strike me as the kind of person that ever experiences fear.
He’s too in control of everything, too demanding.
Like he just said, he gives an order, and that is the way it will go.
What’s there to be afraid of when you are the ultimate authority?
Especially if you’re the ultimate authority with no emotional attachments or relationships to anyone else here?
“Afraid of what?” I ask.
She looks at me and rolls her lips into a tight line, as if she’s trying to decide if she should say what is clearly on the tip of her tongue. She gives in with a small shake of her head.
“He’s afraid that if we send you back to Dane to take the dust from him, you won’t come back.”
Why would Weston have any fears about me? What does it actually matter to him if I go back to the Voyagers, to Dane, or stay here? If he’s just trying to eventually have everyone on his side, then it makes sense that he would be afraid to lose one person.
But why do I feel like it only has to do with me?
Have I not been convincing enough, and he just doesn’t trust me yet?
“That was your plan?” I ask, looking for the confirmation so I can stop pretending I don’t know. “To send me back and take the pouch from Dane?”
She nods. “You’re the only person who can get close enough to him to do it.”
I pause for a moment. If I need to be more convincing, I have to start with Sig, and I need to mitigate the fears.
“I would come back,” I say, dropping my voice low and serious.
“You would?” Her eyes narrow and a single eyebrow raises.
I nod. “Yeah, I would.”
“Why? You wouldn’t stay with Dane?”
The words are tumbling out of my mouth before I can even process that I’m saying them, and it isn’t until they hang between us that I realize I actually mean them. This isn’t part of my lie.
“No one deserves to be trapped here if they don’t want to be. I’d make Dane see that, and he’d let me come back.”
I remember feeling trapped the moment Dane told me he didn’t know how to replenish the dust. Immediately my thoughts went to my fellow Voyagers, who didn’t know the choice was going to be taken from them.
The same worry applies to the Castaways, especially the ones I’ve gotten to know.
They’ve already completed their goal, they found the healing waters, and now they are trapped.
But Weston is the reason for that. He’s the one who is refusing Sig’s plan to let me go, and give everyone a chance to get off the island. He’s the villain here, not me, or Sig, or Dane. He’s the one saying no and controlling the fate of everyone around him.
“Then we need to get Cap to understand that, and change his mind. The only way he’ll say yes is if he can trust that you’ll come back.”
“I can work on that,” I say, and again, I’m telling the truth.
Maybe Sig’s advice the other night wasn’t just for Weston.
The best way to gain his trust may be to stop being an asshole to him, even though it feels like he draws it out of me, challenging me at every moment.
He says he wants to trust me, and he’s taken some steps to show me he’s starting to, but just when I think I’m making progress, something sets it back.
Changing my method might be in my best interest, and maybe instead of fighting, I need to start befriending. Being friends with Weston might just be his weakness, as long as I can keep from blurring the lines and falling into his trap.
With as little friendship experience as I have, I’m not sure how I’ll accomplish that, but I need to try.
My life on the island depends on it.