Chapter Three
Yun
I never would have thought I’d miss the trailer we’d all crammed into before, yet here we were. We’d returned to the base after breakfast, but instead of the place we’d stayed before, an esper had guided us in a different direction.
They’d walked us to a far nicer double-wide set up closer to where the higher-ups slept. Instead of a tiny patio space, each mini-home was surrounded by an actual picket fence. Stepping inside had shown the niceties extended there as well.
They had four bedrooms along with a kitchen and full bathroom. Everything looked like a house, rather than clearly being an RV. The floor had that hollow feeling with each step, but otherwise? It was one of the nicer places I’d slept.
Yet, somehow, I missed the old place.
Probably because, in my experience, change never boded well for me. It rarely meant something better was coming and instead most often signaled trouble.
If they were moving us here, it meant they’d get something out of it, and I doubted I’d want to give whatever that was.
“You keep yawning,” Ingram said, lying flat on one of the couches with his feet stretched out over the armrest. The couch wasn’t especially small, but given Ingram’s height, it still couldn’t fully accommodate him. “You slept a ton. Why’re you still tired?”
Just the mention of it made me yawn again, covering my mouth out of habit. “I don’t know.”
“Her vitals are still out of sync.” Kenyon had his phone out, watching videos with the sound off, but the way he answered said he paid attention to us even if he didn’t look this way. “Her resting heart rate is high, her breathing still shallow, her oxygen a little lower.”
“So do we have to do something?” Ingram asked, a line appearing between his eyebrows.
“No. Think of it like recovery after surgery or illness. Her body is still recovering. A few days and it should level back out. I mean, that’s my guess at least. It’s not like I’ve ever seen this before.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think anyone’s seen it before.”
“Why am I still here?” I blurted the question out before I could stop myself. I just kept thinking about it, drowning in confusion. Carter had spoken to me a bit just after I’d woken, but other than that, none of them had bothered me for answers.
“This is a pretty nice place,” Kenyon answered slowly, gazing around as though he thought my complaint was with the place itself. “I mean, we could ask for something else, I guess. They seem pretty into making us happy, so I bet you could get whatever you want.”
“No, why am I here? With you all? You’ve seen what I can do firsthand, so why haven’t you dropped me? Why are you still letting me stay around? No sane esper would let me guide them, not after what I did.” It had taken far less in the past to get thrown aside, so what the hell was their problem?
“Well, there’s your mistake. We’re not exactly sane.” Ingram stayed lying flat, his hands behind his head like a pillow. “So things sane people would do have nothing to do with us. We’re more go our own way people.”
“Yeah, but you’re not stupid.”
Ingram turned his head to stare at Kenyon.
Point taken…
“You know that I could hurt you.”
“But you haven’t. Look, Spark, I could hurt you. Any of us could, right? We’re a hell of a lot stronger than you are.”
“Yeah, but espers are always stronger. That’s normal.”
“But you’re still here with us even though you could get hurt.
So yeah, we knew going into it you could scramble us, but fuck, what in our lives can’t do that?
Just about everything we deal with wants to fuck us up, so it’s really a waiting game.
Besides, you might still be the funnest way to go.
” Ingram’s tone said he found it hilarious, but I struggled to find the same humor.
His words made sense, after all. I didn’t like it, but there was truth there. They had every ability to hurt me any damn time they wanted. I had some protections, but at the end of the day, any one of them could snap my neck well before I could actually stop them.
“You’re insane,” I muttered when I couldn’t come up with anything else to say in return.
“Guilty as charged.” Ingram smirked and patted his face. “Now, Kenyon says you need to rest. Want to come sit here for a bit?”
It took a moment for the meaning to hit me, and when it did, my cheeks burned.
Which was a strange fucking reaction. Usually when men propositioned me, it angered me. It annoyed me. It didn’t create this flutter in my stomach.
Of course, I didn’t have the history with others that I did with Ingram, so perhaps that made the difference. It took me back my night with them all, with the way they’d excited me, the reaction of my body, the heat that had filled me, the pleasure.
It meant that I couldn’t muster a snappy comeback, not even a full-fledged glare. Instead, I twisted and headed outside, needing quiet and time alone to get myself back under control.
Ingram’s laughter followed me as I stepped onto the porch at the front, seemingly plenty amused by the interaction though he didn’t follow me. I let the door swing shut before leaning my back against the wall, just to the left of the entryway.
My cheeks still felt as though flames licked them, and I couldn’t calm myself. I slid down, my back scraping against the siding, until I crouched right there. Anyone could walk up, could exit the house and see me, but I couldn’t seem to force myself to move.
It was the first time I’d had to actually think about what had happened between us all, about how I’d given in.
No, not just given in. I’d enjoyed every last second of it. I’d basked in the pleasure, in the way they’d touched me, in the sensations I’d never experienced before.
I struggled to make sense of it, and the more I thought about it, the more confusing it became. It felt like a body that wasn’t my own, like something I’d turned into.
I recalled The Pitt, the way he had touched me, and it made my skin itch. In the years since, the reaction had been the same. The touch of another against my skin had sickened me, down to my core, making me think that would always be the case.
I’d accepted the insults, the jokes, the names. Blizzard. Frigid. Prude. I’d taken them in and chalked it up to my broken self, to a body and soul crushed unnaturally until nothing else could set it to rights again.
Yet that night, burned into my thoughts, had given me a glimpse of something else, something different.
What did it mean?
Did I want to explore it?
I closed my eyes and let the back of my head strike the outside of the house, wishing it would shake loose the answer.
It didn’t, of course, because life didn’t work that way. No matter what, I’d have to come to a conclusion on my own.
And while no doubt Ingram would say sitting on his face was the answer, I had a feeling it might be slightly more complicated than that.