Chapter 19 Thea #2
Slade lifts a hand, bringing it toward my face.
I lean away, but he catches my tear with his thumb anyway.
For a moment, he stares at the droplet on the pad.
His brow dips slightly and his eyes narrow, scanning my single tear as if it contains a secret message he’s trying to decode.
There’s a flex in his jaw, a flicker, and his nostrils flare, but then his hand falls and wipes the droplet away on his pants.
Edmond shifts, like he wishes he could step away, but we’re inside a moving vehicle. He turns his head, not quite facing the door, not quite facing me either. “Unfortunately, there isn’t anything we can do about it.”
“But then how did you walk out with me? They just let you go without any consequences? Nothing? We need to go back, call the police. If you let me go, I can—”
“No,” Slade rumbles through clenched teeth.
Edmond turns, surprised. “Speaking now, are we, sir?”
Slade snarls at him before finding my gaze. His eyes soften. “You,” he rasps, as if he’s fighting to get the words out. “You will not be permitted to leave. This was not without consequence.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Your location has been negotiated for during the time being. Eventually, you will need to return.”
“I’m sorry? What?” Returned? I don’t want to go back. Why take me at all if I’m just going to be dumped back here?
Edmond opens his mouth. “I think he said—”
“I know what he said. Why do I need to go back?” I blink, quickly discarding the prickle behind my eyes.
Slade purses his lips, like he’s deep in thought, and then he turns to look out the window, effectively ignoring me. I turn to Edmond and raise my eyebrows.
“I think that is all the congressman could do. But for now, you are safe. Let’s get some food for you, shall we?”
The thought of food after being drugged is revolting, and my stomach churns, flipping on its end. A sour tang bubbles up my throat, and I swallow, forcing the rising nausea down, but the limo tilts and I bend over my seat, clutching my stomach.
“Miss Thea?” Edmond asks, concerned. “Are you all right?”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
Slade pounds on the side of the door three times, and the driver pulls over.
I gag once and paw at the door, tumbling out once the handle gives way.
My body jerks as my empty stomach dry heaves over the side the road.
The fumes from the exhaust make it all worse, and my body jolts again.
I brace a hand on my knee, well aware I look like a broken camping chair, folded in half, naked.
A single-serve bag of crushed chips crinkles beneath my heel, and a crack pipe rolls around, the hollow glass singed at the tip.
“Are you ill?” Slade’s voice is closer behind me, and I’m still not used to it.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “I don’t know. My stomach’s been revolting since they gassed us last night. I just haven’t had the time to think about it. Guess now I do.”
There’s a shuffle behind me, and a hand presses firm against my now aching back. The weight of it, the warmth at the point of contact, makes me flinch, and I leap to the side. When I look at Slade, his cheeks blaze, and he rubs the back of his neck, scrubbing entirely too hard.
“I’m sorry. I just … I can’t not touch you.”
I bristle. “Well, try.”
The moment poofs away. Any red on his face from embarrassment turns to ire, and his jaw clamps shut, working back and forth.
I didn’t mean for it to come out so rude. But the whiplash in the last hour alone is enough to have me seeing a chiropractor for weeks. Every emotion—terror, humiliation, anger … desire. I blow a curl out of my face.
“Miss Thea, here.” Edmond extends his arm out of the limo and offers me a bottle of water.
I take it. “Thank you.” Then, my eyes dart to Slade as I crack the top. “And thank you. I’m sorry, I just …”
He blinks and turns his back on me, ducking through the backseat door.
I’m left holding my water bottle on the side of this—I glance around—deserted back road somewhere outside the city.
A crooked sign leans into the road, and its sun-bleached letters read LAKE MICHIGAN KEEP RIGHT, and when the chirr of summer insects becomes too much, I climb in after him.
What does he want from me? I’m not a toy, some plaything he can use to manipulate this society he belongs to. If he truly wanted to help, he’d get all the girls out. What is it about me?
I barely have time to shut the door before Slade pounds the side of the limo again and it pulls back onto the road.
The limo glides through the night, catching the glow of passing streetlights and headlights.
Through the tinted windows, the distant city lights twinkle and dance into a blur that thins out.
We hum along while Edmond smiles, Slade rubs his palms over his widespread thighs, and I stare out into the void.
“You need to learn how to dance.” Slade’s voice breaks through in a spectacular, gritty husk that instantly has me turning to him. He holds my unblinking stare as my mouth pops open. I need to learn how to … Is he serious? “The Culling. They’ll have it again, and again.”
“Well … that’s just … great.” It’s unbelievable.
No one would believe me. In passing, we hear about one-off politicians having a drug addiction or doing something shady.
You might even have a government-contracted businessman selling classified secrets.
But the idea that this sort of conversation is normal within this circle of men, in this society—and that’s his solution?
Learn how to dance? I can dance. Just not when I have hundreds of sleezy men ogling me from their pretentious leather seats as they puff their cigars and guzzle their top-shelf liquor.
At least he told me, which is a feat in itself because he wasn’t talking.
“Pull through as close as possible to the door, Paul.” Edmond’s voice bounces off the rolling limo as it turns onto the lake house drive. He turns to Slade. “Can’t be too careful.”
Slade nods.
I ponder the congressman’s voice, the delicious, smooth, rich texture of it, layered with a gravelly rasp. I’m curious if that is his voice, or if that part will wear off. How difficult is it not speaking when his job and extracurriculars seem to demand it? “Why don’t you speak?”
Slade tilts his head to study me, eyes tracing somewhere around my face. My nose itches, and I want to scratch it, but he’s staring, and I don’t know what it is about that piercing look, but it makes my skin buzz. An odd sensation of uncomfortable and spark.
“Something in me learned silence was safer,” he finally says.
“But why speak to me then?”
He presses his tongue to his back molar and then pushes his frames up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger.
“We’re here. Let’s move quickly. We don’t know how many members you’ve upset tonight with your antics.” The limo barely stops before Edmond is pulling on the handle and ushering us all out. Security men meet us and escort us to the doors.
The mineral tang of the lake is faint, along with the lapping of water around the other face of the house, but it settles me.
Calms me. And yet, my hands can’t unclench.
Staying away, hidden away, feels like another passive dismissal, an uncertain future like before.
And maybe, just maybe, I’m done with that.
I’m safe for now, but safety isn’t enough.
I want more than that. I want this to end.