Chapter 24 Bri
TWENTY-FOUR
Bri
Daisy finally decided to speed up, which has put me next to Tai.
Every time he slows down or veers away, she stays right by his side.
It’s not horrible being next to him. I expected him to lay into me after I pushed him into the water.
He was shockingly kind and compassionate.
Which I needed. I needed a friend today.
I didn’t want to be worshiped. I wanted someone to simply be with me for a minute, and it was nice.
His presence distracts me from replaying what happened today over and over again, and blaming myself for everything.
I’m also paranoid the brethren are looking at me differently.
I’ve let them down in some massive way. Being put up on a pedestal feels awful, because at any time I could fail them and come crashing down.
Tai’s never put me up there. He might annoy the shit out of me, but at least I can be myself.
“Your arm okay?” He’s been wiggling his fingers and fiddling with a tiny embedded panel on his forearm for a while now.
“It’s okay, I think. It doesn’t agree with the sand,” he says and stops messing with the arm.
“Oh good. I mean…not good. I worried it was the water.”
“A bionic arm that can’t get wet wouldn’t be very useful,” he says and smiles over at me. A real smile, one of the rare ones.
“True.”
My mind is completely blank. It’s rare that I struggle to find something to say. I’m usually trying to stop talking. Maybe it was his kindness earlier today, or the heatstroke, but I want to keep talking, and I can’t think of anything to say.
“You know, you can ask,” Tai says, interrupting my thoughts.
“Ask what?” I’m confused. What should I be asking?
“You want to know what happened to my arm. How I got this,” he says and waves at me with his bionic arm.
“Oh, no. It’s none of my business.”
“Since when has that stopped you?” he asks rhetorically.
I look down. He must have interpreted my silence as me waiting for him to talk about his arm now that we’re, dare I say it, cool. In reality, I was trying to think of something to talk about other than the weather.
I don’t want him to feel obligated to tell me. But if he wants to tell me, I’ll listen.
“It happened right before I joined the military. I had gotten myself into some trouble. Then it all sort of blew up, literally, and I lost my arm. I was given the options of prison planet or military. They told me they would give me a bionic arm if I enlisted. ‘Prisoners don’t need two good arms, but soldiers do,’ they said. ”
Who is this Tai stringing together sentences and telling me stuff about his past, like he almost wants me to know more about him?
“There’s not much of a choice there,” I tell him. I know it takes a lot for him to talk about his past. The Tai I know doesn’t easily admit his mistakes or weaknesses. This insight is a big deal.
It appears I’m not the only one who’s been thinking about the past since we crashed here. Being away from j’Tilak and the military has disrupted his life more than I realized.
“Part of me wanted to go to the prison planet out of spite. I was angry and stupid back then.”
I can relate to that. “I didn’t take you for a bad boy,” I tell him, returning to our normal teasing.
“Got it all trained out of me. I don’t think about it much anymore.” He looks down at his arm deep in thought.
“I bet it’s hard not to think about it, when a reminder is right there every day.”
He looks off in the distance, and I take it as a sign he doesn’t want to go any further. I probably wouldn’t either if I lost an arm, and from what it sounds like, he’s not proud of the circumstances.
“Doesn’t everyone on your planet have to do mandatory military service?” I ask.
“I could start three years early or be shipped off,” he says quietly. “I didn’t even know about the mandatory military service on j’Tilak. Even though I imagined the worst, it was still better than a prison planet.” His voice trails off.
Daisy and Brutus slow down to let the brethren pass, glaring at Tai the entire time. The guilt hasn't gone away. Somehow, in all the commotion, the fact that it was my fault slipped right by them.
The two h’axom walk side by side, close enough for my leg to brush against Tai’s. My bare skin against his khaki-covered leg. Tai looks down at where our legs graze.
“Is the military all that bad?” I ask. The words come out as a whisper, sounding more seductive than they should.
“Absolutely not. It was the best thing that happened to me.”
“You’re lucky. On Earth, most people in your situation are forced into the military because they don’t have any other option and they are tossed to the front lines of some dumb war over who knows what.
” My mind plays a sequence of faces of all the boys I grew up with who left right after high school and were never seen again.
“That is troubling, your people would sacrifice human lives for something trivial,” he says. “Service on j’Tilak is different. Even calling it the military felt silly until recently. We are a peaceful people but have seen battles where we come to the aid of those who are under threat.”
“I wish it was like that everywhere.”
We ride quietly for a while. I mentally process how fucked up it is that putting one’s life at risk is the only way out of poverty for so many. It’s clothes on your back and food in your belly, but I wish there were another way. One that didn’t involve bloodshed.
It feels like I’m being watched. I am relieved to see it’s Tai and not one of the brethren. They have been on my last nerve. All of my attempts at getting them to doubt Boss have completely fallen flat.
“How much do you hate me for making you stay here to help them?” I ask and nod toward the group of brethren in front of us.
“I should say ‘a lot,’ but the truth is, I agree with you. These weirdos deserve better than Boss, and it’s admirable that you want to help them.”
I could fall off my h’axom in shock. I was half joking when I asked him the question and he answered it with sincerity. Admirable? I didn’t know Tai was capable of that emotion, especially toward me.
It’s quite possible I have judged Tai unfairly. Well, not totally unfairly. Because he has been a total ass more than once. But for the first time since I met the grumpy bastard, I’m understanding him a little.
“You’re getting a sunburn,” he says, nodding towards my leg. He’s right. My scantily clad legs have been exposed to the sun all day, and my skin feels hot and stretched tight.
“Yeah, it’s gonna be a bad one,” I say, spreading the small piece of fabric over my leg. The wind blows it away immediately.
“Here, I can help.” He brings Brutus to a stop and jumps down.
He steps to me and puts his hands out. Instead of grabbing my hands to help me down, he clutches my waist and pulls me down to the ground softly.
Being this close to him, I can smell the clean water on his skin even though he dried off hours ago.
I don’t know where to put my hands, so I rest them on his broad shoulders.
The corded muscles bunch under my fingers on one side, and the cool metal shifts on the other.
Up close, my eyes are met with the concern in his.
I feel cared for. He doesn’t seem so overbearing anymore.
Tai holds me to him longer than necessary. I wait for what comes next, hoping he leans a little closer. But he doesn’t. I stand there frozen and awkwardly wait for something to happen. My eyes drop to his lips.
“What are we doing?” I whisper, unable to stand the tension for another second.
Tai reaches for his belt and, in one swift motion, has it undone.
Fuck me. That was really hot.
Like an idiot, I stare open-mouthed.
Tai undoes his pants and drops them to the sand. He carefully steps out, shakes the sand off, and holds them out for me.
“Here. Put these on.”
“I can’t take your pants!” I push them back toward him. A warm wind blows against my sweaty body and I shiver a little. It was totally from the wind and not the sight of Tai with his pants off. Underneath his pants are tight black shorts clinging to muscular thighs.
I close my eyes and keep pushing his pants back toward him. It’s too much effort to not look down.
“I’ll be okay. My skin can tolerate the sun better than yours,” he says and pushes the pants into my hands. “Here. Let me help.”
He does an unspeakable thing and gets down on his knees in front of me.
“May I?” he asks, pointing to my leg.
Speechless, I nod. Bri, get it together. Words! Use words.
He picks up my foot and pulls one pant leg over it up to my knees and does the same to the other.
His rough hands on me sends another shiver.
I focus on everything else as Tai tugs the pants up my legs and secures them at the waist. He unchains my skirt’s waist and wads up the flimsy material in his hand.
Suddenly my throat dries up, and I resist the urge to lick my dry lips.
The pants are way too big. He folds up the cuffs and rolls the waist a few times to get them to stay up. When he stands back up to look me over, I see a similar want in his eyes that matches mine.
“Are you sure?” I croak out. My voice betrays me, sounding far too eager.
“Totally sure.” The look is gone, replaced by his serious business-like tone.
He grabs a canteen off his saddle, takes a long drink, and hands it to me. I take a slow sip, not wanting to choke on the water.
I take a beat to get myself together. It’s fine. He’s just being nice. I’m being weird because it’s been a long time since…
“We should, um, get going,” I tell him. Before I can struggle up Daisy’s side to get back on, he grabs one of my legs and hefts me up into the air.
I easily swing my leg over and settle into the saddle again.
It feels weird to be wearing pants that Tai was in seconds ago.
I purge from my mind the thoughts of what parts of him were touching the same fabric I am wearing now.