“We’re not prepared. The whole thing is—”
“Blaine!” I turn on him, let his name come out of me like a whip. “Look,” I say as evenly as possible. “Badger claims he knows a way in, and Vik is going to exploit that with or without us. If we don’t take the job, he’ll just send someone else. This is our chance to do something. Be a part of the big strike he’s planning.”
“The strike he’s planning but hasn’t shared any details about,” Blaine mumbles. “What do we really know about this Badger guy? He could get us all killed.”
“I read about him in some underground papers in Bone Harbor. He’s been selling water to AmEast citizens right under the Order’s nose. Badger’s good and he knows what he’s doing. He’ll get us in. And anything we need to plan further, we’ll figure out before we get to the Compound.”
Vik has a chopper set to bring us to the small Expat settlement of Pine Ridge west of the Gulf. From there, we’ll get in touch with Badger. We need to be ready within the next hour, which means packing fast, and asking questions—the detailed questions—later.
“I still don’t like it,” Blaine says. “We shouldn’t go. We—”
“Do you even care that Pa is dead?” I erupt. “I’m trying to make his sacrifice worth something. Trying to get us back to Emma, Claysoot, Kale. Remember your daughter, Blaine? Or are you fine pretending she doesn’t exist either?”
His fists grab the front of my shirt, his momentum sending me backward. My shoulders hit the wall, followed by my head.
“Don’t you dare,” he hisses. “I think about her every damn second.”
“Sure doesn’t seem like it.”
“Just because I don’t say something aloud doesn’t mean I’m not feeling it. But this is so like you—jumping to conclusions, saying whatever comes barreling into your head.”
This is the closest we’ve come to a fistfight in years. I half want him to throw a punch, but he won’t. I know he won’t.
“I used to think you were so much better than me,” I say, staring him down. “I’d always beat myself up over how selfless you are, putting everyone else first, being so sickeningly decent, and it’s like I don’t even know you anymore. Because this isn’t decent: wanting to sit around and do nothing but work soil and fool around with Jules. It’s cowardly.”
“You arrogant—”
“Pack or stay, Blaine!” I grab his wrists and tear myself free. “I don’t care what you decide so long as you don’t stop me from doing what’s right.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw. We stare at each other for a painfully long moment. Then he picks up his bag, throws a few things into it haphazardly.
“You’re an ass, you know that?” he says. Dark shadows linger beneath his eyes, and he’s squinting slightly, almost as though looking at me blinds him.
“I’ve always been an ass.”
He either doesn’t hear the teasing tone of my voice, or he chooses to ignore it.
“I love you, Gray. I always will. Which is why I get so riled up by the fact that you can’t see how losing you would kill me.”
He snatches his bag and leaves, and I realize for the first time that all his hesitations could be for different reasons—ones that have nothing to do with not wanting to remove Frank from power or returning home to Kale.
He’s still trying to keep me safe. Just like he did when we were kids—shielding me from a slingshot blow with his own body, or pulling my curious hand away from a flame. Blaine is never going to outgrow playing big brother.
I stop by the female quarters and find Bree making her bed like the room is more than a temporary home.
“Here goes nothing,” I say.
She straightens, turns to face me. “It’ll be a breeze, I’m sure. Getting in off-limits places always is.” Her eyebrows are raised with the joke, the corners of her lips curled in a smile.
“Can’t go much worse than Burg, right?”
She swings her bag onto her shoulders. “Don’t tell me to hand over my gun when I need it, and we should be fine.”
The reminder of how she took a beating at Titus’s hands because I convinced her to lower her weapon makes me cringe.
“Oh, don’t give me that look. I bounced right back. Even have a nice battle scar as a result.”
She’s speaking of the thin mark above her left eye, a pale echo of where stitches once held together split skin. I reach out, my thumb eager to trace it, and she pivots away from me. It’s quiet for a moment, the air heavy with how things once were between us.
“We should go,” Bree says. “They’re probably waiting.”
She attempts to squeeze by me and I grab her elbow before she can escape into the hall. “I’m not going to stop trying, Bree.”
“Then you’re an insensitive jerk who doesn’t respect me,” she snaps. “Or what I want.”
“You really don’t want us to talk? Ever?”
“That’s not what I said.” She’s scowling, looking at her feet, the doorframe—anything but me. “It’s complicated,” she says finally.
“Explain it, then.”
Bree stares down the hallway. Licks her lips. Finally, she glances back at me. “I still trust you on missions like this, I do. I still want us watching out for each other. I just don’t want to be anything more.”
I don’t believe her. Not for a second. But then I wonder if that’s because I’m doing exactly what she said: not respecting her decision, choosing my own feelings as a greater, more worthy truth. I let go of her arm and the tension in her body dissipates. Her shoulders relax. She peers at me, as if she’s trying to read my thoughts.
“Come on,” she says, but I feel like I’ve managed to pull her closer by letting her go and the concept is so bizarre that I stand there smiling, my feet fused with the floor.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asks.
“You,” I say. “You make me a mess.”
She rolls her eyes and hmphs. But she also gives my chest a light shove before walking away. Contact. That she initiated. The first since Burg.
FOUR