“WHAT?Who?” Was it Randolph? Had he suspected something?
My thoughts backtracked to the overhaul, to the blond soldier with the green eyes. And the three marks down his neck from my nails.
“Morris.” I guessed. It had seemed like they were friends. You said you’d be cool, Morris had said when Chase protected me. He’d obviously known Chase and I had had some sort of connection in the past.
“You know him?”
“How could I forget? He arrested me.”
“Tucker Morris is…” Chase grimaced, as if unable to find the right word. “He was in my unit. He came back with me after he… delivered you to transport.” He glanced quickly over and then looked away, his face tightly drawn.
“Why would Tucker have called the reformatory?” I asked, glad that Chase seemed to dislike him as much as I did.
An odd expression crossed his face. He was beyond angry now. Tortured almost. Clearly Tucker had done something really bad to Chase.
Or Chase had done something really bad to Tucker. Which would explain why Tucker would have turned him in.
“There’s… sort of a history there.”
“What ‘sort of a history’?” I asked dubiously.
I could hear Chase’s heel tapping the floor. He hesitated so long I thought he wasn’t actually going to answer me. Then he sighed heavily, resigned to sharing.
“Tucker enlisted in the Bureau about the time I was drafted. We were in the same training cohort.” He was rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“And you two hit it off?” I prompted dryly. Getting Chase to explain anything was like pulling teeth.
“No,” he said. “We had some things in common. Important things for training. We’re about the same size, so they put us together for hand-to-hand, and—”
“Hand-to-hand fighting?”
“Yeah. Combat maneuvers. He seemed all right at first, quiet, but decent anyway. We had classes together, just like in school. On the Statutes and all their caveats. Negotiations. And then policies and procedures for management of disruptive civilians.”
I snorted, thinking of my mom telling the soldiers to get off our property.
“He got in some trouble….” Chase waved his hand, indicating that this part of the story was inconsequential. “After that he was a real pain. Arguing with everything the instructor said. Refusing to follow orders. Kid couldn’t even fill out the correct paperwork for an SV-one.”
I frowned. I didn’t want Tucker to have rebelled against the MM, because that’s what I had done, and I didn’t want to have anything in common with that blond-haired, green-eyed coward. I motioned impatiently for Chase to continue.
“It wasn’t that he couldn’t get anything right. It was that he purposefully tried to get things wrong. He kept sneaking off base, then getting caught and thrown in the brig. Getting his pay docked, his rank stripped. He was sort of used to calling his own shots, and he had… uh… ties he couldn’t cut at home,” he added.
“Have to dedicate your life to the cause, right?” I feigned indifference but remembered with a pang what Rebecca had told me in the reformatory. How convenient for you, I thought bitterly, that your ties were so easy to sever.
“Yeah,” he looked mildly relieved. “It’s standard procedure to break off any previous relationships. Women are a distraction, temptations of the flesh and all that.” He laughed awkwardly.
An acidic taste crept up my throat. It seemed unthinkable that he would follow such a ridiculous rule, but his compliance made the transformation seem even more real. The thought that Chase had changed so quickly after being drafted made me feel like I’d never really known him at all.
I was beginning to think that maybe I’d gotten the wrong impression of Tucker, and that any hope I’d harbored for the return of my old Chase was about as likely as me going back home and finishing high school. But these thoughts felt just as wrong as what Chase was telling me now.
“So my CO—my commanding officer—made Tucker and me partners. He told me I couldn’t make rank until he passed all his courses.”
“And that’s what you wanted?” I spouted. “To move up?” I tried to picture Chase as MM leadership, calling the shots in an overhaul, charging people for Article violations. He couldn’t be that heartless, could he?
“Got to be good at something.” The sound of his voice was as foreign as the look on his face when he’d taken my mother away. I shivered.
“He didn’t go down without a fight. Fought me a few times at first. Then he started fighting everyone. He fought so much that the other guys harassed him just to see him lose it. Like it was funny.”
I tried to ignore the wave of pity I felt for Tucker.
“The officers even got into it. They started setting up matches for him after drills at the boxing ring on the base. Word spread. Lots of guys came to place bets. If they bet on Tucker, they usually won. That’s when our CO got it in his head that Tucker would be good leadership material.”
“How’s that?” I asked, confused. “I thought they hated him.”
He shrugged. “Maybe they did at first. But when he fought they started to see the soldier he could be. Vicious. Unstoppable. But still too much of a liability.”
Chase cleared his throat then and scowled, and I felt a wash of relief that he seemed to struggle with this concept. There was still some humanity inside of him.
“Our CO offered him a deal. If he would just dedicate himself, work hard, be the damn poster boy for the FBR, then they would stop the fights. They’d put him on the fast track to captain, which normally takes years, but they were going to make it happen in months if he just played nice.
“It was a double bind. The harder he pushed, the more they wanted him. The more he conformed, the more they wanted him. He couldn’t win. They started rigging the fights, to try to break him….” He trailed off.
“How?” I asked.
“Nothing terrible,” he said, the color in his face rising. “Sometimes they’d make him run before a fight. Or wouldn’t let him eat that day. They started setting him up with bigger guys. He got knocked around a lot more and… it got worse. He quit trying. He took their deal. After that he didn’t really have anything to fight for.”
Nothing terrible. Right.
I chewed my lip, quietly making sense of the last few minutes. Feeling a fresh sense of grief for not one, but two good people.
“He’s jealous of you.”
“What?” Chase’s head shot up.
“Tucker’s jealous. You got out. You’re free. He doesn’t want you to have what he can’t.”
Chase considered this.
“What I don’t get,” I said slowly, “is why you’re jealous of him.”
“Why would I be jealous of him?” Chase blinked, taken aback.
“I don’t know. Maybe because all you wanted to do was move up, but he was the one chosen.”
“He paid for it.” Chase’s shoulders rose an inch.
“I know, that’s the part I don’t get,” I said. “It’s pretty sick to be jealous of someone that was practically tortured. Even if he did want to be a soldier….”
“He didn’t!” Chase said with sudden vehemence, slamming his fist down on the table. My spine straightened.
Silence.
A heavy sigh escaped between my teeth.
“I thought you said Tucker wasn’t drafted. That he enlisted.”
Chase’s eyes were dark and indecipherable. He looked right at me, but he wasn’t seeing me.
“Right… he enlisted…. I only meant that he didn’t adjust well.”
I lowered my eyes to the fist that had banged the table. I watched the way the gnarled knuckles couldn’t quite straighten.
His hands hadn’t been like that last year, had they? I would have remembered. They’d been calloused but still soft when he’d touched my face, gentle when they’d run through my hair. They were rough now. Fighter’s hands.
And just like that, all the mixed emotions I’d felt for the two soldiers during this story—the pity, shame, and anger—were tossed into the air like bingo balls, jumbled chaotically, and then suddenly reassigned to their rightful places.
Tucker, the career soldier. Chase, the broken rebel.
Once, soon after Roy had left, my mother and I had gotten into a horrible fight; the worst we’d ever had. It was about the same thing. How I’d made him leave after he’d hit her, how I should have minded my own business.
I hadn’t known what to do. I’d hated her for saying those things, for blaming me for Roy leaving, even though she was right: I’d made him go. I hated that she couldn’t see how terrible he had been and how I’d saved her—us—from more of the same danger. But when I looked at her red, swollen eyes, all of that fury burned into something different. I just felt terribly sorry for her. So I’d gathered her in my arms and squeezed her as tightly as I could and told her that we were both going to be okay. She fell apart, but I was right. We were both okay.
I had the overwhelming urge to do the same for Chase now. To hold him so tightly his ribs hurt. To tell him we’d both be okay. I didn’t though. Maybe because I still didn’t trust him. Maybe because I didn’t trust myself. The truth was, even if I held him now, even if he’d let me and he did fall to pieces, I would have no idea how to put him back together. I had no idea if any of us, my mother included, would be okay.
“You were right about the double bind,” I said softly.
He stood too quickly, the chair tipping and cracking against the floor behind him.
“No, wait.” I didn’t want him to leave, but I didn’t know what else to say.
And just like that, the gate closed. His eyes dulled, his mouth relaxed, and the connection that had just threatened to build between us disappeared.
Without another word, he grabbed his coat off the chair and was out the door.
“Chase,” I called, but my voice had little volume.
I sat down at the kitchen table and clicked off the static hum from the radio. Absently, I traced the thin, raised welts on the backs of my hands and I thought about his hands, and how deeply the wounds beneath some scars ran.
“DOyou miss them?”
I regretted asking when he hesitated.
“Yes.”
“It was really awful, wasn’t it? The accident I mean. I-I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say.” I chewed my fingernails.
“No, not terrible. I just…” He scratched his head. “I’ve never actually talked about it.”
I remembered the police knocking on our door. Telling my mother what had happened. They had needed someone familiar to wait with Chase until his uncle arrived from Chicago. I remembered the tears that had stained his innocent face.
At fourteen, Chase had lost everything.
“I was so sad for you,” I told him. I thought of how his mother would let me braid her thick, black hair. How it stayed in place even without a tie. His father used to pat my head and call me “kiddo.”
“My sister was a nightmare,” Chase said, and laughed a little. “She was a little better after she went to college. She was on winter break when the accident happened, did you know that? They were going out to get dinner.”
I remembered. It had been the first freeze of the season. The other car hadn’t been able to stop.
“I was mad at Rachel because she’d taken my bed and I had to sleep on the floor. I stayed home that night because we’d been fighting. It was so stupid.” He scowled. “The last things I said to her weren’t nice things.”
“But if you hadn’t fought, you’d have been with them,” I pointed out. It hurt, hearing that guilt in his voice.
He sensed my sorrow and turned to face me.
“You know what I remember after the police came?”
“What’s that?”
“You sitting on the couch with me. You didn’t say anything. You just sat with me.”
THAT accident had taken Chase away from me. Had led him to Chicago, where his sorry excuse for an uncle had abandoned him in the wreckage of the War. Three years later Chase had come back home, a sturdier, more intense version of the boy he’d been, and my joy at his survival had led to something different, something deeper than I’d thought was possible. Something I’d only just discovered before he was drafted and had to leave again.
Of all the things he’d lived through, it was becoming a soldier that had torn him apart.
After a while I stood, leaving the pot still half full on the table, and went to rinse off the spoon. Still distracted and confused, I forgot my task as the water ran over my fingers. Slowly, a very different realization crept into my brain.
Hot water. The hot water heater was working.
I looked out the door for Chase again, worried. What if the carrier came while he was gone? What if he didn’t intend to come back at all?
He needs to be alone, I told myself. Reluctantly, I left him to his mood and went to check the shower. I’d clean up quickly, just in case we didn’t have a chance when it was time to go.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before starting the water. I’d grown thin in the last month—not starving thin, but lean, and more muscular. All traces of the girl I’d been at home had vanished. I wondered if Chase had noticed. Not that it mattered or anything.
Maybe Rebecca had been right. Maybe the MM had made him break up with me, but that didn’t mean he’d been chaste. Had he been with other girls? Sean had found a way, so surely Chase could. I found I detested this thought, and then I detested that I detested it. It was none of my business. In fact, Chase’s love life was the least of my concerns.
What was wrong with me? Even if some of his actions made a little more sense after an explanation, it didn’t mean he wasn’t still insufferable. And besides that, who knew if he was even telling the truth. His whole story had been under the guise of Tucker’s misadventures, after all. Even if he had seemed genuinely affected back there, it didn’t mean he was the same person he’d been a year ago.
I turned on the water and was just about to disrobe when a slam in the kitchen interrupted my thoughts.
Chase was back. And, I soon found, frantic.
He bolted into the room, nearly knocking the door off its hinges, and slammed off the valve. His eyes darted wildly behind me.
“What—”
Without a word of explanation he jammed us both inside the closet and jerked the door closed behind him. I became acutely aware of the sound of his breathing, of the feel of his chest pumping in and out and pulling me with it. Of the truth: We were in imminent danger.
It was a tiny space, barely large enough for us to stand. The shelves holding the towels cut into my knees and hips, but he’d still managed to wrap himself around my body. One hand was firmly latched over my mouth. When I automatically bit down, I could taste the salt from the sweat on his fingers.
The adrenaline was pouring off of him. My own heartbeat accelerated to meet his.
“Hello?” a man’s voice called from the kitchen. I went stiff in Chase’s grasp. He held me tightly against him, angling his side and back toward our exit.
“Don’t answer,” he breathed into my ear.
“Hello? Is someone here?”
An instant later I heard a loud clang and splatter, likely our soup pot being knocked off the counter. Then the scrambling of footsteps across the wooden floor.
I couldn’t get enough oxygen. Desperately, I pried off Chase’s hand. He relaxed his grip slightly, only to press my face into his shoulder.
“Got him?” shouted a second male voice.
“Where you gonna go?” said another. There was a loud crash. Maybe the kitchen table.
“You going to arrest me?” the first man called. He sounded willing to bargain.
One of the others laughed. “You know we’re past that, old man.”
There was another struggle, then the sliding of something heavy across the wooden floor.
“No!” he begged. “Please! I’ve got a family!”
“Should have thought about that before.”
The other snickered. “Think they’re compliant?”
At the mention of compliance my body began to quake. These were soldiers.
We couldn’t run. We had no escape.
Click. The metallic sound that only a gun could make.
I jerked instinctively. I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t die in this closet.
“No one is going to touch you,” Chase murmured into my hair.
I wanted to believe him, but as I turned my head, I saw in the crack of light from the doorframe that Chase had raised his own gun and was aiming it at chest height straight out into the bathroom.
I gasped. He continued whispering things I couldn’t make out. I wrapped my trembling fists in his shirt and bit down in the fabric covering his chest.
Someone walked into the bedroom down the hall.
“Clear,” he reported after a moment.
Don’t come in here. Not in here.
The bathroom door creaked open.
Footsteps moved across the tile floor, with just a little squeak. New boots.
With the door open, I could hear the carrier sobbing in the other room. He was begging for his life. He was crying for his little boy. Andrew.
“You try to take a shower, old man?” the soldier yelled from the bathroom. I pinched my eyes closed and tried to be absolutely still. Why had I turned on the water? What was I thinking? That we were at home? That mistake was about to get us killed.
The carrier continued bawling, and then grunted when he was struck with something. I smothered a sob into Chase’s shoulder.
“I was going to but… but t-the water heater… it’s broken… I forgot,” the carrier answered.
My stomach twisted.
Chase slowly eased back the slide on his pistol. It made a nearly unperceivable click. I prepared myself for the blast. I was ready to run.
The soldier abandoned the bathroom.
A second later, the deafening sound of gunfire split my eardrums.
It took me a moment to realize that Chase’s whole body, from the shins up, was cramming mine into the corner of the closet. He’d begun whispering again. I couldn’t hear him over my raging pulse, but I felt his lips move against my ear.
“Upstairs,” said a soldier. “Cover me. We’ll move the body in a minute.”
Footsteps ascending. The ceiling groaned under their weight.
I couldn’t hear the man anymore. He wasn’t crying for his son. I felt the bile scrape my throat.
The FBR was murdering civilians.
Before I could think through the ramifications of this, Chase was dragging me out of the bathroom. My legs didn’t feel right. Like they were pulling through water.
He halted unexpectedly at the entrance to the kitchen. I glanced down and saw a man’s denim-covered legs emerging from beneath the table. Before I saw anything else, I was again smashed beneath Chase’s heavy arm. His hand snaked around my face, blocking my vision.
But I could smell it. The metallic tang of blood. The peppery sting of gun smoke.
And I could hear the carrier gasping for breath.
I took a step, guided by Chase. I slipped on something wet. I tried to swallow, but my throat felt like sandpaper.
There was a change in the man’s breathing.
Chase paused. Leaned down. He did not release his grip over my eyes.
“Lewisburg… West Vir… ginia… two… o’clock… Tuesday…”
“Oh, God,” I sobbed. Imagining the scene below me was just as terrifying as the real thing must have been. The ceiling creaked again.
“Clear!” one of the soldiers called upstairs.
“Look for… the sign….”
That was all the carrier said. He sighed, a sound infused with liquid, and then he was gone.
Chase didn’t release me until we were outside, and even then, he didn’t let go of my hand. He pulled me at a run through the empty backyard, toward the woods. My legs, to my relief, were working again.
“Don’t look back,” he ordered, breaking the silence of our flight.
Frigid air needled at the drops of sweat lining my brow and neck. The grass crunched, frozen, beneath my rushed steps. I had to sprint to keep up with his breakneck pace as we crossed through the threshold of the woods. Neither of us made any attempt to soften the noise of breaking branches. My eyes stayed fixed on the pack over his shoulders; he must have grabbed it when we’d gone back through the kitchen. My strained hearing picked up only the sounds of the forest, tempered by the rush of my breathing. But my thoughts were loud, loud, loud.
The carrier was dead. Murdered.
My mother would have to find someone else.
Even if she’d already made it to South Carolina, she wasn’t safe. She’d never be safe again. I’d never be safe again.
I would never see Beth again. Contacting her would only invite soldiers to her doorstep.
And finally: It’s my fault. I hadn’t caused the carrier’s death, I hadn’t been responsible. But just as I knew this, I knew that he would never have been there if not for people like me.
They told us girls like you were dangerous, Chase had said after I’d run away. I hadn’t believed him then, but I did now.
I was dangerous. A man, a stranger, had just died to save our lives.
A commanding resolve shuddered through me. If I died now, his death would be in vain.
Focus. His last words had been to help us, but this plan was more thinly laid than the last. What sign? Surely checkpoints didn’t advertise their purpose. We didn’t know where we were going. We didn’t know who was safe to ask. We couldn’t even go back to the truck, now that the radio report had described it. We only had a time and a date, one that was rapidly approaching.
I kept seeing his legs, spread awkwardly over the kitchen floor. I could hear his sobbing plea to return to his son—to Andrew. My brain morphed the faceless soldier who had executed him into the guard Randolph. Then the scene changed from the kitchen to the woods outside the reform school, and I was the one crying out for my mother. It was my legs splayed out across the cold, wet ground.
“Ember!” Chase gave my shoulders a firm shake. I snapped alert. It was dark now. I didn’t know how long we’d been moving. I’d lost track of time.
“If we’re caught, that’s what will happen,” I said, refocusing on the present. He’d begun pulling me along again, and didn’t confirm or deny my statement.
I gulped down the frigid air. My heart rate was high from the exertion and the adrenaline.
“What if they catch my mother?”
She’d already been sentenced. And if she’d made it to the base, she’d already served her time. Would that matter if she was caught at a checkpoint?
He slouched but kept moving at a fast walk. The woods were growing denser; the line of houses no longer visible in the distance behind us.
“‘Multiple-offense Article violators are subject to trial by a senior jury of the Federal Bureau of Reformation and sentenced appropriately,’” he quoted.
“What does ‘sentenced appropriately’ mean, Captain Jennings?” I said, exasperation rising above the panic.
“I’m not a captain. I was just a sergeant.”
“What does it mean?” I growled.
He didn’t answer for a full minute.
“The worst thing you can think of.” His voice was very low. “It might be worthwhile to consider the… reality of the situation.”
I slammed on the brakes; the inertia after so long in motion made my head spin.
“Worthwhile?”
He turned back to face me, eyes guarded and unreadable. His jaw twitched ever so slightly.
“Worthwhile?” I shouted at him.
“Keep it down,” he warned.
“You…” My voice shook. My whole body shook. The simmer had jolted back up into an overflowing boil. “I need your help, as much as I hate to admit it. You say jump and I’ll jump. You say run and I’ll run. Only because you know things I don’t have the time to learn right now. But you will not tell me what is worthwhile to think about when we are talking about my mother! Not a minute goes by that I don’t consider the reality of this situation!”
He stepped forward, grabbed my shoulder, and leaned close to my face. When he spoke his voice was grounded by a very controlled fury.
“Good. But does it ever occur to you that I don’t need you? That if I’m caught, I’ll be lucky to die as fast as that poor bastard back there? Here’s my reality: There’s no going back. I am risking my life to get you safe, and as long as I live, I’ll be hunted for it.”
I felt all the remaining blood drain from my face. He released me abruptly, as though he’d just realized he was clutching my arm. I focused on his Adam’s apple. It bobbed heavily as he tried to swallow.
The shame suffocated my anger. Hot, ugly, gut-wrenching shame. I could have melted from it, but with his eyes locked on mine, I found myself unable to look away.
“I-I haven’t forgotten how dangerous this is for you,” I said carefully, trying to control the hitch in my voice.
He shrugged. I wasn’t sure whether he was dismissing my apology or the worth of his own life. Either way, it made me feel worse.
As cruel as his tone had been, the earlier appraisal of his fate had been the devastating truth. That I had so much influence over someone else’s mortality seemed impossible; I couldn’t conceive of it. So, awkwardly, I motioned us back in the direction we had been heading.
Time was ticking.
WE walked all night and then through most of the next day, taking breaks only when we had to. He caught me more than once startling at shadows, and at times I could see his eyes darken as some terrible memory consumed him. We didn’t speak of our mutual vigilance. When the pressure got too tense, we moved out.
It was hard hiking. No trails had been carved through these hills, and when we weren’t shoving aside swollen brush, we were wading across streams or slopping through the mud. As the adrenaline wore off, our bodies stiffened and slowed like machines without oil.
We didn’t talk about what had happened at the house or what we had both said afterward. These things were tucked away in a locked box in the recesses of my mind. Instead I became consumed by thoughts of my mother’s safety, thoughts that brought me to the edge of hysteria before the fatigue finally numbed my mind.
As dusk descended, Chase finally forced us to stop. We were both stumbling regularly now, and getting clumsy.
“No one’s following. We’re making camp here.” His tone was so firm and so exhausted I knew I would lose any argument otherwise.
We were in a small clearing, a lopsided circle lined by pine trees. The ground was relatively flat and not too rocky. Chase checked our perimeter for safety and escape routes, then went to work connecting the curved aluminum poles of the tent he had stolen.
When I grabbed the pack to take out the food, he quickly stopped his task to retrieve the supplies himself. I wondered what he was hiding, but was too tired to care. I used the last of the smashed bread to make sandwiches, and inventoried our supplies. We still had two packages of freeze-dried soup and eight FBR-packaged granola bars left, but they wouldn’t last long. We were going to have to find some food fast.
“Chase?” I asked after a while. My thoughts had returned to the reformatory.
“Yeah.”
“If a guard at rehab was, um… caught… with a resident… do you think he’d be executed, too?” I hoped he understood what I meant, because I didn’t really want to go into a whole twisted explanation of what had happened.
Chase began stuffing the long pole into the nylon loops with fervor. I thought his face had darkened some, but maybe it was just the low light.
“Probably not. He wasn’t committing treason. He’ll probably be court-marshaled. Dishonorably discharged. It’s not common, but it happens.”
My face rose. I felt a little better at this news. Freedom from the FBR was what Sean and Rebecca had wanted.
“It’s not a good thing,” Chase added, seeing my face. “The civilian sector blacklists dishonorably discharged soldiers from everything. Getting a job, buying a house, applying for public assistance. Anything on the books. He’ll be held in contempt if he’s caught collecting pay.”
“But how’s he supposed to live?”
“He’s not. That’s the point.”
My shoulders slumped. Sean would still be a soldier, conflicted as long as he loved his Becca, but safe, if it hadn’t been for me.
Chase had stopped and was staring at me. “You seem pretty concerned about him,” he blurted.
“Well, yeah. His life is probably ruined because of me,” I answered miserably.
Chase went back to building the tent, no less forcefully than before. “If he would have followed the rules, he wouldn’t have had a problem.”
“And if you followed the rules, you wouldn’t have this problem! I remember!” I snapped. My head throbbed. His words from after the murder came forward, cutting fresh wounds. He would be hunted for life because of me. I was a liability. I was dangerous. I was his burden. I got it already.
We were interrupted by a long, whining cry in the distance. I jumped to my feet, but Chase only cocked an ear toward the sound. After a while, he continued working on the tent, unconcerned.
“Coyote,” he informed me.
I rubbed my arms, distracted. “Hungry coyote?”
He stared at me for a moment, ascertaining if I was really afraid.
“Probably. But don’t worry. He’s more scared of us than we are of him.”
I glanced around the campsite, visualizing a pack of rabid coyotes stalking their next meal.
Chase laughed suddenly.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. You just… Just, after everything that’s happened in the last couple days, you’re freaking out over a coyote.”
I pouted. He laughed again. Soon I was giggling, too. The sound was infectious.
The intensity of all my emotions seemed to make my hilarity that much more acute. Soon, the tears were streaming out of my eyes and I was gripping my stomach. I was happy to see Chase in the same boat. As the silliness died away, he smiled at me.
“That’s nice,” I said.
“What?”
“Your laugh. I haven’t heard it in, well, a year.”
His smile melted, and I felt a striking loss at his withdrawal. An uncomfortable silence settled between us. Talking about the past had been a mistake.
He turned around to finish the tent, and it was then that I saw the gun peeking out from beneath his shirt. He must have put it there sometime when I’d been distracted. Apparently he was more concerned about a hungry coyote than he was letting on.
Brushing my teeth made me feel a little better. After I’d splashed some water on my face, I removed the boots from my aching feet and crawled into the tent. Erected, it was no more than three feet high, a tight squeeze for one person and extremely cozy for two—especially when one of them was the size of a small mountain.
Still, when Chase zipped up the entrance behind me and turned, it was a surprise to find ourselves face to face, only inches apart.
A black-and-white photograph seared into my mind. His tousled hair and scruff and thick lashes. The high cheekbones that made the shadows of his face bold and secretive. The soft curve of his bottom lip.
A flash of heat sparked in the pit of my stomach. For a moment, I heard only the sound of my thundering heart. And then he slid away.
I willed my pulse to slow, but it would not listen. He had weakened me, stolen some of my control in one drawn-out look. And that, I knew from previous experience, left me treading on very dangerous ground.
I could not fall back in love with Chase Jennings. Doing so was like falling in love with a thunderstorm. Exciting and powerful, yes. Even beautiful. But violently tempered, unpredictable, and ultimately, short-lived.
You’re tired. Just go to sleep, I told myself.
And then I realized that there was only one sleeping bag.
“I guess I leave my clothes on, right?” My head reeled. I pinched my eyes closed.
“If that’s what you want,” he said, his voice low.
“I only meant in case we have to get out quickly. Like yesterday.”
“Makes sense.”
Shut up and lay down, I ordered myself. But it wasn’t that easy. Nerves danced in my belly. I had no idea how to approach him. I began analyzing every possible movement, where I should put my arm, my leg.
“You’re thinking so loudly it’s giving me a headache.”
I tried to reciprocate his annoyance, and that helped some. It was easier to be around him when he was cruel. It was harder when we weren’t fighting. It reminded me too much of how things used to be.
“Are you waiting for an invitation?” he asked.
“It would help,” I admitted grouchily.
“Get over here.”
I had to smile then. He had such a polite way about him. After a deep breath, I crawled up beside him, and rested my head on my sweater.
Chase exhaled dramatically. His arm slid beneath my head and wrapped gently around my back, then pulled me flush against him. I felt the warmth of his skin through our clothing, his breath in my hair. My pulse scrambled. He zipped the remainder of the sleeping bag up, and on a whim, I slid my knee over his thigh and rested my head on his shoulder. I heard his heart there. Faster than I thought it would be, but strong.
He cleared his throat. Twice.
“Sorry. I’m sort of cramped here. Hope that’s okay.” I wiggled my leg a little to indicate what I was talking about.
He cleared his throat again. “It’s fine.”
“Are you feeling all right?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said shortly.
His chest felt firm yet inviting against my cheek, and his scent—like soap and wood—relaxed me, made me dizzy. Every muscle ached, my blistered feet cried, but even that faded into white noise. Exhaustion lowered my defenses; I knew I should be cautious being so close to him, but I couldn’t help it. I felt safe, finally. Calm. As the minutes passed I even stopped caring if the MM found us, just as long as I could sleep awhile.
Chase breathed in slowly, and the rise and fall of his chest made him feel so much more human than soldier. It stripped away some of the loneliness that had been saddled on my shoulders all day. I found myself longing for him to touch my face, my hair, my hand curled on his chest. Some small, reassuring message that everything was going to be all right. But he did not.
The coyote bellowed one long, lonely cry. I shivered involuntarily.
“What if he…”
“He won’t. I’ll make sure.” Chase paused, sighed softly, and then whispered, “Sleep easy, Ember.” And though the ground was cold and uneven and my jeans were twisted around my legs, I slipped away.