Revenge and the Wild (22 page)

While Bena was there, Alistair broke the news to Nigel about him and Westie leaving for Sacramento. Bena always knew exactly what to say to Nigel to calm him down.

Westie went to check on James. The floor creaked as she stepped up to the open door of her room. He continued his drunken snoring without pause.

He looked so young sleeping in her bed. She was tempted to touch his cheek, tell him things would get better. Instead she got on her hands and knees, wriggled beneath the bed, and lifted the board, revealing the stack of gold bars. They’d need money on their travels, money she didn’t want to ask Nigel for. She pinched a piece of gold from one of the bars with her machine, put it in her pocket, then slid the board back into its place. It would be hard to find someone who would take raw gold as payment without alerting the authorities, but
she was sure she could find some crook willing to make a trade in the city.

After tucking James in, she went downstairs to face Nigel.

He was in his office waiting for her. Alistair and Bena were leaving just as she walked in.

“I’ll get our things,” Alistair said on his way out.

Bena gave her a wink and a gentle squeeze on her shoulder. Westie wanted to stop her and ask about Nigel’s mood, but couldn’t without him hearing.

“Shut the door,” Nigel said when she was in his office.

He was either nervous or angry, judging by the way he kept rearranging his desk.

“I seem to remember things going terribly wrong the last time you were in someone else’s room without being invited—yet here we are again,” he said, but he didn’t sound upset.

Westie sat down in the chair opposite Nigel, propping her boots up on his desk. “And I seem to recall someone saying they’d help take the Fairfields down no matter what scheming had to be done.”

Nigel’s lips twitched but didn’t quite turn into a smile. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

“Are you angry?” she asked.

Nigel leaned back in his chair, looking up at the sepia-painted Vitruvian Man on the ceiling that used to give Westie a touch of the giggles when she was younger. “No, but I am concerned about your healing process should your travels not yield the results you want.”

“You’re talking about me drinking.”

He nodded. “I just want you to be all right.”

“You don’t need to worry about that anymore—trust me on that one.”

He opened his mouth to say more, but she interrupted him, wanting to escape the subject. “James is upstairs in my room. Take care of him while we’re gone. He’s in a bad way now that all his money’s gone.”

“I’ll be happy to have him. While Alistair’s away, I’ll need the extra pair of hands to help me move Emma into the mine. I plan to attach the engine, and once I do, it’ll be too big for the great room..”

“Take care of yourself too. Both your names are on that list we found,” Westie said.

Nigel stood and forced Westie into a hug. Once the awkwardness of the embrace wore off, she settled in and leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Don’t worry about us,” he said. “I’ll take care of James. And we have Jezebel and Lucky looking out.”

“We’ll be back day after tomorrow,” Westie said.

With a final squeeze, she let go of Nigel and went to meet Alistair.

They left soon after Westie’s conversation with Nigel and rode through the night without stopping, and without sleep. Westie had forgotten how peaceful the road could be away from the clicking of so many inventions. Even with the silence and tired eyes, she couldn’t turn off the sound in her mind.

It was morning. An overcast sky threatened rain. Autumn was beginning to show in all corners, but the cold gusts made it feel more like winter. Crisp air stung Westie’s nose with the scent of pine. The closer they got to the city, the more maples they encountered until they were swallowed up by them, enchanting splashes of color in an otherwise dreary landscape. Deep orange, scarlet, and purple leaves fell from the sky like embers from a burning airship. Westie raised her parasol to keep the sugar sap of the leaves from sticking to her hair.

She’d stayed quiet during the ride, but there was a question that had been nagging at her ever since their kiss.

“I want you to tell me something, and I need you to be honest,” she said through chattering teeth. In her haste to leave, she’d forgotten her duster. Her fingers and toes had gone completely numb.

Alistair looked at her, raising his brows. “Of course. What is it?”

Now that she had his full attention, her courage leaked away. She opened her mouth and closed it. After three more tries, she finally found the right words. “Three years ago, at my birthday party, you put on your mask and never showed me your face again. Why?”

He looked down, face going red, mask humming loudly. “Oh, that,” he said.

“Yes,
that
. It’s hard for me to believe, after all those years of you hating me and avoiding my very existence, that you love me all of a sudden.”

He shook his head and made a sound she thought was laughter. “I never hated you. The opposite, in fact.”

“You could’ve fooled me—and everyone else around for that matter. Everyone saw it. Even Isabelle.”

She choked on Isabelle’s name. It was still difficult for her to say out loud.

He took a breath and let it slowly whistle out through the mask’s air filter. “I’d never seen the way others treated you prior to that party. Once you left school, it was just me and you. I’d assumed they were afraid of you like they were of me—especially after you crushed Isabelle’s hand.”

He chuckled at the memory, but when Westie didn’t join in, his laughter trailed off into a hum. “I was happy that you had friends, and I enjoyed watching you interact with them and be a normal girl for a change.” He sighed, a long hissing sound. “While I watched, I saw how the boys looked at you. I recognized the stares because I’d caught myself doing the very same thing.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“Just one year earlier you were thirteen, all bones and skinned knees, climbing trees and crying when I wouldn’t play stickball with you because you could hit the ball so much farther than I. You seemed like a child then, while I was a man of sixteen. Then suddenly, at fourteen, you didn’t seem so young anymore.” The redness in his face deepened. “I was terrified by the way I’d started to feel about you. I knew that I’d always loved you, but it had changed into a . . . mature kind of love.”

His words floated in the air above her. Just letters and sounds she couldn’t make sense of. When they finally fit together, all piled up
and heavy, they came crashing down on her. For the first time in her life she was speechless.

He hung his head. “After seeing how those boys were with you at your party, I knew it wouldn’t be long before there were more. With all those admirers, why would you choose a mute with scars on his face when you could have the James Lovetts of the world?”

Sadness welled up inside, burning her nose and chest as if she’d breathed ammonia. The pain of it grew and grew until she was drowning in tears. She was overwhelmed with—she wasn’t sure with what, joy, confusion, an anger as strong as dark whiskey.

“You are a coward!” Things would’ve been so different had she known his true feelings. Maybe she would never have left Rogue City to hunt cannibals, or fallen prey to the bottle. She wouldn’t have felt as used up and poisoned as she had.

When she spoke again, it was with a sad lilt. “You broke my heart, Alley.”

His eyes were wide and glittering. “I know. And I’ll spend every day of my life trying to make it up to you.”

Gentle rain tapped against Westie’s parasol. It was just a few drops at first, and then the sky opened and rain spit out like sharpened spears. She could hardly see what was right in front of her face. The lace of her parasol wilted, useless. She folded it up and attached it to her saddle.

The valley was known for its flashes of rain and quick floods. The storm turned the road to glue, and the horses struggled to move in the mush collecting beneath their hooves. Then the hail came.

“We need to get off the road,” Alistair shouted.

The hail chased them into the maple forest, beneath the canopy of leaves where the beating was less abrasive. Westie’s clothes soaked up the wet, chilling her to her core.

Henry stumbled in the muck. She fell but managed to grab hold of the saddle horn with her machine before hitting the ground. Spooked by the sudden shift of weight, Henry took off at a full run, dragging Westie through the brush, knocking her against trees. Branches reached out like clawed hands scratching at her skin until she finally let go and fell into a pile of leaves.

“Westie!” Alistair slid from his saddle and rushed toward her.

He helped her to her feet and led her below a sturdy tree. Nothing hurt more than a bruise. The scratches weren’t deep enough to draw blood. She knew there were no broken bones, but the cold she felt was just as crippling. Alistair grabbed his pack from his horse. He used a large sheet of hide to make a shelter and laid out his bedroll and wool blankets.

Westie had started to peel off her clothes when she noticed Alistair frozen in place. The exposed skin around his mask made him look like a child who had gotten into his mother’s rouge.

“What?” she said. “I’m freezing and I’m not getting under blankets in these wet clothes.”

He looked at the ground. “Of course not. I’ll go find Henry.”

While Alistair was looking for Henry, Westie stripped down to her underclothes, desperate to get warm. She found flint in Alistair’s pack and built a fire beneath a tree just outside the shelter with the
driest wood she could find, then wrapped herself up in his blankets, trying to stave off hypothermia.

Alistair returned after a while, but the feeling in Westie’s limbs had not.

“Henry wouldn’t come to me,” Alistair said, warming his hands by the fire.

Westie’s muscles were wound tight, and she shook so violently she could barely get words through her clenched jaw. “Give him time to settle his nerves. He’ll come back.”

“I couldn’t get your bedroll—” His eyes grew when he glanced back at her. “Your lips are blue.”

“No shit?” she tried to say, but her words were broken by the clack of her teeth.

“We’ll have to share,” he said.

He started to move beneath the covers, but she stopped him.

“Not with those wet clothes you’re not.”

With a bashful tilt of his eyes, he shed his clothes down to his underwear, which were mostly dry, and got beneath the blankets with her.

Westie felt some reprieve from the cold when she saw Alistair without his shirt. The skin of his chest was smooth on top of layers of muscle, far more than she remembered from when they were kids. He was built much better than she’d imagined in her dreams where he was scantily clothed.

“What are you smiling about?” he asked.

“What? I wasn’t smiling,” she said, clamping her lips together.

Alistair’s teeth chattered when his skin touched hers. His shivering moved the blanket off her shoulders, and she huddled closer to steal his heat.

“Your skin is freezing!” he said.

He wrapped his arms around her without permission, without thought. She knew it was out of concern rather than an excuse to touch her while her clothes were off.

His skin was hot like fever against hers, almost painfully so, but each time she tried to pull away he gripped her tighter, winding his limbs with hers like two trees that had grown together until becoming one. The rain stopped as suddenly as it had started, but still he held her.

Her eyes closed as her body warmed, exhaustion taking over.

Sleep had just crept over her when she felt the tips of Alistair’s fingers move across her back. Her eyes opened to the wall of his chest, panic and dizziness making her head float. It was a different kind of touch than what she knew from him. And though his fingers remained only on her back, this particular touch she felt all over.

She looked at his face. His eyes met hers, blue and illuminated against the grayness around them. Being there alone with Alistair in the woods, she realized she’d wasted their years together, avoiding her true feelings. If the loss of her family and Alistair’s near death had taught her anything, it was that time with loved ones moved faster than wild horses burning the breeze.

His pupils dilated when she reached out to him. With two snaps she undid his mask and pulled it off. Stubble dotted his jaw around
the silver map of scars. Everything seemed to stop. Leaves paused on their way to the ground, birds silenced. It was as though the world held its breath.

She moved to kiss his scars, but he recoiled before her lips could touch them. Fear wrinkled the skin between his eyes. The fold smoothed in an instant.

She pulled back, wondering what she’d done wrong. They’d kissed before, so why in blazes . . .

Then it hit her. She’d tried to kiss his scars. Last time anyone had put their mouth to his cheek, it was to eat his flesh.

“Balls,” she cursed. She leaned away from him, put her hand to her mouth, and talked between her fingers. “I’m so stupid. I should’ve known—”

He put his finger to her mouth to keep her quiet.

She pressed her lips together, tried really hard, but just couldn’t do it. “You know I’d never do anything to hurt you, don’t you?” she said.

He took her hand, put her palm against his cheek, and nodded. She ran her finger along the raised lines of his scars, read his heartbreaking story down to his neck, and stopped when she reached his breastbone. His body quivered beneath her touch. She felt the
bomp-bomp
of his heart racing against her own, both rushing to the finish line to connect to each other once more. She breathed him in, the sweat, the rain.

Leaning forward, she put her lips to his chest, tasted the salt of his skin. His breathing became more labored, and his muscles began to twitch.

A confidence like nothing she’d known prior to that moment led her actions. She let her hands slip down to his narrow waist, where she grasped his hips and pulled him toward her. She smiled when she felt the evidence of him wanting her too.