Steel Lily ARC (31 page)

“Oh, it’s not,” I conceded, “It’s a general distrust on my part and him wishing he could woo me like the other girls.”

Mom leaned in and put her hand on my knee. “You know there are no other girls, right?”

“Not right now, maybe…”

“Not ever.”

I raised my eyebrows, dubious of her proclamation. “How do you know that?”

She smiled. “Let’s just say I’ve been here long enough and interacted with that boy enough to know…and there have never been any other girls, no matter what he tries to tell you.”

“But you don’t have to be the first,” Dad said, butting into the conversation. “Remember what I said. Twenty-five is the new dating age.”

Mom and I laughed.

“He’s just making up for lost time,” Mom said. “Ignore him. Now tell me about your abilities.”

And so I did.

We all talked late into the night, until the sky turned purple, then red, then the brilliance of the sun stole the beauty of cool night sky. Mom’s red hair glowed against the new dawn, and her eyes were tired as she yawned.

“Good Lord, we stayed up all night,” she said, “Well, two of us, anyway.”

She motioned to Dad, who had fallen asleep on the end of the couch, his mouth open and his arms crossed. “He was so excited and heartbroken at the same time when you showed up earlier,” Mom said quietly, her eyes never leaving Dad. “He has hated himself for leaving you. We both have. You deserve a family.”

“I have one.”

“A
normal
family.”

“Normal is overrated. I like my family as is.”

“Radiation filled and all?”

I nodded. “That’s like the warm, gooey center of a particularly good donut.”

Mom laughed. “Well I’m glad we’re comparable to a donut.”

“A particularly
good
one, at that.”

She smiled and nodded, but then she grew serious. “You haven’t had an easy life. We haven’t been dealt the cards that I wish we could have given you. But because of that, you’ve overcome. You’re resilient, and that will keep you going. The chance that I may someday get to see you again—get to hug my baby—that’s kept me going. And look, it’s happened. Things don’t always come to fruition the way we think they will, but life has a funny way of working itself out, if we have the patience to wait on it.”

I looked at her, taking in every laugh line, the way her hair didn’t all quite make it behind her ears, her heterochromatic eyes like mine. “Do you regret it?” I asked.

“Regret what, baby girl?”

“Coming here. Trying to keep me safe, when all I managed to do was end up here with you.”

Mom took my hands in hers and rubbed them, the weathered feeling of her palms massaging mine. Her eyes were as clear as day when she responded. “Not one bit. I’d do it again, and again, and again. A mother’s love knows no bounds, and I would do anything to keep you safe, to know you were happy. I would lay down my life for you to live one more hour.”

“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” I asked with a smile.

Mom’s face was fierce. “If you don’t know what you’d die for, you haven’t lived enough.”

In that moment I wondered what I’d die for, and knew almost instantly.

Freedom.

Because humankind wasn’t meant to live in a cage.

Someday I would break free and fly. I would fly away from this place with my family and my friends and never look back.

And we would be free…

Or we’d die trying.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

The next week was more of the same: breakfast with everyone, lessons with Riggs, and Jaxon sneaking me to my parents in the evening.

Never once did he try to hold my hand since that first night.

I wasn’t sure if I liked that or not.

Mom and I practiced late into the evenings, pushing both of us to exhaustion until we fell asleep on the couch. In the mornings, Jaxon would come get me before the sky turned red with the rising sun, and we would act as though we were nothing more than friends.

We weren’t.

Right?

Right.

Dammit.

Moonlight streamed in through the massive window across the room, and I looked outward to see the stars. Or maybe it was a hologram. Who knew.

Someday I would see the real stars. Someday I would taste life outside of a dome. I knew it.

I leaned against the kitchen island, rolling an apple across the countertop as Alice rummaged through the cupboards.

She hadn’t said more than three words since she’d been tracked.

“Alice, you know if you hold all your words in, you’ll eventually explode,” I said, trying to prod her. “It’ll be messy. All those words to clean up…you know I hate cleaning. Why would you do something like that to me?”

She just gave me a dirty look, grabbed an orange, and went back to our bedroom.

I felt like crap.

I needed her back. She needed to be back. But her bloodshot eyes were evidence that my Alice was gone, and I had no idea how to find her behind the hollow emptiness that was left behind.

My heart hurt for her.

Sari passed her as she came out to the kitchen, but said nothing until she got to me. “She’ll come around. I promise. Jaxon did.”

“And look how he came around. He should have stayed wherever he was.”

Sari shook her head. “You know, you’re an angsty bugger when you have a crush.”

“I don’t have a crush,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Nope, not at all. You have a head-on collision with loooove.”

As if on cue, there was a knock at our door.

Sari winked at me. “Nine PM. On the dot. As usual. The boy is like clockwork when it comes to you.”

“We don’t even touch, woman.”

“Because if you did, the sexpot tension between the two of you would explode into amazingness and fireworks of epic proportions,” Sari said evenly. “It’d be like, the collision of a lifetime.”

I laughed, but at the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be more like a crash and burn. I tossed her my apple and went to get the door as it sounded again.

And with the turn of a doorknob, there he was. Blue eyed, dreadlocked, and looking at me like he had a witty retort already planned if I were so brave to make a comment.

Which I wasn’t, because I was as awkward as a gangly prepubescent kid.

Oh yeah, Sari, total sexpot right here,
I thought to myself.

As usual, he extended his arm. “You ready?”

“Always.”

“Behave, you two,” Sari called behind us.

Jaxon smiled. “Not tonight.”

That caught me off-guard. Mom and I had planned to try to make a dessert for Dad tonight. “What do you mean, not tonight?”

Jaxon cocked his head to the side, and a lone dread fell across his face. “Have you forgotten? You owe me a date, woman. Tonight I’m collecting.”

“I have plans.”

His grin was blinding. “I know. With me. I’ve already talked to your parents.”

I floundered for words. “You what? You asked my parents if you could take me on a date?”

“It seemed to be what people did in the old days,” he said reasonably, “Why not keep the pointless chivalry alive?”

“Because you’re Jaxon.”

He pretended to chew on the words. “So chivalry doesn’t apply to me?”

“I didn’t think so.”

“Oh. Okay then.”

And with that he grabbed me, lifted me on his shoulder, and carried me down the hall, leaving Sari’s laugh echoing in my ears.

Or maybe that was my heartbeat threatening to explode out of my head. Either or.

“Put me down!” I hissed quietly.

He laughed and set me down. “Will you follow me if I do?”

“Like you’d let me do anything else.”

“This is true.” Jaxon navigated the hallways and stairs that slowly ascended to the surface of the dome in silence, leaving me to wonder what we were doing the entire time. Before long we stood on the muddy ground under the overpass that hid the entrance to the academy. Shadows hid the underground acropolis that Riggs had created. If it weren’t for the fact I knew it was there, I wouldn’t have looked twice at the gap that led to the Academy below.

Moonlight lit our path. Jaxon stepped into the light and took my hand. “I’m going to show you something only Sari’s seen.”

“Oh God, please keep your clothes on.”

Jaxon laughed. “Get your mind out of the gutter, you perv.”

“I’m just saying, no matter what permission my parents gave you, they wouldn’t want you to blind me with something that scarring.”

“Blind you with something that beautiful, you mean,” he said.

Well yes…
but I wasn’t going to say that. “You aren’t God’s gift to women, contrary to your belief.”

“Sure, sure. I’ve seen the way you look at me. I’m not a piece of meat, you know. I have feelings, too,” He winked at me. “This is a first date. Don’t think I’m going to let you in my pants that easy.”

“This is
not
a date! This is me giving into your demanding ways and hoping you’ll leave me alone afterward.” I forced myself to mean it. It wasn’t a date. Jaxon was…Jaxon. It would take a lot more than a moonlight stroll to convince me that he wasn’t the self-absorbed, egocentric asshat that he presented himself to be ninety percent of the time.

But the ten percent of the time that he wasn’t made me hope this was real.

He chuckled to himself as we made our way over the hill and onto the desolate street. My thighs burned and I found myself hoping that wherever he was taking me, it was close. Here he was less careful. He kicked a chunk of asphalt that had loosened from the road. It thunked down the road a little ways and when we reached it, he kicked it again.

“So, you’re a bit of a caveman since you came from Dome Three,” Jaxon said, no hint of offensiveness in his words. “I want to show you a good time, so I’m introducing you to my woman.”

“A guy like you will never settle down.”

“A guy like me settles down for four hundred horses of power, let me tell you,” he said, his tone passionate and excited. “And I don’t get to take these horses out to play nearly enough.”

“Horses? Real horses?” The thought of seeing a real horse excited me. I’d never seen one, except in books.

Jaxon snorted. “No, not real horses. I’m referring to horsepower. You know, what’s under the hood in a car?”

“You know how to drive?” I exclaimed. The idea of trying to navigate tons of steel stopped me in my tracks.

“Like I said, perks of being Jaxon Pierce.”

The comment made me notice that his name was different than Riggs’s. “Why don’t you have your father’s last name?”

“That’s a conversation for another day,” he said evasively. “I want tonight to be fun.”

“But you said you were letting me get to know you.”

“Not about that, I didn’t.”

It was apparent he wouldn’t budge on the topic. I sighed. “Okay, show me these horses.”

When we turned the corner, a dilapidated twenty-foot tall sign stood with half the plastic lying on the ground at our feet. When I looked between the two pieces, it read
Heckle’s Porsche Dealership
, with insignias below the words to indicate what I assumed were car logos.

“Cars take gas…” I said slowly.

“Yep. Good catch.”

“And you plan on getting this gas how?”

Jaxon slid his hand over a dusty car with the logo that was below the word
Porsche
. The body of the car was long and underneath the dust, it looked like the paint might be white. As we passed, I noticed the windshield was cracked and riddled with bullet holes. Nothing had avoided the war.

We entered the display room where multiple cars sat, each one riddled with bullet holes. An iridescent puddle of oil had expanded from under one of the vehicles and now blanketed the surrounding area. The place smelled of oil and gas and rust.

“Jaxon, I don’t think any of these are going to go anywhere, no matter how many horses you got to pull them.”

Jaxon’s laugh echoed through the room. “Not these, no,” he agreed, “but they had a back showroom that no one got to, and thank goodness this baby was saved.”

I rolled my eyes as he led us to the rear of the building, and through a door on the left. The ground was covered in silt and debris, but a little further into the room, underneath an overhang that shielded it from the elements, sat a car in pristine condition.

It was jet black, and the only way I knew it was there was that the moonlight made the paint shine in the darkness. The smooth lines were elegant and made it look fast even while stationary. I smiled in spite of myself. This
was
a cool car, although I didn’t have much to compare it to.

Jaxon stood by the passenger door with a goofy grin. “Well, what do you think?”

“It’s pretty cool,” I admitted.

“
Pretty cool
? Do you know what you’re looking at?”

“To be honest, no.”

He shook his head and opened the door. “Get in the car.”

I blanched. “I don’t think—”

“Don’t think. I like to live to the chorus of ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time.’ Makes for more fun.”

“This doesn’t even seem like a good idea right now.”

He walked over and took my hands, his eyes pleading. “When have I ever led you wrong?”

“I’ve only known you a little over a week. It’s early yet.”

“Then let’s see if it’s now,” he said good-naturedly. “And anyway, you’ll be begging me to drive faster once we’re on the road.”

“I suppose if we’re going to die trying to escape, you wrapping this thing around a pole or another car would be quicker than anything Riggs could think of.”

Jaxon snorted as he helped me into the bucket seat and clicked the seatbelt across my lap, his fingers lingering on the tops of my thighs. My whole body burned from being so close in such an intimate space.

He shook his head. “I’ve never met someone so beautiful who could be so macabre.”

“Queen of Darkness, at your service.”

The door shut and suddenly I was in the contraption alone. The leather interior was cold and I ran my hands across the wooden dashboard. There wasn’t a hint of dust or a speck of rust anywhere.

The car shifted under Jaxon’s weight and as he turned the key, the car growled to life. He lowered his foot onto the pedal, causing the car the rumble and snarl. “Doesn’t she sound beautiful?”