The Other Side Of Gravity (Oxygen, #1) (24 page)

Ah, no. I was going to kiss her.

I leaned in slightly. My eyes raced across her face, looking for some sign that she didn’t want me to, even as I kept leaning in. She kept her eyes on mine for the longest time before they dropped lower to what I could only imagine was my mouth and I was done for. I went in for the kill. When I was so close I could feel her breath on my lips—                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           “That was a clever trick.”

Our heads whipped to look in that direction. Sophelia was breathing so hard. I felt bad that I hadn’t noticed it until now. Had she not wanted me to? She had leaned in. I thought she wanted this just like I did. Had I taken advantage and misread everything?

And this guy? Wait.
Guys
. There were two of them and they looked exactly alike. “What are you?” I asked and then grimaced, knowing my brain was scrambled. Sophelia had officially scrambled my brain. “Who are you?”

They were twins who couldn’t have been older than sixteen, standing off to the side, leaning against the opposite brick wall. They had blue boots on their feet with their arms crossed, shaggy blonde hair and long noses. They were the hip kind of guys who wore all that weird junk, like mesh shirts over their t-shirts and neon green pants on one and then hot red pants on the other. They looked like mirror images of each other standing like that. But the cocky smiles on their faces made me cautious…and the fact that they had obviously seen and heard everything with the Militia, or something at least, and waited to say something until right before we were about to kiss.

Little bastards.

“I’m Roddy and this is Fletch. We’re twins.” He grinned.

Sophelia let a little giggle slip, making me look at her in question. She shrugged and muttered. “Come on, it’s funny.”

I looked back at the twins and gave them my best glare. If Sophelia wasn’t mad at them for messing up that kiss, that’s fine, but I sure as hell was. “What do you want?”

He smirked. “I think she’s probably safe now, dude. I doubt she’ll float away if you want to set her down.” His grin widened. “Unless you just like holding her against the wall like that in front of civilized company.”

Sophelia couldn’t scramble down fast enough. Her cheeks flamed as she took two steps away from me. “He was helping me,” she insisted.

“I know,” the guy insisted back; I didn’t know which one was which. “Sucks when you run out and let it get so close like that. But when you’re on the run, what are you supposed to do? Am I right?”

I took the two steps Sophelia had put between us and closed the gap so fast as I took up guard in front of her. “I repeat,
what do you want?
”

I was pretty happy when I felt her hands on my back gripping my shirt instead of pushing me away.

The guys looked at each other and kind of chuckled, which was doing
nothing
to calm my nerves. I was two seconds from clocking these clowns, taking Soph’s hand, and running as far away from them as we could get before he said, “We want to help you. Correction, we want to help
her
.”

“What?” I heard myself say. “Do you know her?”

“We don’t have to know her to know
of
her,” the other one finally spoke. “Our mother talked about how one day we’d have to fight, how one day the revolution would no longer just be something we talked about at the dinner table; it would be real and it would be in our faces. We think that time is here.” They looked behind me and I realized that Sophelia had peeked out around my shoulder. “And we think all the revolt needs in a pretty little redhead who isn’t afraid to stir things up.”

“
You
think?” she said, and I was happy to hear that snappy Sophelia was back, the girl I met on the ship, the girl who wasn’t all broken and waiting for things to happen, she was
making
things happen. The girl who defied her proprietor and ran, consequences be damned.

I pulled her to my side.

“Not just us. There’s an underground group of revolutionists just waiting to overtake the government. We’re called the Patriots.” He chuckled.

“Like the Civil War Patriots?” I said wryly. That’s all he could mean, right?

“You know it? Of course, bruh! What else?” He got even more animated if that was possible. It was, apparently. “The Patriots, or the Whigs as I like to call us, but Mommy gets her skirt all in a bunch over that one since we—”

“You call her ‘Mommy’?” I asked.

I
had
to. But really, did I have any room to talk?

“Yeah,” he defended and stepped toward me. “What of it, dude? I love my mommy. Don’t you love yours?”

His brother grabbed his arm, like the guy was about to murder me right there on the granite sidewalk, filling the cracks in the stone with my blood. I wanted to laugh so badly, but held it in for Soph’s sake. I did not want to get into a fight with her there, especially since they were being weird and talking about
needing her
.

I shrugged and held up my hands. “Please continue,” I mocked.

“Anyway,” he said loudly, throwing his hand in the air before proceeding, like no altercation had taken place, “the Patriots believe that we should have the same rights as the Elites. We’re not asking for handouts, not at all. We’re just asking for the same opportunities. We want to work for our money, buy our own food, and take care of our families. No more of these massive taxes that no one can afford, no more food and oxygen rations from the government, and no more regulations that don’t allow the same things for us as it does for the Elites. We work and live for us and our own. The less government the better.”

“No more being told how we should exist.” We all looked at the other one, who had been strangely quiet.

“That’s…” I tried, but came up with nothing.

“Perfect,” Sophelia said softly beside me, but she may as well have screamed it. It spoke to that place inside us all that wanted to be woken up, that begged to be heard, that waited for those small moments to feel alive.

The pause held, the silence clinging to us, until one of them finally said, “So now that we’re all on the same page, let’s let everyone else in on it. Let’s let the revolution leaders know you’re here and then let’s get the rest of the stacks and the people on board. And then let’s get our rights back.”

What he was talking about was what everyone wanted, of course…and it would never happen.

“And you think Sophelia is somehow the key to this?”

He began slowly, “In the mines, our parents worked hard. But they also talked while they worked down there, where there were no cameras or techs, and they began to convene secret meetings. And then the workers began to pool their money to buy an Around Landu doll.”

Sophelia gasped. I looked over at her, but she didn’t look back. She just gripped my hand harder and waited to hear more.

I felt ice run through my veins at that gasp.

He grinned at her, knowing he had her somehow.

“Stop,” I barked at him and turned to face Sophelia. My Soph. No matter how quickly it had happened or how slowly, depending on how you looked at it, because I had always been waiting for her, hadn’t I? I had always thought myself so big and grand, so purposeful and on point in my actions to save my family, no matter the cost, but she was the one who had paid everything, not me. I reveled in my rebellion, even though I liked to tell myself I didn’t. She fought against it.

I put my arm on the wall above her head, boxing us in, creating our own little world in the space we had available to us. I expected her to ask what I was doing, to lean away, to look at me with questions as I rushed to explain, but her fingers found my shirt, clinging to me in a way I didn’t yet deserve. She waited for me.

She waited right there in my gaze, knowing that she was safe with me…and I’d never been so destroyed and utterly put back together again.

I heard the noise erupt from my throat before I could stop it. She seemed puzzled, but gripped tighter to me. “Are you all right?” her whispered plea asked in the sweetest way.

“Me?” I asked, completely incredulous. “Are
you
all right? Sweetheart, those boys want to tote you off and make you their sacrificial lamb.” She smiled in a placating way. “You don’t agree?”

Her eyes never left mine. “My mom used to think that I was better than I am.”

“Well, who says you’re not?” I kept my eyes slammed onto those gray ones.

She gasped just a little before she shook herself. “I’m just saying, she had all these ideas. She was always talking about the person I should be one day, the kind of person I had to become. I was so little, so I know she was trying to just pack in as much info without scaring me, but get her point across. But on my eighth day of birth anniversary she brought home…”

“An Around Landu doll,” I guessed.

She nodded sadly, as if admitting it betrayed me somehow. “Her buying that doll for me was the reason that we couldn’t—”

She had to stop and I knew why.

              “The reason you couldn’t pay your taxes. Ah, Soph, no wonder you…” I tugged her to me and pressed her face in my neck. When she nestled in and wrapped her arms around my middle, I sighed from the balls of my feet to the ends of my hair follicles.

I looked over my shoulder to find Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum still standing there, little smiles on their dumb faces. I rolled my eyes at them and went back to rubbing her back, trying anything to make her feel better. I pulled her close to me with my free arm, letting my hand dip in and out of the small of her back, hoping it was helping to warm and comfort her. When she started to nuzzle her face into my neck, the barest of movements, and brought her hands back to my chest, I tightened my grip on her.

“Soph,” I whispered, but it was everything a growl should be. “Those idiots already interrupted us once, at the
very best part
. Please don’t make me kill them if they do it again.”

She complained in a small groan of her own and I couldn’t help but chuckle.

She whispered against my jaw. “Wow. Who knew you were this much fun?”

“I am
completely
offended.”

She giggled. “No, you’re not.”

“Okay, I’m not.” I pulled back to pull her face up to see it full-on. “Are you sure you’re all right? I mean, we’re not even sure what all this means.”

“It means we should go with them.”

“Say what now?”

She smiled small. “I know you just want to help. And…” Her face went completely, utterly blank. I knew I wasn’t going to like this. And I was going to take another hit. “Honestly, you could just leave me with them and go back to your family. You don’t owe me anything.”

She was looking down at our shoes. And I waited. She wanted me to pull her face up, to beg her, to tell her it would never happen that way, but I thought I had been telling her that all along. I thought I just had. I felt like I needed to let her make this step on her own instead of me chasing her, or else I wouldn’t know if she really even wanted this.

But when she finally did look up, I realized my fatal mistake. That by not leaping for her when she jumped, she thought I no longer wanted to catch her.

I took her upper arms in my hands before she could move away and then moved those hands up to hold her face, letting my thumbs whisper over the skin under her eyes, carrying the tears away to be forgotten. I forced her to look at me, but she didn’t fight me like I thought she would. Where had my feisty Sophelia gone? She was ready to bust Tweedle heads one minute and then crumbling before my eyes the next?

No.

I groaned like I’d been kicked in the gut. She wasn’t crumbling; she was blossoming. Her walls came down for me and when we got around other people, they came right back up again. I was so honored by that. Her showing these tears—the tears for me—
was
her way of showing me she wanted this, it was her way of chasing me, it was her way of catching me and leaping at the same time. And that’s when I knew I had to…

I leaned in swiftly, but not too swift, down to her space, hoping I wasn’t wrong. When she sucked in a breath against my lips right before I touched her, I knew I’d been spot on.

This girl. The girl with fire for hair, defenses for a tongue, and a weapon for a heart, she was mine and she needed to know it. She probably thought it was weakness when she cried, but any good leader needed compassion. And this world needed compassion more than any other emotion.

I wrapped one arm gently around her back and let her lean back just a little as I kissed her. As second kisses went, it...was amazing. The first time, I was so caught off guard and confused. I couldn’t believe that, one, holy-wow-she-wants-to-kiss-me-wait-no-come-back that by the time my lips caught up with my brain, she was already pulling away and thought I was upset. In the history of kisses anywhere, has there ever been a guy who has ever gotten mad about being kissed? Ever? I didn’t think so. And if you actually come up with a reference, well, just keep it to yourself. And two, I was just so shocked at the fact that she actually
wanted
to be kissing me!