The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage (39 page)

“Yeah.”

“I’m really sorry, too, Nate. I can’t even…I can’t think what it would be like to lose my dad.”

I just nodded. Graham Porter, important and wealthy man, was a world away from Andrew Charters. I knew she knew that. But for a moment, once again, I didn’t know what to say.

I settled on redirecting things a little.

“You and your dad still getting along?”

“Really good,” she said. “Really good.”

A crisis will sure bring a family together. I’d brought the Porters more than a few. “I bet he’s pretty done with me.”

She tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrows. “Well, you probably don’t want to drop by anytime soon.”

I wouldn’t be.

“Okay,” I said. “Makes sense.”

She sighed suddenly. “Nate, why’d you do it?”

“You mean Eric Finn?”

She looked at me. “Yes, Eric Finn.”

“Sorry. The last few days…you don’t know. I had to narrow it down.”

Her shoulders dropped and she scowled. “I saw that you were there, at the Institute. I don’t even want to know how that went.”

I nodded. “I’m not really ready to tell you about it,” I said.

“Okay. Tell me about Eric Finn.”

I shrugged. “It’s stupid.”

“I already know that. It was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, even stupider than Kirby Lake last year, and I was stupid enough to go along with that one.”

She shook her head, looking at me. “It broke us, Nate. You get that, right? You know that?” Her face flushed. She swiped her jacket sleeve across her eyes. “It broke us.”

I’d known we were done. I didn’t see how it could be any other way, especially since I’d made my mind up on what to do.

Hearing it from her, though, that was terrible. My throat jumped. I felt my own tears brimming.

“I know.” My voice broke.

She raised hers. “So tell me!”

“I did! I’m not kidding! It was stupid.” I sniffed. “It was childish and insecure, and I was jealous and—"

“Jealous of him? Why?”

I looked at her. I’d figured this out, mostly. I think I understood. Telling her, right then, with her close enough to kiss, knowing there’d be no more kissing, no more anything…I couldn’t open my mouth.

I had to, though. That was part of my deal with myself.

“It’s hard,” I said by way of beginning.

“Try.”

“I am.” I breathed. “Okay. Yeah. Jealous. I felt like if you were with a guy like that, an older guy, all…like he is…”

“I don’t know what that means, Nate.”

“Looking like he does.” Once that was out there, the rest was a little easier. “I couldn’t figure out why you were with me. Why you’d want to be with a guy like me.”

“You mean a guy who looks like you.”

“Partly, yeah.”

She closed her eyes and inclined her head. “Jesus. So you hunted him down and almost beat him to death. That’s great. That’s great.”

“No! I—no!” I didn’t want her to think I was a monster. I couldn’t handle that. “No…I did that because…look, I just didn’t get it, okay? I don’t understand why you would let him get away with what happened.”

She opened her eyes. She turned her head slowly toward me.

“Are you crazy, Nate? I’m…I’m serious.”

“No.” I sighed heavily. “Turns out I’m just immature. And stupid. Like I said.”

“You said ‘don’t understand.’ You don’t understand. Not ‘didn’t.’"

I nodded.

She looked like she was going to cry again. “Fuck, Nate, don’t you see how much that sucks?”

“I…yeah…”

“No! I can tell, you don’t get it! You still don’t get it! It’s not about you understanding what’s going on in my head. You’re just supposed to trust me! You’re just supposed to want to do what…what I ask you to do, as my friend! As my boyfriend!”

She choked on a sob and sniffed hard. “After everything, Nate…you know what I’ve been going through, after Kirby Lake. You knew.”

There was nothing for me to argue against. This, right here, if I had to be honest, was why I’d come here. I just nodded.

“I know.”

“And you still did that! God!”

“I know. I know. It was wrong. I’m sorry. I’ve learned better. I get it better, now. I do.”

“Oh, you get it now? After, what, a week, now you have your shit together?” She looked disgusted. “It doesn’t work that way, Nate. I’m sorry. You don’t get off that easily.”

“I know that. Believe me.”

I drew my leg up onto the table so I could sit facing her.

“Lina, I thought I was losing my mind. From the…from my dad’s stuff. I thought it was making me…” I shook my head. “You know. Stupid.”

She wiped her eyes and looked sideways at me. “You’ve been acting kinda shitty, Nate. For a while. So?”

“So I was wrong. There’s nothing wrong with me. Not like that.”

“So…I don’t get it. What’s your excuse?”

I took her hands. She looked down quickly, but she didn’t pull away. She looked at me.

“That’s my point. There’s no excuse. I’ve been stupid.”

I thought of the woman, whose full name, I learned before I left the Institute, was Evelyn Tamara Hill.

She was thirty-three.

I thought of Lou Uldare. Of Eric Finn.

“Worse, I think I let myself be stupid…because I thought I was, like, sick or going crazy or turning into my dad.

“But I wasn’t. I’m not.”

She was quiet for a bit before she said, “How do you know?”

“The Institute.”

She nodded.

She looked at our hands again.

“I’m scared for you, Nate.”

“Me too, Lina. And thanks. That’s, you know, better than scared
of
me.”

She laughed weakly. “Dude. I don’t care how badass you are. You know I can take you.”

It felt strange to laugh.

“Nathan?”

“Yeah.”

“Pushing me, like that? Knocking me down? You…you get why that was about the worst thing you could possibly do, right?”

I saw Evelyn’s mangled throat in my mind and started to cry. Lina let me. She released one of my hands so I could pull some tissues out of my back pocket and blow my nose.

“I do,” I said.

A car horn honked.

Too soon. Too soon.

“Time to go,” I whispered.

“Where are you going?”

I disengaged my other hand from hers and stood up. “It’s time to pay the price,” I said, then shook my head and laughed. “Jeez, it sounds all stupid and melodramatic like that.”

Lina smiled. “That’s us,” she said.

I grinned weakly. “Well, that’s just lame.” I felt like a burden had been lifted, and the lightness was a whole new kind of heavy. “I gotta do the right thing. No more running off.”

“Brave men run,” she reminded me.

“Ugh,” I said. “You know what? I used to be pissed at my dad over that. I thought it was just his half-crazy brain, riffing on a stupid line from a stupid movie and passing it off as some kind of, like, wild hobo wisdom.”

I thought of my dad as he was on our trip, clean and trimmed and just this side of sane. I was glad I got to see him like that.

“Maybe it was, when he wrote it. I don’t know, you know?”

Lina nodded.

“But here’s how I’m gonna take it from here on out,” I said. “Brave men run…not away, or to fight another day, or whatever.”

I saw that she understood. “No,” she said. “Not that.”

“I gotta run toward the trouble,” I nodded. “My trouble.” I shrugged. “It’s a stretch. Work with me.”

“That sounds like a good thing,” she said. “But…what does it mean, for real?”

My mother honked the horn again from somewhere down on the street.

“That’s my ride,” I said. I opened my arms. “Can we hug, Lina?”

She stood up, but didn’t come to me. “What are you doing, Nate?”

“Turning myself in.”

Her eyes widened. “For Eric Finn?”

“And…stuff. Stuff I…I can’t talk about with you, not right now. In a while. If…you want.” I half smiled. “If you’ll visit?”

She looked sad. It was a sad thing.

But there was something else in Lina’s eyes that made that new heaviness in my chest ease off just a little. Something like understanding. And pride.

She stepped forward.

I put my arms around my best friend and breathed her in, breath after breath after breath after breath.

the end

September 7, 2012 ~ January 31, 2013
Long Beach, California

Afterword

This book exists because my community of friends, readers, and fans came together and said they wanted it. The following people even put money down to make it happen:

Elizabeth F. Nalagan • Joel Gerhold • Rachel Steele • Thom Byrne • Brian Hunt • Bruce "Icepick" Press • Michael C. Dougherty • Dee Morgan • Seth Nicholas Johnson • Keri Orstad • Jeffrey A. Benson • Rick Jones • Stephen Jacob • Robin Hudson • Dan Campbell • The Grailpack • Scott Roche • Earl Newton • Eric Baumwell • James Ballard • James Durham • Mur Lafferty • Joe Mieczkowski • Laura A. Burns • Andrew Delaney • Matt McRoberts • Julie Press • Paul Fischer • Kendall P. Bullen • Theodore Minick • Dave Rayburn • Charles Eugene Anderson • Jonathan Hickel • Al Crowley • Joshua Messinger • C. A. Sizemore • Richard Sutton • Christopher Weible • Mark • Phillips • Eric Scott Elliott • Jim Waters • CJ Marsicano • David Sobkowiak • Matthew Blocker • R.W.W. Greene • Justin R. Macumber • Dr. Francis T. O'Donovan • Kurt Hines • Mark Gibson • Sherry D. Ramsey • Jeffery E Doherty • Susan Jones • Grant Baciocco • Dave Pitts • Jared Congiardo • Josh Wolff • Pon3zer Brkmn • Chris Moody • Mark Jeffrey • David Fisk • Samantha Brandt • Dwight Dunlop • Ray Slakinski • Mark Harris • Charles Sheehan-Miles • Buddy Brannan • Troy Clem III • Robert J. Noble • Nuchtchas & The Clockwork Doctor • Brandon Campbell • Jim Ryan • Steven Saus • Derek from Monster Kid Radio • Kris Johnson • Ryan Harron • Chris Rickard • Lianne Burwell • Nicholas Ahlhelm • Andrea Gideon • Tony Mast • Robert J. Peterson • Rick Stringer • Peter Ellis • Cher Reese • Dave Robison • Thomas Pryce • John Archdeacon • Brian McKelvey • Marc Jordan Paxton • Aws Al-Najjar • Hugh J. O'Donnell • Dave Wiener • Erik Ackerman • Angie & Joe Morency • Cyber Cowboy • Stephanie Harvey • Jarrett Lennon Kaufman • m. • Jason Ramboz • C David Dent • Jeffrey • Asher • Jon Tollerton • Alan White • Jeff Schultz • Glenn Seiler • Kevin Crosby • Jason Newland • Yvette Schwenck • David P Mackler • Shawn Thorpe • Seth "Palms Daddy" Harwood • David M Robb • Tim O'Donnell • Patrick M. Monaghan • Stephen • Mrs. Marie Krieger • Anita M. King • C E Dorsett • Kent Perry • Angela Greene • Bruce Lerner • Pearce Kilgour • Doug Rapson • P.G. Holyfield • Terry Mixon • Cedric Speleers • Elisha L Griego • Mary Ellen Warren • Charles Brown • J. Marcus Xavier • Nicole Feldringer • JJ • Jerry Harrington • Scott C. Leeds • Dharma Kelleher • Javier Garza • Shawn St Pierre • Spants • James Husum • Steve Bickle • Jeff Xilon • Jim Lewinson • Linton Bowers • Brion Humphrey • Aura • Scott E. Pond • Meason Kolkhorst • Kira Mandel • Justin Holdridge • Ed Garbacz • Richard Read • Susan Z • nulloperations • Nicole Gugliucci • M. J. Brudenell • Daniel Monson • Biscuit • Tabitha Grace Smith "TABZ" • William L. Ross

Thanks, everyone!

About the Author

Matthew Wayne Selznick is an author and creator living in Long Beach, California with the best gal in the world and too many pets.
Pilgrimage -- A Novel of the Sovereign Era
is his second book. You can find more about him and his storyworlds at his website,
http://www.mattselznick.com
. Or, subscribe to his free e-mail newsletter:
http://bit.ly/subscribemws
.

More From Matthew Wayne Selznick

The Sovereign Era

Brave Men Run -- A Novel of the Sovereign Er
a (The Charters Duology, Volume One)

Pilgrimage -- A Novel of the Sovereign Era
(The Charters Duology, Volume Two)

"The World Revolves Around You"

The Sovereign Era: Year One
(editor)

Paramount
(forthcoming)

Daikaiju Universe

"Reggie Vs. Kaiju Storm Chimera Wolf
"

"Reggie Vs. Kaiju Dragon Squidbat" (forthcoming)

Protector

"Cloak"

Non-Fiction

Worldbuilding For Writers, Gamers, and Other Creatives Volume One: Star, Planet, Moon

Reading
The Amazing Spider-Man
Volume One
(forthcoming)

Crowdfunding For Indie Authors
(forthcoming)

Before You Go...

...I want to say thank you, very much, for buying this ebook. As an independent author and creator, your patronage means a great deal to me. Your purchase quite literally helps keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

Would you do me two final favors?

First: if you found any typos, continuity errors, or other apparent mistakes, would you let me know? Please e-mail
[email protected]
with the details. If applicable, we'll fix things very quickly.

Second: I'd love it if you'd write an honest and thorough review of this book on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Goodreads.com, your own blog, or wherever you'd like. Reviews help sell books, and I really value them. Don't have time for a review? How about a quick note on Facebook, Twitter, or the social network you prefer?

Thank you, very much!

Sincerely,

Matthew Wayne Selznick

Table of Contents

Pilgrimage

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Author’s Note

Sovereign Ability Classes

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – One

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Two

From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Three