Article 5 (Article 5 #1)(96)

“Make the call,” Chase told Sean. I glanced at him, confused.

Sean took a step back. After a moment, he shook his head, focusing on the present, and removed a radio from his belt. It was like the one Chase had in the MM but smaller, and it clicked rapidly when he turned it on.

“Package ready for pickup,” Sean said. He had to clear his throat. An array of emotions was flying across his face.

Nearly a minute passed with no response from the radio.

While we waited, I caught Chase watching me. His gaze held no more secrets but was clear and honest and deep as a lake. I traced my fingertips over his high cheekbones and saw how the lines between his brows melted as the pounding in his head subsided. Finally finding peace, he closed his eyes.

“One hour,” came the response, making me jump. I recognized the voice. It belonged to a wiry man with greasy, peppered hair and a mustache.

Chase nodded his approval. He’d asked Wallace to help us. We were going back to the Wayland Inn.

We were going back to the resistance.





CHAPTER


17



IT was nearly dawn when I finished with Wallace. A deep exhaustion filled me, one that soaked into my bones until they were soft and pliable and barely able to sustain my weight. In this condition I dragged myself up the stairs of the Wayland Inn, out the exit onto the roof, and into the cool, dark air.

Wallace himself had attended to Chase’s injuries when we’d returned. Once a medic in the FBR, the resistance leader taught me how to check Chase’s pupils for dilation and how to manage the other symptoms of concussion. I’d led Chase to an empty room, to a bed with a moth-eaten comforter, and waited only minutes for him to fall asleep. Sean told me later that this was the first time Chase had rested since I’d been found missing.

Then Wallace and I had talked. I’d told him everything I remembered from the base: the layout, the personnel, and the horrors within. It was terrifying to relive, but ultimately purging. After hours of his soft but persistent interrogation, I felt empty.

Later we would talk strategy. The time to fight was coming, but until then we’d been granted a moment of peace; a deep breath before the plunge.

There was one thing I had to do before I slept. I had to see the sky.

I sat on an old wooden bench, positioned around the corner of the exit door. My body bowed into the weathered planks, rejoicing in the freedom coating my limbs. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes and felt the last bit of claustrophobia from the holding cells slip away.

My mother was gone, and with her, the child I had been. She’d been taken with violence, as had my youth, and in their place a new me had awakened, a girl I didn’t yet know. I felt achingly unfamiliar.

The sky had turned peach and raspberry when the rooftop door burst open with enough force to kick my heart straight into my windpipe. In an instant I was on my feet.

Chase’s hair was messy, his eyes wide and wild and tinged with pain. My heart throbbed as it did for him alone, with equal parts love and fear. Only when the sun brightened the bruises on his jaw did I remember to breathe.

“Is everything all right?” I asked.

He took a tentative step forward. Several beats passed. His gaze roamed over my face in a tender, familiar way, and for a moment I forgot that I felt lost and empty. I was the same girl I’d always been. The girl he loved.

“Everything’s fine. Sorry,” he apologized. “I just couldn’t find you and…” he shrugged forcefully, looking unbearably vulnerable for such a big person.

He’d thought I’d run away again. I let my hair fall forward, hoping it would hide the guilt heating my cheeks.

I sat again and he sat beside me. We didn’t touch, and I felt a severing as he turned to watch the sun stream over the horizon.

You know what I remember after the police came? he said in my mind. You sitting on the couch with me. You didn’t say anything. You just sat with me. His tone had been softer, less serious than it was now. It struck me how much the years had changed us, and yet here we were, sitting together in silence, watching the same sun rise.

For a long time we were very still, until I noticed Chase’s hand resting, palm unfurled, on his thigh.

I wondered how long he had been sitting like that. Unassuming. Possibly not meaning anything by it. I took a deep breath, feeling the nerves tingle down my spine, and placed my hand in his. With our wrists in alignment, my fingers only reached to the first joint of his knuckles.

I studied the blunt, raised scars on his hands from too many fights. His fingers traced the white latticed pattern from a whip on mine. Soft skin trailed over calloused patches and the cool metal of a stolen gold ring. His thumb teased slowly down the side of my first finger, and my whole arm prickled with heat. Then our fingers intertwined. He squeezed and I squeezed back.

I leaned my head on his shoulder, feeling a sudden wave of fatigue. The fear and anger had been left to simmer until a later time when they might actually make sense, and though I knew it was temporary, I was relieved. We were safe and together, and that was all that mattered now.





ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Growing a book is no solitary venture. It is a process touched by many, and I will never be able to truly convey how grateful I am to the following people for changing the trajectory of my life.

First to my agent, Joanna MacKenzie, who took a huge chance but never made me feel like a risk, who donated so many hours not just to the manuscript but to my therapy, and who is both the best champion and best cheerleader in the entire world. There would be no Article 5 if not for Joanna. Additionally, without Danielle Egan-Miller’s and Lauren Olson’s thoughtful comments, guidance, and advocating for Article 5 on all fronts, I would be lost.