Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(10)

After a moment I picked up my spoon. Took a bite.

“Tell me that’s not the best ice cream you’ve ever had,” she said.

“It’s not the best ice cream I’ve ever had,” I said, trying hard to swallow without giggling.

A look of disbelief spread across her face. Then she slung a spoonful of mashed potatoes across the table, and splattered them all across my shirt.

*

“HEY.”

I jolted up straight in my chair as Sean snapped his fingers in my face. My chest still ached with the memory. If I had known my mother would be dead three months later, I never would have fought with her over something stupid, or yelled at her when she’d gotten a citation. I would have packed our stuff and we would have run, and we’d both be at the safe house now.

I tried to hold on to the sound of her laughter, but it blended with the others down the hall. Cara’s soprano rose above the rest. They were probably playing poker again, competing for something someone had picked up in town. Candy maybe, or cigarettes. I cringed. They might as well invite the whole base over with all the noise they were making.

Billy pushed away from the computer, shoving back his hair absently. I’d zoned out while we were scanning the mainframe for more information on girls’ reformatories in Chicago. There wasn’t much for me to do while Billy hacked into the server and Sean scanned the lists.

“Go to bed,” Sean told me, squinting at the screen.

“I’m fine,” I said, yawning. “And anyway, you’re not the boss of me anymore.”

He tossed me a pointed look over his shoulder. “Was I ever the boss of you?” When I grinned, he said, “That’s what I thought. Go away, you’re making me tired.”

I did what he said, but only because I wasn’t helping any. I took one of the candles; its wavering yellow light made the walls look that much more decrepit. When I got to my room, I paused outside, listening through the door for the sound of Chase’s breathing. The noise in the hall seemed amplified; the guys that had left before curfew returned. Houston and Lincoln were arguing about a cute girl they’d seen in the Square. Someone was singing in the shower. The walls were way too thin.

I tried to imagine Chase lying on the bed, but the thought made me nervous. I wondered if I should go inside at all. He didn’t sleep well—I knew the nightmares still plagued him, though he never talked about them. I could crash in the supply room and let him catch up on some much needed rest.

Before I could change my mind, I inched the door open and slipped inside, careful to cover the flame with my hand. It didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust, to find him stretched out over the moth-eaten velvet chair, placed strategically in front of the window—the same window I’d escaped from when he’d told me about my mother. He’d left our blanket folded at the foot of the sagging mattress, empty in the center of our tiny space.

Empty, just like me. Lost without my mom, without any lead on Rebecca, without any sense of purpose here.

The yellow light was small and didn’t grant much visibility, but even so I could tell he wasn’t moving. Barely even breathing. He was too still to be anything but awake, and I matched his stillness, feeling his eyes graze over me, conscious of my breathing, too shallow, and the hot wax that dripped on my thumb.

I blew out the candle.

Crossing the room, I placed it on the window ledge, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d climbed into his lap. My palms searched through the dark to grasp his face, and my thumbs raced over his cheekbones, rough from not shaving, to his lips, parted and soft. There was no time to question how he’d respond, or think of how we’d barely touched these last few weeks. I needed this, needed him, and he needed me as well. His arms surrounded me and pulled me close, and then I was kissing him and he was kissing me back, his lips pressed hard into mine. He was alive and warm, smelling vaguely of sweat and mint toothpaste, and I told myself his touch would make me warm, too.

I squeezed my eyes closed and kissed him with that kind of pressure, begging him to make me forget, to feel anything beyond this bottomless, irreconcilable black hole that had torn open inside of me. His teeth skimmed my jaw, nipped my ear, and the groan he drew from my throat made his own breath stutter. He crushed me against him then, closer, impossibly close, scooting to the edge of the chair. I thought he meant to lead us to the bed, but he paused, and in those damp, trembling moments, something between us shifted.

I clung to him. Like a strong wind might whip him away. And he must have sensed it, because I could feel his fists knot in the back of my shirt and his ragged breaths heat my neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice strained. And then again, “I’m sorry,” only this time more desperately.

He lifted me and placed me on the edge of the bed, and then backed away so fast he stumbled over his boots. I didn’t understand. All I knew was that the emptiness inside of me was filling with something else, a great impenetrable sadness. Cold and unyielding. It was growing fast now, seeping through every part of me.

I couldn’t see his face in the dark, couldn’t read his expression. I didn’t have much time to anyway. A second later he left and closed the door behind him.

I fell back on the bed, my lips swollen and hot, my eyes burning with stubborn tears that refused to fall. I drew my knees into my chest and tried to make myself as small as possible. After a while I pulled the blanket over me, but all the heat in the room had left when Chase had.