Breaking Point (Article 5 #2)(59)

Crack! Automatically I fell to my knees, but it was just Chase in the corner of his closet, peeling back a floorboard beneath a loose scrap of carpet.

“What are you doing?”

He shined the flashlight on a small wooden container, half the size of a shoebox. When he blew on it, dust sprayed across the room.

“I left some things here before I was drafted,” he said.

With one eye on the darkened window, I watched him pull open the squeaky lid and rummage through the contents inside with one finger. He removed a school picture of a pretty mixed girl with jet-black hair bobbed to her chin. Rachel, his sister, when she’d been in high school. Intrigued now, I sat beside him on the floor, ears still perked toward the window. The sudden sensation slid over me that we’d done this before—hunched over a flashlight and buried treasure while trying not to get caught.

He shuffled through forty dollars cash, a dinged-up matchbox car, a couple baseball cards from teams before the War, and a wedding picture of his parents, folded in the middle. The white crease across the center of the page was so thick it nearly split in half.

Something fluttered in my stomach. I thought of the letters I’d written that he’d carried in our backpack for so long. He didn’t have much, but his small collection of memories kept him grounded. It was touching, and somehow profound that so little could represent so much to him.

What did I have to remind me of home? Of my mother? Of Beth, just blocks away sleeping in her bed? All I had was this stupid necklace that was supposed to have been for my protection. And it wasn’t even really mine. Suddenly Chase, with all his loss, seemed rich beyond belief.

The box shifted, and something metallic slid across the bottom. He placed it in his hand. A tiny circle in the broad expanse of his calloused palm. Braided silver, colliding into a single black stone, as dark as Chase’s eyes.

His mother’s wedding ring.

“Maybe you should switch yours out for this one,” he suggested. There was a thin quality to his voice. He was trying too hard to sound casual.

I gulped, but a solid lump had formed in my throat that I could not push down. Nervously, I twisted the ring he’d stolen for me from the Loftons’ ranch. I kept it as a disguise—there were Statutes about unmarried girls staying out alone with men. Indecent, the MM said. Scandalous. Like nail polish and hair dye and all the other contraband items deemed immoral in Article 2. But if I wore Chase’s mother’s wedding band, it wouldn’t just be for my safety. It would be for other reasons, too.

Two memories collided simultaneously. One, just a flash of Chase’s mom and dad kissing. I’d been young enough to run away shrieking, and old enough to wonder what it was like.

The other of me standing in line at the pawn shop, cashing in my mom’s engagement ring.

We’d both lost our families. We could die, just like them, at any moment. We were living on borrowed time already. What if he was captured? Executed? What if he just disappeared?

I stood, looking anywhere but at him. The heel of my hand rubbed forcefully at the tightness in my chest.

“It’s not like it would mean anything. Not really.” He scratched his head, and chuckled dryly, but his eyes were dark and brooding.

My hand fell to my side.

“It wouldn’t?”

He shrugged, too carelessly.

“We’re not even valid citizens. It’s not how it was for my parents. I’m just saying it wouldn’t be real, that’s all.” He laughed again. “Forget I said anything.”

But I didn’t want to forget. A deep ache had filled me, a longing for something more. For a future, one with him, one that shimmered in the distance like a mirage.

I stopped him before he could shove the ring into his pocket. I didn’t care if the MM thought I was a valid citizen, or recognized our relationship. We had each other, now, and if we knew it that was all that really mattered.

I reached for his fist, curled around his mother’s ring, and brought it to my lips. Gently, I kissed the inside of his wrist. I heard his breath change tempo, quicken.

“Does that feel real?”

He nodded.

“Then who cares what they say?”

A warm, relieved smile spread across his face.

“Someday,” I promised.

But instead of saying something more, his expression flattened, and he shoved the ring in his pocket. For a moment I was humiliated, until I realized his gaze had narrowed on a point behind me.

“We’ve got incoming,” he said quietly.

I spun toward the window, ducking when I saw a shadowed shape. Had someone just come in? Or had they been inside the whole time?

“Sean?” I whispered.

“Too small.”

“Too small for a man?” I clarified. He didn’t answer.

My heart pounded out of my chest. In that moment I knew that she was here. I could feel her, just feet away. I would have her back in seconds.

“We’re going.”

He couldn’t tell me no, because now he had to find out, too.

“I can break through the lock in the back,” he said.

“I don’t care if you throw a rock through the damn window,” I said even as he shushed me. “I’m getting in that house right now.”

He placed a steadying hand on my arm and I forced myself to take a deep breath.