Breaking Sky(49)

The quiet that snuck around them was chilled. Chase shivered. “I…I’m sorry.”

“I know.” Pippin ducked back into his bunk. “Go to sleep,” he grumbled with the kind of finality she wasn’t going to push against.

Chase couldn’t move. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Pippin had never appeared interested in guys, but he’d certainly been uninterested in girls. Chase had been hanging back on the subject until he was ready to talk. She’d even imagined it a few times. Pippin would sit her down and say, “So…I’m gay.” And then she’d say, “Of course you are,” and it would all be smoothed over. Accepted.

She’d never imagined it coming out in the middle of the night like a slap. Pippin was smart enough to fly circles around her; he’d never tell her something this important before he was ready, and yet that was exactly what had seemed to have happened. She had pushed him. Chase felt cruel all of a sudden, even guiltier than when she’d ignored his pleading during the race.

Tristan had been right to knock the pride out of her.

When the alarm sounded again, she hopped down from the bunk on shaky legs and turned it off. Pippin was snoring. The lump on the side of her skull stung when she touched it, but not as bad as the throb of remembering that she deserved it.

“Careless,” she whispered.

Tristan had told her she was a bad pilot when she was mad, but it was worse than that. Chase was a bad pilot when she was emotional—she couldn’t do anything when her feelings took over. How long would it be before she crashed Dragon because she was upset with Pippin or annoyed with Arrow? Tomorrow? During the trials?

She had to go back to how she flew before Phoenix showed up. To being cold and clean and clear.

Without care.

? ? ?

Tristan wasn’t hard to find. He was hard to find alone. Cadets trailed him between classes and at the chow hall. He was constantly being fangirled the way Chase was used to getting attention for being Nyx.

Although with Arrow around, Nyx was pretty passé.

It didn’t make her jealous so much as curious as to why her peers’ allegiances had gone Canadian. Then again, Tristan knew their names. He asked them where they were from and quizzed them on what they wanted out of their careers. He engaged. Eh, that seemed like so much work…

In the end, Chase found him in the hangar during free hour, talking to Phoenix the way she sometimes talked to Dragon.

“Is Phoenix a girl or boy?” she asked.

He turned around and eyed her cautiously. “Boy. Yours?”

“Dragon is a dragon,” Chase said. She climbed to the top platform of the ramp stairs so she didn’t have to stay close to him. She put her back to Phoenix’s cockpit, her eyes taking in Dragon. Her baby’s silver skin was bent and hammered, unlike the other two Streakers, the mirror sheen lost in a patchwork of mends and scratches. A running tally of Chase’s slip-ups. Her reflection in the metal was a blob of uniform and a stand-up stretch of messy brown hair.

Tristan looked up at her. “Here for a rematch?”

Chase leaned over the rail, looking down at him. She’d come to apologize for the fight. To smooth things over so there were no hard feelings—no any kind of feelings—between them. It was harder to find the words than she’d imagined.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He twisted a mechanism in the engine bay. “One of my stability lights has been going on and off. I’m checking to see if it’s the censor or an actual problem.”

“Who taught you how to do that? They never let me anywhere near the engine.”

“Adrien.” He wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “She wasn’t supposed to, but I paid close attention. She’s a bit odd in all those classic genius ways. You know. You have Pippin.” He smiled, and it knocked into her. She looked away. “Plus, if I’m going to fly a bird, I’d like to know how she stays in the air.”

“Adrien created the Streakers, didn’t she?” Chase had been mulling that thought since the elderly engineer had arrived. “I’d assumed they were all-American.”

“Does it change your love of Dragon to know she’s a foreigner?”

He was probably teasing, but Chase answered flatly.

“No,” she said. “But it puts this whole project into new perspective. Canada reached out to America despite the danger of attracting Ri Xiong Di’s attention. It’s a tangle of deception, and now there are two countries on the line.”

“Think of it this way.” He looked up at her from the bottom of the ramp stairs, leaning on the rail. “Canada had a strong gun, so we looked for a strong arm to handle it. Weaponry is nothing without manpower. Besides, we’ve been trying to help America since Taiwan. Although, the Star cadets have told me it doesn’t feel that way from the U.S. side.”

“Americans are very good at thinking we’re on our own. We tend to parade that truth through the streets. Ri Xiong Di played to our weakness by isolating us.”

Tristan climbed the ramp stairs and sat next to her. She scooted to the far side and gripped the rail.

“I came here to apologize,” she said without looking at him. “You were trying to help me during the race, but I…I didn’t see it. I’ll be focused from here on out.”