In the Afterlight - Bracken Alexandra (онлайн книги бесплатно полные TXT) 📗

I managed to stay vertical until the small bed was in arm’s reach; by then, my knees had had enough. Leaning forward, I tried to untie the shoelaces but my hands were shaking so badly Cole had to tease the knots out for me. He clucked his tongue at the sight of the socks as I peeled them off, but said nothing.

“I ruined it, didn’t I?” I asked. “The other kids won’t trust me.”

Cole shook his head. “All they saw was someone upset over losing someone they love. No harm, no foul, as the saying goes. Will you cut yourself some slack before you literally run yourself into the ground? Take care of yourself so you can help me take care of them, all right? That’s the deal, and it starts tonight, right now—with you staying here and sleeping for at least seven hours.”

“But Clancy—”

“I can deliver the Little Prince’s meal for one night,” he said. “Do you honestly think you could handle him right now if he tried to take you on?”

“Take someone with you,” I said. “Have them watch from behind the door to make sure he doesn’t try anything.”

“I’ll ask Vida.”

“Chubs would be better.”

“You got it.”

I spread my legs out on the bed in front of me as he stood up, too tired to argue, too tired to do much beside watch him go. Just as he turned out the lights, I said, “Tomorrow. I’m going to find Lillian Gray tomorrow. I’m going to take care of it.” Of everyone. And when this was over, I’d be the one to go find Cate. I’d save her the same way she saved me.

“Atta girl. I have no doubt.” He stopped in the doorway, turning back. “There’s someone waiting for you. Do you want me to let her in?”

I nodded.

It was Zu. Cole shut the door behind him, and I could just make out the edges of her dark shape, outlined by the faint glow bleeding into the room from under the door. She pulled the thin top sheet up over me, finishing with a kiss to my forehead.

And that—not the video, not imagining what they would do to Cate as a prisoner—that tender kiss was what brought the tears to the surface.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to make you worry. She took care of me...and I never treated her as well as I should have, and now she’s gone, and doesn’t know that I’m sorry. They could kill her....”

I felt her hand around mine, squeezing in reassurance. I know, I know. She used her other hand to smooth the hair away from my face.

“You lost someone,” I said, my voice sounding rough to my own ears. “The guy who helped you get to California. Will you tell me about him? Not what happened to him, not if you don’t want to talk about it, but what he was like as a person. Would that be okay?”

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to see her nod, even if I couldn’t read her expression.

“What was his name?”

Zu picked up the same small notebook she’d been toting around for weeks. I closed my eyes, listening to the faint scratch of her pencil against the paper, only opening them when she tapped my shoulder with it. She reached over and switched on the light on the dresser so I could read it: GABE.

In the single second before she turned the light off, I saw tears caught in her lashes. The expression on her face knifed clean through my heart. I would have done anything, anything, to take the weight of that pain off her shoulders before it crushed her into dust. But I knew better; there was no real relief from it. You just had to be willing to let the people around you serve as supports, and take their share of it when it seemed too much, too heavy, to hold on your own.

I shifted back on the narrow mattress, giving her room to crawl in next to me. Zu was all elbows and knees. Growing, stretching up in height, the way everyone seemed to right before they crossed that strange, ambiguous line into being a teenager. An almost-adult.

But the way she cried, the way she wrapped her arms around me and buried her warm, wet face against my neck—that was a kid. That was a kid who’d already lived a hard life and was being asked to take on more.

“I know,” I said quietly. “I know.”

The darkness rose and fell over me like a cold wave. I shut my eyes, relishing the simple fact that my mind was like a blank sheet, drained of all thoughts. But hours later, no matter how still I forced myself to be, I couldn’t shake the rush of sensation in my legs—the feeling that they were still running.

11

I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING looking for a fight. Muscles ached that I didn’t know I had, and my feet screamed bloody murder when I slid my tennis shoes back on. All the sleep had done was process my stifling sadness into pure, unflinching anger. I had energy to burn. I opened the door and shut it behind me as quietly as I could, so as not to wake up Zu.

The manual clock in the hallway said 4:45 A.M. It would be another hour before anyone else was up and ready for the day. Plenty of time to work out the lightning zipping through my body, and return to some state of calm.

The light in the gym was already on, and my whole body tensed in anticipation when I saw who was running on the treadmill, taking quick, confident strides. Cole must have seen me out of the corner of his eye, but he kept running and didn’t acknowledge me until I was standing right next to the machine and its whirring belt.

“Not in the mood, Gem.” His voice was flat, edged with warning.

“Too bad,” I said, walking over to retrieve two pairs of gloves. “I am.”

I waited for him. Gloves on my hands, stretching, trying to warm my body up for this. Finally, after a good five minutes, he let out a grunt and hit the STOP button on the machine. Cole scooped up the gloves from the floor, his face flushed from the run, his eyes overly bright. I had half a second to drop back into a fighting stance before his knee rose up toward my stomach; I jumped back, but was caught by yet another obvious swing he made to my sternum. That, at least, sent the thoughts shooting out of me, along with every last ounce of air in my lungs. It was a distraction—he had me pinned against his chest in the space of a single heartbeat.

I twisted out from under his arm, trying to use the momentum to flip him over onto his back. Like that was ever going to happen. The best I got was a stomp to his instep. He didn’t back off, though, not the way he normally would have. I felt the temperature in the room spike dramatically, and then—

He pulled back, letting me drop onto the floor with a sound of disgust. No. The word shot through my mind as he turned his back to me and started to remove his gloves. The sparring may have started as a way to release some of the heat that was boiling me alive from the inside out, but my head had hooked into the rush of it in a way I hadn’t expected. I needed more. I needed to get the black thoughts of Cate and Jude and what was waiting for us at the end of all of this out of me. And that required sweating or bleeding it out.

I lowered my head and charged toward him. I saw his expression darken in the mirror in front of him just before he slammed into it. This time, momentum actually did its job, sending us both sprawling back onto the edge of the mat. Without a single word, Cole dragged me by my neck further onto the mat, and then he showed me just how pissed off he really was.

Trying to roll or kick him off did nothing. He had me pinned beneath him, his whole crushing weight settled on my chest. One hand pinned mine over my head, and the other arm came across my neck, applying just the right amount of pressure there to dwindle my oxygen supply down to nothing.

He eased up on my windpipe, but not by much. I thrashed under him, knees kicking up to try to hit his lower back. His skin seemed tight against his skull, his face set with fury.

I choked in a shallow breath, but he didn’t pull back—my mind was floating away from my body, drifting into that same pool of black forming in my eyes.