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Silence fell. Each one of them knew it couldn’t come to pass. The bluff had hold of Gunner, and so Gunner had hold of nothing.
“What about you, Don,” Patrick said then. “You got eyes on a promotion?” “Was that a dig?” Donny frowned. He turned to their mother. “That one was surely a dig—”
“You used to do that a lot.” He frowned. “Dance?” “Laugh,” she said. “Have fun. You were sunshine once.”
No son of mine, he’d said. No son of mine in a pit. And he’d found a way. It would only take a war.
I sank my face into the faded quilt and screamed myself hoarse, begging God to explain to me, just this once, why it had to be him, and why it had to be me.
“Do you regret me already, then? It usually takes a little longer, I’ll admit.”
He suddenly pictured himself trapping her against a wall again. He wanted to feel her soft body pressed once more to his. To run his hands over every agonizing curve of her. Perhaps it showed on his face, because Nina’s cheeks flushed pink. He was beginning to crave that, too.
He heard her laughter, and he thought its sound could end a war. The gate was a stone’s throw away, and he reached for her easily, finally, like it was the most natural command his body could obey.
“Promise me.” Did anyone ever deny him? “I promise.” I thought I heard him mutter something about fools.
And I was aware that my chest rose and fell too quickly, and that my body was coiled tight enough to break the bones within. Patrick saw that, too, and when the wall behind me began to crumble, giving way to my trembling hands, he held up both of his. “Shhh,” he whispered, suddenly inches away. He stroked my face once, twice. “Easy.” The walls cracked. “Nina, calm down. You’re all right.” But my head shook of its own accord, and a sound escaped my lips. And it seemed, though I didn’t know how, that he understood. “I’m all right, too,” he said instead. “Look at me, Nina. Nothing hit. I’m all
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“We’re safe,” he said, and it was so soft. Soft enough to end a war. Soft enough to break me.
“Am I to take it you trust me now?” And he’d considered the question carefully, pushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear, left the skin searing. “Ask me somethin’ easier.” I braced myself. “Do you want to trust me?” “More than I want most things.”
“Will I see you downstairs later?” “I’ll find you” was his only reply. “If you don’t want to be found, you should stay up here.” A promise. A warning.
And wasn’t that the true evil of war? That it didn’t have the decency to strip the humanity of those we killed?
“I can guess why you’re here, Nina,” she said to me now. “You don’t need to tell me. But promise me, before you do it, you’ll give me enough warning to turn my head. I—I don’t want to see it happen.” She closed her eyes, as though the scene were unfolding here and now. All these men and women buried beneath mountains of dirt. “Either that, or bury me with them. God knows there’ll be no peace for me after this.”
He grinned when he saw me. It was small and fleeting; he tore his eyes away to hide it.
He lowered his mouth to my ear. “Come on,” he said, his voice drowning all the others. “It’s about time I bought you a drink.” I narrowed my eyes at him, trying to appear unaffected by how close his face was to mine. “You own all the liquor,” I reminded him. “Then I’ll buy it twice.”
“Don’t mind me, Patrick. I insisted on coming, and I’ve seen men shot before.” “But I do mind you,” he said simply, and the heat of his gaze was too intense to hold. I looked away, warmth creeping up my neck.
During an interval of conversation, Patrick reached over and took the bottom of my chair. In one smooth movement he scooted it closer to his own, so that parts of our arms glanced each other’s,
Theo’s eyes only skittered as far as Patrick’s hand, which had reached around the back of my chair and rested just short of my shoulder, not touching, but sending a message as clear as if it were.
“God, I hope destiny has something more in store for me than the boy I loved when I was eighteen.”
How did we get here? I thought. “God knows, Scurry girl, but here we are,” he said.
Beyond Isaiah, another sound found me—soft breath, in and out. I bolted upright. In an armchair before the hearth, Patrick slept with his chin on his chest.
hello favorite microtrope
“You speak in your sleep, too,” Patrick said then. “I’m starting to think you might never shut up.”
He pulled that damned coin from his pocket. “Shall we flip to see who gets the first one?” “That depends,” I said without humor. “Will it be a fair toss? Or will you use your medium to manipulate the outcome again?”
“So, then, we’re both kids from the brink turned Artisan imposters.” His mouth twitched. “You’re smiling,” he said. “Why?” “It’s nice not being the only one.”
“I wondered… if I could prove to you that I could protect you… if you’d ever consider this place, here with me, as somewhere safe.”
I could see how quickly he would fall in love with me. It seemed almost as though he were predisposed to it. That his mind was already made. What I could not fathom was how I was not to fall in love with him. I was failing already. Tumbling into it.
It was the longest he had seen her survive a silence.
Difficult as she might be to understand, he wasn’t misreading her when she admired the hills and laughed at his brothers and marveled at Kenton’s machinations. She no longer resembled a tightly wound spring. She went quiet when she looked at him, and that was how he knew.
How many moments had he imagined her in his hands? A hundred? A thousand? Could she feel the core of him rearing, clawing her into its recess? What will I do, he thought, if she claws her way out?
When I was done, my reflection in the armoire mirror didn’t seem all that terrible for someone whose liver had pickled overnight.
“I think it’s to keep me off the street, miss,” he said. “Me dad got buried in the tunnels. Sometimes Patty invents jobs just to keep people paid.”
“I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said gruffly. “So you’d better fuckin’ come out, Nina. Promise me. Now.”
I wondered if it was a picture I’d ever be adept enough to paint. Clouds, skies, muddied skin, and a man who might be, at that very instant, declining into love.
“Breathe,” he said. A command. “I’ll come find you after.”
“It ain’t our lot in life to live easy, Nina,” she said. “Men like Patrick die young, and the people who love ’em live on without ’em.”
She blinked away dreams, and he was grateful to have her hazel eyes now, too. It was quite a relief to drown in them.
He braced his arms against the wall and hung his head, cursing. “God almighty, Nina. It’s barely daybreak. I thought… I thought—” “What?” I asked. “That I’d left?” His cheeks hollowed and filled. “No, I—”
Patrick had never understood the possessive tendencies of men in love. Possession was for gold, land, idium. But something primitive and marrow deep lashed against his rib cage when Nina looked at him, and he thought, though he knew it was brutish, that he wished to claim her.
What wouldn’t one do, to preserve something so invaluable?
“I won’t make you a target.” She chuckled bitterly. “I’ve been a target since I was a girl, Patrick. I’d hardly know the difference.”
He lifted her then, clear off the floor, and her screeching laughter tinkled down the tunnel as he pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m in love with you, I’m afraid.”
“Look somewhere else, Nina. I’m only so strong.”
“You left me,” I told him, my voice heavy with old pain. “You broke us. And you may have come to regret it, but I do not owe you sympathy for whatever pain you feel now.”
“Whatever you want, darlin’,” he said. He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “Always.”
“But recently,” he said, his eyes resting on mine, “sleep has become easy. Quiet. All that noise in my head… I barely hear it.” I waited, breath catching. “That’s because of you. Do you understand?” I nodded. Swallowed. “But I woke up just now, and you weren’t there, Nina. And I convinced myself that someone had taken you. Even as I was runnin’ down those stairs, I imagined you were tied up in some hole, and a man held a blade to your throat and threatened to hurt you if you didn’t name every one of my secrets. And that… that is a thought to keep me awake all night long.” His stare was molten;
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“Yeah,” he said. His breath fogged between us. “I can see all those stories passin’ over your eyes. Which one are you gonna pick?” And beneath all that knife-sharp severity, there was pain; only for a moment, he let me glimpse how deep it ran. “You’ve got this last chance to give me the one that’s true.”
I closed my eyes and felt his fingers sliding into my hair. “And when I come home, I’ve got plans to marry you. Promise me you’ll be waitin’.”
He watched her sleep and thought of the look on her face when she saw children on the street, when he chased her downhill, when she danced. He wanted to give her a lifetime of that.
