The Bargaining Path
Page 46
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“Has he said anything?” Adam asked James and Don when we arrived at the jail.
“He’s said a lot of things, none of which are useful. He’s just being overly pleasant.” Don answered. “Exactly like we’ve heard.”
“You okay?” James asked me quietly. My eyes were still red from crying, and my skin was still pale. I nodded, hoping he would let it drop, but when I went to walk away, he grasped my wrist gently to stop me. “Baby, what is it?”
“It’s nothing.” I murmured quickly, trying to get away from him.
“What did he do?”
“It was not him, and we need to let this drop right now.”
“Alright.”
When Adam’s eyes met James’s over the top of Don’s head, I watched Adam smirk slightly in that annoyingly arrogant way that he always did, and James looked back at him, opening his mouth to shout some threat of brutality if Adam had touched me.
“James, drop it.” I snapped at him, before reaching back compulsively to grab my cigarettes only to find that I had left them at the house. Immediately, I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream and stomp my feet and make a genuine fool out of myself right there in front of my boyfriend, who more than likely would not judge me for it, Adam, who would rush to my aid, and Don, who would find it amusing and also, as useful evidence to prove his point that women were fragile and weak. Instead, I stopped, closed my eyes, breathed in deeply, and ran my fingers through my hair.
“Look, crazy.” James told me, and when I opened my eyes, I saw that he was holding the pack we shared between the two of us. “I grabbed it on the way to get Don. I knew you were jonesing.”
Just like that, my irritation at him lifted, and I was smiling slightly at his tendency to remember things, trivial and serious, that I so often forgot. He smiled, too, and lit the end of my cigarette after I took one from him.
“We have to give this up, James Maxwell.” I told him, but after inhaling deeply and feeling that nicotine bring all the inner chaos to a sudden but not shocking halt, I began to assign my quitting day to dates in the future when things would be less uncertain.
“Yes, we do, Brynna Olivier, but not today.”
James echoed my thoughts exactly, and we smiled again. With the cigarette burning between my index and middle finger, I stood on my tiptoes and hugged him around the neck.
“Paul keeps saying he only wants to see you.”
No better way to make me break our embrace than to genuinely rip the air from my lungs with words as shocking as those. It was not shocking that Paul wanted to talk to me; I figured he had come there, at least in part, to find out whether I would be taking his deal or not. He had come alone, in good faith, just like he had said he would. I would have to lead Adam and Janna into an ambush, and then Paul would return to his clan, and my mother would be returned to me. Knowing that Paul was telling James he would only speak to me made me think that he would also tell Adam, and then through explanation of his reasoning for only wanting to speak to me, Paul would reveal my “betrayal.”
“He only wants to see her?” Adam asked, and my heart plummeted. He must have felt it, because his gaze snapped onto me, but I saw only concern, not suspicion. “If you do not want to speak to him, then you will not. For no reason other than that it is what you want to do will you go into that room. No one will force you.”
“You think any of us could actually force her in there? Her?” James asked, with a derisive laugh.
“James…” I actually closed my eyes for a second, so sick of their constant bickering. “Like a married couple” did not begin to explain it. More accurately, I would say they bickered like drooling, blubbering infants, each pulling one end of some coveted toy. Of course, you know that I am the toy, metaphorically, and I do not need to continue the analogy and say that pulling both ends would surely lead to the toy breaking in half, though it is an accurate analogy, certainly; I could not stay away from Adam, and he had kissed me only moments earlier, and I had responded, but I still loved James. More than that, I knew that I wanted to be with him, whereas with Adam I merely suspected that if the opportunity presented itself…
But this is all unimportant.
“I will talk to Paul. I will see what he wants. But he is smart, and he will know that you all are standing behind the two-way mirror listening in. So I need one of you to light the torches, and leave Paul and me alone.”
“No way.” James said.
“Yes, I must agree with Maxwell, though it is shocking. If you wish to speak to him, fine. But you will not speak to him without our supervision.”
“I am sorry, if one of you were going in there to talk to him, would the rest of us have to ‘supervise?’” I asked huffily, and not one of them answered. Don actually made a point of avoiding my eyes. “Exactly. Honestly, gentlemen, you are thousands of years old…” I told Adam, “and you…” I looked at James, “…have traveled through space after surviving the apocalypse on a ship that required all the ingenuity and forward-thinking and progressivism that our world had rightfully embraced, and yet you both still embrace such foolish and obvious old-world sexism.”
“It most certainly is not sexism, my dear Brynna. It is merely concern for you. It is chivalry.” He looked at me with a mischievous glint in his eye that I pointedly ignored.
“Is it? It seems to me like it is just an old-fashioned ‘damsel-in-distress’ mentality. ‘Let us protect the weak, vulnerable female.’ It is annoying, and as recompense for you two insinuating that I cannot take care of myself, you will do exactly what I instructed you to do only a moment ago: Light the torches so Paul can see that you all are not lurking in the room behind the mirror, and then leave us be. If he tries to attack me, I will shout, but more than likely, he will be dead before he can touch me, or at least wounded severely.”
“Let us stop at severe wounds, if you please. We need him. He knows very much.” Adam informed me, and though he seemed amused, James seemed aggravated. Just before I began to walk through the hallway to meet with Paul, I stopped in front of him, wrapped my arms around his middle, and looked up at him, smiling slightly.
“It is not my fault you keep suggesting I am incapable of taking care of myself.”
“That is not what I’m suggesting, and you know it. I don’t want you in there talking to him by yourself. Sorry I’m not sorry for that.”
“I am sorry, you said that you were the knot master when you and your little friends had to scale those cliffs to get to the campsite all those times. Did you not utilize the same knowledge when you tied Paul’s hands? Will he easily escape?”
“No, and I know that you can handle him if he does. I’m more worried that he is going to get in your head.”
“In my head?” I asked, and I actually giggled. “James…” I kissed him and began to walk away, “Please.”