Beyond Innocence

by Kit Rocha

  She'd left behind everything when she walked away from Sector Five, but the cookbooks were one of the things she missed most. Pulling up recipes on the tablet Noelle had provided her didn't feel the same. It was all so sterile, crisp. Unblemished. Foolish of her, she knew, to miss the imperfections, the curling edge of a cover that had fallen victim to a pot boiling over or the sauce recipe stained from the spatter of a dropped spoon.

  Everything had to be put to rights before her husband returned home. The kitchen spotless, her clothes immaculate, her presentation flawless. But the battle-worn pages had been as comforting as old friends, reminding her that the perfection was a lie, a game she had to keep practicing.

  Or maybe it was good she'd left them behind. Maybe it was a lesson best forgotten, because she was starting to believe the O'Kane women weren't lying. Not about sex, not about loving it, not about anything.

  Lex could lie. Lili had no doubts on that count. She recognized the level of control in the other woman, the ability to school her features and hold her tongue. But for the first time last night, she'd watched Lex, watched her touch another woman, kiss another woman, do things to her that made Lili's entire body throb…

  And she'd tried to remember Lex's last lie. Unpalatable truths fell from the woman's lips often, raw reality delivered without hesitation or flinching. Lili had seen her do the same to men and women alike, fearless in her honesty.

  Maybe every moan and every smile was a lie. Maybe the other woman's shuddering and begging and pleading had been lies, too.

  But why?

  It always seemed like fear must be the answer. She convinced herself of it again and again, every time she crawled back to her rooms, overwhelmed and feeling, feeling all the things she'd spent a lifetime not knowing were possible.

  She'd felt so much last night. Because she didn't think even fear could motivate anyone to lie that convincingly. Not forever.

  Lili had crawled out of bed this morning, still aching, still feeling, and had faced a neat row of empty bottles. A silent line marking the end of everything she'd known about life. If she was going to survive in this new, terrifying reality where her skin was too tight and women might be more than nothing, she needed to understand.

  She needed a friend.

  So she went to the kitchen. She found ingredients. Some of Six's leftover bread and two types of rich cheese to grill, and everything she needed for brownies gooey enough to win over the most reluctant sweet tooth.

  Then she took her culinary bribes in search of Rachel.

  She found the blonde in the garage, smudged with grease and frowning down at a long, handled contraption that almost looked like a cookie press. "Hi," she said absently, barely glancing up.

  "Hi," Lili echoed, already uncertain. Nerves were another thing she could barely remember. The flutter in her chest as her heart beat too quickly, even over something as foolish as this. "I made lunch, and I had extra. I thought…" Trailing off, she held out the plate.

  "Oh hey, that sounds good." Rachel waved the metal cylinder in the air. "Some chucklehead didn't clean it out, and now it's clogged. How am I supposed to grease my fittings with a clogged gun?"

  A rhetorical question, undoubtedly, but the correct response was so ingrained, it was a reflex. "I'm sorry. Can I help clean it?"

  "Thanks, but nah. It'll wait." Rachel laid the grease gun aside and walked to a small sink beside the workbench, where a tub of sludgy soap awaited her. It didn't lather as she rubbed it over her hands and arms, but it did cut through the grime amazingly well. "Tatiana makes it for me," she explained as she dried off. "Have you met Tatiana?"

  The name was familiar, but so many of the faces blurred together. She'd met so many people in those early days, the hazy ones full of grief and pain and all the drugs she could take.

  But she knew how to temporize. How to evade. "I think so. At one of the fights?"

  Rachel levered herself up to sit on the workbench and smiled gently. "I wasn't sure if you'd remember."

  Her muscles started to tense, and Lili didn't even know why. It wasn't as if she'd ever developed any pride. That would have been suicidal, at best, and impossible besides. But maybe this was why people needed it—to protect against the awful, empty humiliation of having a weakness laid bare.

  Everyone knows. It was horrifying, really. But it left her with no reason to lie. "I'm not sure I do, I suppose."

  "You've been pretty out of it." The words were matter-of-fact, and Rachel tilted her head. "Not today, though."

  "No, not today." Lili was still gripping the plate, so she forced her fingers to relax and set it down on the bench next to Rachel. "I remember enough, though. I remember that you've been...kind to me."

  She picked up half of the grilled cheese with a tiny shrug. "When I first came here, everyone made it really easy for me. And it was still hard as hell, and I hadn't lost anyone, either. So."

  Lost. The word was like Lili's world on drugs—numb and soft and disconnected from reality. She hadn't lost anyone. Her family had been stolen from her as punishment, and if she let herself think about it too closely, the guilt would burn her up from the inside.

  She grasped for something else. Anything else. "You aren't from this sector?"

  "I grew up in Eden."

  For the first time, Lili couldn't even school her features. She felt her mouth start to drop open and snapped her teeth back together, but it was too late.

  Eden. The woman who danced on stage at the O'Kanes' bar, the woman who wandered naked through parties, trailing two dangerous, possessive men behind her, the woman who was staring at her now with a smear of grease on her nose, perfectly at home in a place that usually belonged to men…

  She was from Eden. Perfect, pristine, holy Eden. "Oh."

  That made Rachel laugh. "Don't worry. I was never from the proper part of the city. You could say I've always been a bit of a street rat."

  Lili covered her hesitation by breaking off the edge of a brownie. The taste was dizzying, the sweetness of the honey playing off the sharp, bitter edge of cocoa in a way her nutritionally balanced sweeteners never could. The leaders of Five had access to plenty of the food manufactured in the factories of Sector Eight and on the farms beyond the borders, but so much of it was processed past the point of recognition. It tasted fine. It worked perfectly.

  It just wasn't real.

  She wanted to reach for the rest of the brownie, but denying herself was another habit. She'd made the mistake of tasting too much while cooking early in her marriage, and had been educated thoroughly on the consequences of developing unnecessary curves.

  "How long have you been here?" she asked instead, tucking her arms over her chest to remove temptation.

  "A few years now. I make beer, fix stuff, tend bar. Dance." Rachel took a bite of her sandwich and chewed before closing her eyes with a soft noise of appreciation. "This is good."

  It was more approval than Logan had ever shown her. And it felt...nice. Warm, gentle. Not overwhelming, but satisfying. "I had a lot of time at home. Cooking was enjoyable, though finding good ingredients could be difficult."

  Rachel leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Drop a bug in Dallas's ear about what you could do with the right setup, and he'll make sure you have it."

  She imagined the empty kitchens. How few people ate there, and how many ended up buying food from the marketplace instead. There were so many people here that feeding half of them could quickly become a full-time job.

  But it was one she was capable of. One that wouldn't require finding a man and letting him…

  She smashed the memories back down. Dallas's hand in the woman's hair last night. Logan's hand in her hair. Pain, fear, confusion—

  Even if the O'Kane women weren't lying, Lili would be. And maybe the men here wouldn't like manufactured sweeteners when they could have honey.

  "I—I might like that." She found strength in the possibility. Hope. "If you think people would enjoy having me cook."

 
"Better than me doing it. I burn everything. Dallas thinks I do it on purpose to fuck with him—" She stopped, and a vague shadow of guilt fell over her face. "Okay, sometimes I do. But not as much as he assumes."

  So many ground-shaking revelations in so few words. That Rachel dared burn food on purpose to irritate a sector leader. That he knew it. That she got away with it. That she wasn't cringing at the consequences.

  Lili could have told her about the time she'd burned her hand and dinner, too. How Logan had dragged her to the sink, shoved her hand beneath the tap, and washed away the med-gel. How calm he'd been as he told her he was doing this for her own good, so the pain would teach her to take better care of his most treasured possession.

  She still had a scar across the heel of her palm. An imperfection. A reminder.

  Lili might be sheltered, but she wasn't stupid. And she didn't want to see pity in Rachel's eyes. "Does he deserve it? When you burn the food, I mean?"

  "On purpose?" Rachel snorted. "Always. He's been better since he and Lex figured out their shit and hooked up, but he still has his caveman moments."

  "Lex is…" Lili gave in and smiled. "I've never met anyone like her."

  "She looks out for us. If you have any problems, you can go to her, you know."

  The smile had been easy enough. Keeping it from slipping was harder. "Oh, compared to where I'm from, I have no problems at all."

  "Okay." Rachel laid down the rest of her sandwich and wiped her hands on the towel she'd used to dry them. "You can come to me, too."

  Once upon a time, Lili had known how to joke. She'd been funny enough to make her younger brothers and sisters dissolve into hysterical giggles. Not much of a challenge, maybe—children who'd never been more than a half mile from their home didn't exactly have sophisticated tastes in humor—but she remembered that sometimes. Laughing. Wanting to make other people laugh.

  I know, that's what the brownies were for.

  It wasn't funny when it was so tragically true. "I am, a little. Right now."

  "Oh yeah?" Rachel tucked her wild, messy hair behind her ears. "What's up?"

  "It's not that I have a problem," she said quickly. "I just... Well, I'm not out of it."

  "And you need something to do."

  She hadn't thought of it that way, but it resonated. Even numb and icy, she'd never been good at simple existence. She'd distracted herself from the silent loneliness of her house with endless mundane tasks, because at least that made her feel useful. "I'm not really accustomed to just sitting."

  Rachel regarded her thoughtfully for a moment. "You don't have to work. But, if you want to, Lex is the person to see."

  People had said that to her before. Dallas had said that to her during the tense ride back from Sector Two, after she'd stood before the other sector leaders and let them paw through every indignity of the past five years of her life. An obvious pattern of cruelty, one of them had declared as she left the room.

  As if it was a surprise.

  "Everyone else works," she said softly. "I should have to, too. Shouldn't I?"

  "Probably," Rachel agreed. "But I don't think anyone would blame you if you needed some time."

  "I can't be the only person who came here from a bad place."

  "Of course not." She toyed with the crust of her sandwich without picking it up. "You're kind of a special case, though. You already know that. You gave Dallas something he needed, and that buys you breathing room."

  Yes. She'd paid with pain, and then cheated, drugged herself so she wouldn't have to feel it. "Did it help? What I did?"

  "Oh, hell yeah." Rachel reached out and grasped her hand, squeezing for only a moment before letting go. "But it must have been difficult, and Dallas and Lex understand that."

  Dallas and Lex care. That was what she was really saying, and she believed it. All the little signs of self-control, the ones Lili recognized in Lex—Rachel had none of them. Just earnestness and openness. Faith. She wasn't saying it, but everything she said screamed it.

  "I don't know if I need a job," Lili said, forcing the words past her sudden nerves. What she was about to ask for was foreign and strange, but the word itself made her slowly melting heart ache with longing. "I think I need a friend."

  A wide grin curved Rachel's lips. "Yeah?"

  It was so bright, that smile. It tugged at all the cold and lonely places inside Lili. It made her want to smile back—for real, this time—and she hadn't done that in so long. "I'm lost. I don't know the rules. And if I start guessing…" She'd offend people. She already had, and she'd do it again. Worse, probably.

  "Oh." She slapped her forehead. "Of course. You need someone to help you figure out Sector Four. Holy shit, I'm an idiot."

  Rachel still sounded friendly, but caution was a habit Lili might not ever break. "Did I say the wrong thing already?"

  "Not at all. I'm just laughing at myself." The woman's cheeks turned pink. "I've been busy lately. Too busy, apparently."

  With the men, Ace and Cruz. The artist and the soldier. She'd witnessed Cruz's capacity for violence in the cage, but Ace was the one who made Lili's pulse race with panic. Instincts she barely understood screamed that he was dangerous, even in the face of Rachel's blushing, dreamy smile.

  Lili didn't know how to ask why anyone would want two of them. It might be the truth, but it wasn't exactly polite. "How long have you been together?"

  "A few months." She lifted one hand to the ink that encircled her throat—pretty swirls that Lili had always assumed were meant to look like lace or ribbon. Here, up close, she could pick out the letters. The names.

  She'd seen the tattoos before, the ones the O'Kanes wore on their wrists, on their shoulders and arms and bare chests and hips. They decorated their bodies with the same attention to detail that Lili had always used with her makeup—but makeup washed away if you made the wrong choice.

  Rachel had etched their names on her skin. Forever. It made the heavy ring on Lili's left hand feel like the empty promise it was. She hadn't bothered to take it off yet, but she could. Thank God.

  Rachel's voice cut in to her thoughts. "If you need help selling it…"

  Lili realized she was staring at the diamond. It had always been too big. The first month she'd had it, she'd knocked it into a dozen things, scratching walls, cupboards, her own skin. It had seemed fitting, though. It was beautiful and icy cold and only for show.

  Just like she needed to be.

  The world seemed to constrict for a moment. It was hard to breathe, like the air around her had gotten heavier. Her heart racing, Lili twisted at the ring, dragging it off her finger. When it clattered to the workbench, she managed her first deep breath. "Please. I don't want it anymore."

  Rachel picked it up, testing its weight with a few bounces of her hand. Then she held it up to the harsh, bare lights and whistled. "Might take a while, but you could get a ton for it. Then it'll be gone forever, and you'll have money." She winked at Lili. "Kill two birds with one stone."

  It was such an outrageous pun that laughter bubbled up in Lili's chest, but it caught in her throat. Or maybe she caught it, because she had to. If she let the laughter free, she might not stop, and God only knew what would follow behind it. Rage and tears and five years' worth of sorrow and terror.

  Too soon. It was too soon to put so much on a friendship that had been built on a few kind words and a sandwich. She smiled instead, and it felt sadder but safer. "Then I'll owe you more brownies. Or cake? Cookies?"

  But Rachel only grinned. "Eh, what are friends for?"

  Hawk

  Finn had once told him that the cars were the only thing about Sector Four that made sense to him at first. But Finn had grown out of that—trial by fire and true love made for a lot of motivation for growth.

  Cars were still the only thing about Sector Four that made sense to Hawk.

  Though Jasper McCray was a close second. Dallas's second-in-command had offered to help Hawk fix up his car, since it had nearly been wrecked
during Trix's rescue and their wild dash across Sector Five. The car was his baby, the first one he'd restored on his own, every part traded for, every modification carefully planned.

  And the bastards from Five had riddled her with bullets.

  "How long have you had her?" Jasper asked as he replaced a worn sanding pad with a fresh one.

  "Altogether? Close to seven years." Hawk ran his hand over another spot he'd just sanded smooth. Filling in the bullet holes had taken weeks' worth of stolen moments, proof of just how badly he'd abused his poor car. "She's only been running for two, though. Some of the parts were hard to find, even scavenging all the way out to the ocean."

  "Too bad you weren't here. Ford can find anything. Mia, too."

  "You guys do have all the good shit." He grinned. "Our garage wasn't bad. Shipp put a lot of work into getting us supplies, but it was still nothing like this."

  "Dallas has a lot of money," Jas confirmed. "And a lot of pull. That's why you're here, right?"

  It was nothing but the truth. Put like that, though, it almost felt like an accusation. It wasn't—if Jas McCray wanted to accuse him of something, he didn't have to dance around it. But it hit too close to the uncomfortable feelings that kept him out in the garage, obsessing over his car, when he could—should—have been bonding with his new brothers and finding his place.

  "I'm here because Dallas is looking forward," he said after a silence just long enough to be awkward. "I can't ignore the shit that's coming anymore."

  Jasper eyed him for a moment before nodding. "Fair enough."

  It didn't feel like enough, so Hawk fell back on humor, on the joke that held more truth than he liked. "Plus, it's my only chance of meeting any women who aren't my half-sisters or stepmothers."

  "You haven't been doing so hot with that," Jasper pointed out. "You know, since the only woman I've seen you checking out happens to be Dallas and Lex's girl."