The Warrior

by Kay Camden

  Interesting.

  He runs the heel of his palm over both eyes to clear the water, and I know the next step is to open his eyes so I back through the doorway and close the door, praying he doesn’t see the movement, doesn’t notice the sound I feel of it clicking back into place. Doesn’t hear the savage and confused beat of my heart.

  I rummage through the kitchen cupboards to give myself something to do far away from the windows facing his car. If I spotted him spying on me like that, I’d make him pay for it in blood. I owe him the same privacy even though he doesn’t seem to demand it—he did strip shamelessly to his underwear in front of me on his family’s land. Not an excuse though. I shouldn’t have looked. I shouldn’t still be thinking about it.

  I need to be thinking about what we’re going to do for food. We have pots and pans now, and utensils, which makes everything easier. I climb onto the counter to check the top shelves and find a dry box of matches and two votive candles. Not that Rex or I need the matches, but it’s still a sweet find. The candles will be useful when the sun goes down.

  I’m hopping off the counter when Rex returns. Clothed, of course, but it’s still a relief to see the return of those camo pants. Moores love to make us miserable and prancing around naked would sure do the trick. He gives my new outfit an extended glance, drops a box on the table, and tosses me his phone, a text on the screen.

  Aaron: I’m sending you some stuff via my drone. Tell me when you get it so I know.

  I type back: Got it. Thanks! But I show him before I send it. He deletes Thanks! and hits Send. I scowl at him. He scowls back. Then he unsheathes his belt knife and slits the tape on the box.

  Inside we find gourmet deli sandwiches packed in dry ice. One meat, one veggie. That makes him laugh. Under the sandwiches is a bushel of bananas, two giant blueberry muffins, tortilla chips, fancy homemade salsa, and two large bottles of expensive looking mineral water. He digs to the bottom of the box, mouth crooked and disappointed. Seriously? He can’t really be this spoiled and ungrateful.

  I take his phone off the table and type a text back to Aaron: Sloane says thanks but Rex grabs my arm before I can send it. I swivel and twist, breaking his grasp. He snakes an arm around me and snatches it from the other side. I let him do it because if I didn’t we’d be grappling forever and I’ve got a sandwich to eat. I’ll give Aaron my thanks later. Rex probably doesn’t know Aaron and I know each other. Just like Christian is my uncle, Aaron is my cousin, and even if we share no blood we certainly share hatred of the Moores. Maybe that’s as weird as Christian being Aaron’s dad and the partner swap between Rex’s parents and mine. Maybe it’s weird that my dad was once a Moore. That he was adopted by them and lived among them long enough to accept Uncle Christian as a brother. Everything is weird, set up by my ancestors so I’d be born exactly when I was.

  All this history made me who I am. But there’s also a part of me that’s me, something they didn’t craft. That part of me has failed them. I’m doing the opposite of what they predicted. And my plan to salvage it all is an undertaking every one of my family members would try to talk me out of. I don’t need their blessing even if I could get it. My way is a risk but it’s the only way. I won’t kill Rex Moore. I’m going to use him to save them all.

  Chapter 12

  Rex

  I’m halfway through my sandwich by the time she sits at the table with me. Then she unwraps hers carefully like she’s not dying of hunger. I guess this is lunch, but we didn’t sleep last night so maybe this is yesterday’s dinner?

  She’s taking thoughtful little bites while staring a hole through my face. There’s no way she can detect any interest in her new dress. Yeah, she’s handy with some scissors and an old oxford shirt. That was noticed, accepted, and quickly cleared from my expression. So I have no idea what her deal is right now.

  “For you to not be deaf would make things a lot easier.” I twist the cap off my water and chug. When I put it down she’s still staring. “What?”

  Her bangs are different. Shorter? But still cut in that irregular line like a two-year-old did it. Somehow it doesn’t look like a screwup, though, in fact, it’s kind of awesome. Rebellious. Something goes loose inside me, and I shift in my seat so I’m not directly facing her anymore. I can’t look at how it’s changed her face.

  Now that I’m looking at the safety of the wall, I try the word again in my head. Rebellious. Such a crime to even name it. At home, rebellion is forbidden and unthinkable. An illicit thought to be purged by whatever means and never think again. But now? It’s come alive in there, and I have no idea how. Did I rebel before I thought it possible? Or did I think it first and it dirtied my actions?

  She gets up from the table, returns with a piece of paper and pencil. She writes a big letter A. Points at it. Holds up her right fist with the fingers facing me.

  I don’t know what she wants me to do so I do nothing. The heat in the room has suddenly gained several degrees. Inside with no air-conditioning on a summer day in Virginia is just stupid. We need to be bunking somewhere that isn’t a dump, somewhere with cool air and running water and a live outlet to charge my phone. And now I’m looking at her face again under those bangs and thinking: rebellion. A crime as repulsive and disgusting as the Bevans themselves. Why the hell does it feel so right?

  On the paper she’s written a letter B. Now her fingers are straight up in the air, thumb crossed over her palm. She writes a C. Her hand curls, forming the letter itself, the opening a mouth coming to bite me. She points to the letters on the paper in succession: A, B, C. She makes that fist, then the straight fingers, then the hand curling into a C.

  I stand up fast, lit by adrenaline. She writes new letters on the page: R, E, X. She’s not stopping. She powers right into spelling my name with her hand. It’s like a faraway call, my name transmitted through the air, crossing boundaries and borders and settling between us. Spoken, but not voiced. Shared.

  Sweat trickles down my back. I need to get the hell out of here. But I’m not fast enough because she’s reaching—bridging the space—and her eyes, green like summer—those fucking rebellious bangs—

  She spells my name again with her non-reaching hand, and I don’t only see it this time, I hear it in my head, understood like a real spoken word, like input received. I see what she’s doing now, she’s appealing to me like she tamed those Dobermans. That’s how she sees me: instead of her being the primitive animal, I am. She thinks she’s trying to befriend me, but we aren’t friends. We can’t be friends. I had one friend named Emily, and she’s dead because of this nonsense the Bevans started generations ago. They may as well have killed her themselves. And I’m holding them accountable.

  My chair crashes into the table. I see my boot on its bottom rung, but I don’t remember putting it there. Sloane has jumped to her feet, knocking her own chair aside in the process.

  This isn’t a reach for friendship. It’s domestication. Her way of conquering animals is now being used on me. I rip the bundle of bananas apart and throw half at her. How she braces herself for the catch shows how hard I threw it and how much I’ve lost my cool. As if the blood pounding in my ears isn’t enough.

  I toss my half of all the food in the box and leave. Settle down, Rex. Mistakes are made when cool is lost, and I’ve used up my quota of mistakes. Only correct decisions can be made from now on. I’m crossing through the weeds then I’m in my car, slamming the door, hands on the steering wheel. Trey Bevan’s junky house leers at me in its classless Bevan way. The silence is thorough and cavernous. Damning, if I let it be, of all the things I’ve done wrong and will be punished for as soon as I step foot on my family’s land. I finger the dent in my skull behind my ear—that was for disrespect. I tongue the spot between my lip and my front teeth that’s never been right since they got knocked out—that was for talking back. The list continues a mile beyond those two, each incident blurring with the next. Th
ey didn’t teach me good behavior. They taught me obedience—but only when they were looking. They also taught me hate. And oh, I’m good at that.

  I’m baking in the heat, so I start the car and crank up the air. Adding a/c to this car stole some of its rally cred, but I’m sure thankful for it now. My heartbeat slows with the tick of my great-granduncle’s watch against my wrist. The schedule I’ve lived by for my entire life has been put on hold, and I want it back. Wake, train, eat, train, class, eat, class, train, sleep. It’s the only thing that keeps the rebellion at bay. This isn’t just homesickness, it’s loss. I want my life back.

  I look at the house again. I’ve brought Sloane Bevan here. That’s more than I should’ve done. She’s on her own now. I have my cousin to bury, a long list of mistakes to own up to, and a punishment to survive. I shift into reverse, turn to check the back window.

  She’s right behind me.

  I give the car some gas to scare her into moving away before I realize she won’t hear it. So I release the clutch a little, making the car lurch back. She stands her ground, so I do it again until I’m close enough to bump her knees. The resistance isn’t a hindrance but an incentive. This car could flatten her and it would feel just like a bump in the road. I look ahead—there’s not enough room to pull forward and spin around. It appears this is a stand-off. Well, I don’t do stand-offs.

  Setting the brake, I get out of the car. My eyes are wet and I don’t care if she sees. It’s not despair but anger. Failure. The sin of rebellion. Grief for my disregard for the teachings of my family, the victors in this war. I’m being drawn to the losing side by manipulative Bevan trash. And even as I’m trying to get the hell away, she’s trying to stop me and pull me back in.

  “Move.” It comes out gritty and doesn’t sound a thing like me.

  She only stands there, her top lip curled in and her eyes tight like she’s making assumptions about me.

  “Move!”

  Her lips relax. Her eyes thaw. She’s shaking her head. Not at me, but at the assumption she arrived at but doesn’t accept.

  I step forward to move her myself, but she comes against me too fast, her arms latched around my torso. It’s an unpredictable move only for how uncombative it is. Its violence is her softness against me, the steadiness of her cheek against my chest. Not a grapple, but an embrace. My natural recoil does nothing to stop it.

  Bringing my elbows down only makes her cling harder. Softer? Somehow both. I’ve never been hugged so I don’t know what’s normal or how to combat it. I twist but she comes with me. This subdual is too good a move because I have no strategy to counter, and there’s something happening inside me now, a melting of muscle, a breaking of will I’m going to give in to if I don’t get her off me.

  My eyes are newly wet—how? Why? I don’t know, but I’d pay in blood for this emotional fail at home. I grind my palms against them to make it stop. She releases me, putting a few inches between us but her hand goes over my heart and some madness in me doesn’t stop her. I become aware of the tick of my watch now grossly out of sync with my pulse. She places the fingers of her other hand on its beat in my neck, turning her head away as if to listen.

  Hugs? Taking vitals? She’s cracked. But I can’t move away, or stop feeling the ghost of pressure left by her arms around my torso, the contact of her face against my chest. She smells like the forest—earthy, wild, and alive. Like purity and independence and rebellion, and a magic I never learned but feel hidden inside me. I’m taken back to waking up beside the stream on my property, newly healed, the air clean and free moving, my body reborn. Standing beside her is like being near the lake at home with its magnetic pulse, its perfectly irregular tempo. She’s choices and freedom. She’s life and unshackled will.

  Birds chatter at me from all around. I look up. They’ve collected in every nearby tree, branches bobbing as they hop back and forth. She hasn’t broken from me to call them, but I know they’re here for her. She’s of the forest just as they are. I’ve been taught how gross that is. It’s the secret though, isn’t it? The secret to the Bevans’ power.

  She places a hand against my cheek. I flinch—again, never been touched like that. It’s a strange, unwelcome yet so painfully welcome invasion. A guilty pleasure. And I’m not moving away. She trails her index and middle fingers down my cheek to my chin where I know that scar is. Not a childhood scrape but another punishment. Another mark of their power over me, of my obedient hate.

  Rebellion. I hear it whispered in my head, a secret like her fingers on my face. The sense attached to the word has gone from guilty to warranted. If it wasn’t in my own mind’s voice, I’d think she was breaching my head like she did before. I straight-up jump then, surprised by fingers weaving into mine. She raises our joined hands between us. Friends? Partners? More than all that. Once enemies, now—

  “Comhghuaillithe.”

  No idea why I spoke it aloud. I should say it in English: Allies. So maybe she can read it. But no, Rex, that’d be crazy.

  She places her other hand over mine, sandwiching my hand between hers. The intimacy is such a shock, I have to swallow to clear a lump in my throat before I place my free hand on hers. We could be cuffed together for how permanent it feels. As hot as the day is, I’m rolled over by a fierce wave of heat unconnected to the weather.

  I shut it down fast. God, Rex, you’re such a virgin. Our allegiance is purely practical. I need her for her magic. She needs me to get home. We need to stick together to survive my family. That’s it.

  My hands are on fire against hers. I pull them away. There’s honey in her hair where the sunlight’s hitting it. It’s hard to accept that color resides anywhere in that dark mass, and makes me wonder what else is hiding inside her. In the right kind of light maybe I’ll see even more. She stands there looking up at me, and I’m shot through by the image of that prick holding a gun to her head. They know she’s valuable; they know she’s mine now. They’re not getting her back.

  Now I just need to figure out what to do. And how to stop staring at her. And how to slow my heart rate. And stop this disturbing thing, this me-and-her, from feeling so good.

  Return to your people. It comes from nowhere, so distinct and perverted I turn around expecting someone to be there. Then I feel the feather-light tick against my wrist. I check my watch, a habit I’m usually aware of on some distant level but today that distance has been overcome. The moving hand is in my face, not ticking but pounding, the watch’s antique luxury offensive and brazen and tumorous. I unbuckle it from my wrist and hurl it into the woods so far I don’t hear where it hits.

  Rebellion isn’t just a forbidden thought anymore. It’s a storm I’m driving into. Rain muddying the earth, my foot pressing pedal in complete commitment of the slippery grass I’m about to hit, the loose dirt that could send me spinning into a tree. And the destroyed turf I’ll have to answer to.

  Sloane’s fingers enclose my wrist. She brings it forward to scrutinize the lighter band of skin now exposed by the missing watch. My pulse it hot, hard, and untethered. For once it feels in line with my breath, like it’s not such a struggle to keep everything together. It all just syncs now, unaided. She moves her fingers to my neck, taking vitals again. But this time she doesn’t appear to be working something out. The curve of her mouth is pleased. Relieved, maybe. And a little bit awed. Then she’s raising my own hand to her neck—and that’s just too damn much.

  I break away. Get my box of food out of the car and shut off the engine. Back in the house I sit at the table and scoot in like I’m at a formal dinner at home, closed off, minding my food and nothing else so no one thinks they should talk to me. She takes up that piece of paper and leans over it, writing like a crazy girl. She shoves the paper across the table at me.

  That watch!

  I knew there was something off about your pulse.

  It was messed-up.

  It was … co
ntrolled?

  Her eyes are huge when I look at her. The green leaves of a lavender plant—that’s the color they are. Not in summer but fall, when they take on that frosty tone. A color so perfect it’s nearly undefinable. There are so many things I want to bark back, mainly fucking butt out and leave me the fuck alone but there’s no satisfaction in scribbling them out with a pencil. By then I’ll want to take them back. So I send her a look to shut her down, to shut her up, hopefully make her go away. Give me a minute to find the fragments of my head after I just blew it off by vowing allegiance to Sloane Bevan because damn it all, I have no idea what to do with that.

  Instead, I get another note shoved in front of me.

  Okay, but you know I’m right. You don’t have to be such a jerk.

  I give her another look. She takes hold of her long braid, and I see a tremble in her arm. Scaring her doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. In fact, it makes me think her last comment is dead-on. But jerks don’t ever feel their stomach sink like this when they do something shitty, right?

  She wads the paper up and pelts it at my face, proving that tremble to be something other than fear. Okay, she just swore allegiance to a Moore, so she’s probably got the dump of horror flushing through her too.

  I point to her half-eaten sandwich. “Shut up and eat.”

  She does something in sign language that looks like a rude gesture. I see now every sign has a facial expression to go along with it, and even though I don’t know sign language, a face alone can communicate a lot. Especially hers. And right now it’s telling me this isn’t over.