“Did you just give me a compliment?”
“You get one for the year. Hold on to it.” Her brown eyes narrowed on Chase, and she leaned in close. “I can’t believe he let you win. That’s really got to burn.”
Chase smacked her gloves together. “I’m already keyed up, Sylph. Let me take him.”
Sylph ducked out of the ring, hitting the tiny bell on the wall as she passed. Tristan stopped talking to his fan club long enough to give her a heavy look. It swung between apology and pity. Was that why he’d let Chase win? He felt sorry for her?
“Rules?” he asked.
“None. Say ‘uncle’ when you can’t take any more.”
“Done.”
Chase found out fast that he wasn’t afraid to hit her. His first punch grazed her shoulder. Threw her into a spin. She came back and connected with his jaw, happy to hear a grunt. Pushing forward, she aimed for his guts. His nose. She went after all his soft spots until she was winded, which seemed to be exactly what he was waiting for.
He popped her in the face. She fell, and he pinned her chest to the mat, his body against her back. The room was a mutiny of voices.
“We don’t have to be enemies, Chase.” His breath was in her ear. Raspy and tight—the way boys gasped when kissing went beyond lips on lips. She closed her eyes and focused on the fight, but something deep responded to his closeness and the very personal press of his weight. This wasn’t the time…not in the slightest.
“You let me win,” she insisted, more to keep herself angry than anything else.
“You could have crashed. You ignored your RIO. You wouldn’t have stopped until both of you were knocked out, as good as dead.” She tried to twist free, but Tristan pulled her arms tighter, pushed her harder into the mat. “Didn’t you hear him pleading with you to stop?”
Chase threw Tristan off, more angered by the truth than he could ever have imagined. She actually thought she saw red. At the very least, she could taste it.
“Guts have costs,” she heard herself say. They were Tourn’s words, his barked mantra from the summer she’d spent at his base, incessantly running drills. Endlessly pushing herself to the limit for his attention.
She jabbed, but Tristan slipped past her glove, driving an arm down on her elbow and landing a right hook to her stomach. Cheers rose as the whole ring spun.
“Listen to me,” Tristan began. They weren’t against the mat anymore. The nearest people in the crowd, the ones really listening, could definitely hear. “Whatever your faulty sense of accomplishment, guts shouldn’t cost your RIO his life.”
Chase looked at Pippin and saw that he’d heard. He closed his eyes slowly and winced.
Tristan hit her when she wasn’t looking. Not hard, but right in the face. She closed her eyes and shook her head. He leaned in and held on to her with his tight arms. “And you know what? You’re a bad pilot when you’re mad, Chase.”
He stepped back, and she gasped. Everything else was up for question. Her character, her morals. Her intelligence. Not her flying. Never her flying.
It was all she had.
“You asshole.”
“We’re done here,” Tristan said. He was about to say “uncle.” To let her win again.
She lunged. Stepped right into Tristan’s hammer of a punch.
And dropped like a broken-winged bird.
23
HAWK CIRCLE
Looking to Land
The alarm sounded every hour.
“Chase.” Pippin shook her awake on the top bunk. It was only around two, and it felt like they had been doing this drill forever. The room tilted as she sat up. He handed her a glass of water, and she took a few sips. “Arrow should be doing this. He’s the one who gave you a concussion.”
“I could’ve stayed in the infirmary.”
“And have Kale all over us for being so reckless? I’ll pass, thank you.” He took the glass and touched the side of her head, feeling the knot from Tristan’s grand finale of a punch. “Swelling’s going down.” He collapsed on his bed.
“I don’t like that you’re taking care of me. I’m still not happy with you.”
He ignored her. “See you in an hour.”
Chase fell asleep against her will, like the world had swung a black cape around itself and disappeared. When the buzzer sounded next, she watched Pippin shuffle to his desk to slap it off.
“Good. You’re up,” he said.
She was already gritting her teeth, ready to have it out once and for all. “You don’t even want to know why I’m mad.”
He sat at his desk. “I don’t. But what I would like to know is why all of a sudden you want to have a feelings powwow. That’s not our style, Chase.”
“You’re hanging out with other people. Romeo and Arrow. And you’re avoiding me—”
“I’m avoiding you because you keep pushing. I told you I want space.” He sighed. “Keep in mind, I tried to talk to you awhile back and you blew me off.”
“So now you’re blowing me off?”
“Now I’m acting the way we always are together, which seemed to make you plenty happy two weeks ago, I might add.”
Maybe Pippin was right. Hadn’t they always been this way? Sarcastic jokes. Sharp and short conversations. But then if that were the case, why had she duped herself into believing they were best friends? Because he was her roommate? Her RIO?
A wave of loneliness crested over her, and she punched her pillow. Her head throbbed. “So maybe now I want to know about you.” She switched tactics. “Are you okay?”
“Me? I’m not the one with mild head trauma.”
“I mean in general. You’re evasiveness is…” She hoped he’d fill in the rest.
“Am I okay?” He rubbed his face. “Okay is one of the more inexact words in the English language. I will agree to being okay.”
The silence that filled the room was tight. She couldn’t find a way through it.
“Is it still my turn?” he said. Anger and exhaustion seemed to rise together in his tone like twined snakes, and his face was red even through the dark. “All right, I’ve got a good question. Is Tristan the next one?”
“The next what?”
“The next guy you’re going to mess with before you pull up faster than a Streaker out of a canyon.” Before she could answer, he stumbled to his bed, and she lost sight of him. His voice drifted up. “Poor Riot. He’s still a mess, and you’re already on to someone new.”
“I’m not after Tristan. I want to beat him in the trials—to use him to show the government board what the Streakers can do. Tristan understands this.”
“You don’t ever call me Henry.”
“What?”
“You call him Tristan, but you always call me Pippin. Never my real name.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to,” she wondered aloud. Why did she call Tristan by his first name? She even thought of him that way. “But I sparred with Tristan. He gave me a concussion. Does that sound like a crush to you?”
“Yes.”
“He’s just another Streaker pilot. Like Sylph.”
“Phoenix is not like Pegasus. They were trained to bring us down, Chase,” Pippin said. “Arrow has all kinds of know-how on evasive maneuvers we haven’t learned yet. When we get up there with him for the big show, he’s going to destroy us. Keep that in the forefront of your thoughts. Not the fact that he’s manly gorgeous.”
“Manly gorgeous?” Chase laughed. “Pip, this is no time to turn super gay.”
“Yes. It’s no time to be myself. How you’ve nailed it, Nyx.”
Silence.
She leaned over the bunk, the lump on her head growing heavier as she tried to look down on him. “Hey…”
“I don’t want to explain it to you, Chase. Don’t. Ask.”
“I don’t need a
n explanation. I know you’re…”
“Just stop!” He stood, and they almost knocked heads. Chase swung upright to face him. He looked like he was about to cry, but his eyes stayed dry. “Let me make this clear to you.” He pointed at his chest with both hands. “This is my life.” He pointed at her. “That’s yours. I vow not to go snooping around in your sordid love affairs, and in return, you leave my sexuality alone.”
The quiet that snuck around them was chilled. Chase shivered. “I…I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Pippin ducked back into his bunk. “Go to sleep,” he grumbled with the kind of finality she wasn’t going to push against.
Chase couldn’t move. This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Pippin had never appeared interested in guys, but he’d certainly been uninterested in girls. Chase had been hanging back on the subject until he was ready to talk. She’d even imagined it a few times. Pippin would sit her down and say, “So…I’m gay.” And then she’d say, “Of course you are,” and it would all be smoothed over. Accepted.
She’d never imagined it coming out in the middle of the night like a slap. Pippin was smart enough to fly circles around her; he’d never tell her something this important before he was ready, and yet that was exactly what had seemed to have happened. She had pushed him. Chase felt cruel all of a sudden, even guiltier than when she’d ignored his pleading during the race.
Tristan had been right to knock the pride out of her.
When the alarm sounded again, she hopped down from the bunk on shaky legs and turned it off. Pippin was snoring. The lump on the side of her skull stung when she touched it, but not as bad as the throb of remembering that she deserved it.
“Careless,” she whispered.
Tristan had told her she was a bad pilot when she was mad, but it was worse than that. Chase was a bad pilot when she was emotional—she couldn’t do anything when her feelings took over. How long would it be before she crashed Dragon because she was upset with Pippin or annoyed with Arrow? Tomorrow? During the trials?
She had to go back to how she flew before Phoenix showed up. To being cold and clean and clear.
Without care.
• • •
Tristan wasn’t hard to find. He was hard to find alone. Cadets trailed him between classes and at the chow hall. He was constantly being fangirled the way Chase was used to getting attention for being Nyx.
Although with Arrow around, Nyx was pretty passé.
It didn’t make her jealous so much as curious as to why her peers’ allegiances had gone Canadian. Then again, Tristan knew their names. He asked them where they were from and quizzed them on what they wanted out of their careers. He engaged. Eh, that seemed like so much work…
In the end, Chase found him in the hangar during free hour, talking to Phoenix the way she sometimes talked to Dragon.
“Is Phoenix a girl or boy?” she asked.
He turned around and eyed her cautiously. “Boy. Yours?”
“Dragon is a dragon,” Chase said. She climbed to the top platform of the ramp stairs so she didn’t have to stay close to him. She put her back to Phoenix’s cockpit, her eyes taking in Dragon. Her baby’s silver skin was bent and hammered, unlike the other two Streakers, the mirror sheen lost in a patchwork of mends and scratches. A running tally of Chase’s slip-ups. Her reflection in the metal was a blob of uniform and a stand-up stretch of messy brown hair.
Tristan looked up at her. “Here for a rematch?”
Chase leaned over the rail, looking down at him. She’d come to apologize for the fight. To smooth things over so there were no hard feelings—no any kind of feelings—between them. It was harder to find the words than she’d imagined.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He twisted a mechanism in the engine bay. “One of my stability lights has been going on and off. I’m checking to see if it’s the censor or an actual problem.”
“Who taught you how to do that? They never let me anywhere near the engine.”
“Adrien.” He wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “She wasn’t supposed to, but I paid close attention. She’s a bit odd in all those classic genius ways. You know. You have Pippin.” He smiled, and it knocked into her. She looked away. “Plus, if I’m going to fly a bird, I’d like to know how she stays in the air.”
“Adrien created the Streakers, didn’t she?” Chase had been mulling that thought since the elderly engineer had arrived. “I’d assumed they were all-American.”
“Does it change your love of Dragon to know she’s a foreigner?”
He was probably teasing, but Chase answered flatly.
“No,” she said. “But it puts this whole project into new perspective. Canada reached out to America despite the danger of attracting Ri Xiong Di’s attention. It’s a tangle of deception, and now there are two countries on the line.”
“Think of it this way.” He looked up at her from the bottom of the ramp stairs, leaning on the rail. “Canada had a strong gun, so we looked for a strong arm to handle it. Weaponry is nothing without manpower. Besides, we’ve been trying to help America since Taiwan. Although, the Star cadets have told me it doesn’t feel that way from the U.S. side.”
“Americans are very good at thinking we’re on our own. We tend to parade that truth through the streets. Ri Xiong Di played to our weakness by isolating us.”
Tristan climbed the ramp stairs and sat next to her. She scooted to the far side and gripped the rail.
“I came here to apologize,” she said without looking at him. “You were trying to help me during the race, but I…I didn’t see it. I’ll be focused from here on out.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Should I be recording this? Seems like Nyx admitting she was wrong is a big deal.”
Chase fought a smirk. “You’re thinking of Sylph. I’m wrong all the time. I’m just usually too fast for people to notice.” She meant in the sky, but the sentence found a different meaning. Chase was too fast on the ground. Too fast with people. But then, slowing down left you vulnerable. Like now.
What was happening? Every time she talked to this guy, she spilled feelings. “I have to go,” she said, but he grabbed her arm.
“You don’t have to go.”
“You have no clue what I have to do.”
“Well, I don’t accept your apology until you tell me what you meant by ‘guts have costs.’”
She pulled her arm back and looked at him from the side. “I don’t need you to accept my apology.” But she did. She could feel it all over. She’d been an idiot—a bad pilot. And that was the only thing she could not afford to be at the Star.
He raised his eyebrows at her like he knew these things, waiting for her to speak.
“That saying…guts have costs…that’s something my dad told me the day I got this.” She held out the scar on the back of her arm. “I was trying to run the recruits’ landmine obstacle course on his base. I didn’t make it.”
“Then what happened?”
She almost snapped “That’s none of your business” out of habit. But she kind of wanted to unload. Tristan had brought this sort of purging into her life with his innocent questions and “no judgment” looks. If only she could find a way to talk to Pippin the way she’d opened up with Tristan…
Her eyes moved to Tristan’s slowly. Carefully. “I nearly bled out. I had to get a transfusion, and by the time I woke up, I was a few thousand miles away. Back in my mom’s apartment.” Chase remembered being groggy and bandaged, her nose already drying out from the stale smoke in the air. “The next time I talked to him was…”
“A few weeks ago?”
“That obvious?” She took a deep breath. “He never wanted me there to begin with. I have no clue why he invited me.” Chase lined up all the events that had brought Tourn into her life. And then she found herself reliving them. Aloud. “Sixteen
years after the Philippines bombing, a jackass journalist paid for the name of the pilot who dropped the bomb. I didn’t know who my dad was until I saw him on TV making that speech.” She glanced at Tristan. He nodded slowly, proving he knew what she was talking about.
“I’m proud to have served my country so profoundly,” Tourn had said, seeming the best sort of steely-eyed. Maybe Chase should have thought that he was a monster like everyone else, but she already had one of those beside her, puffing like an industry smokestack.
“Janice fell off the couch when she saw him. Burned a hole in the rug with her cigarette.”
“Janice?”
“My mom. She told me to write to him. She wanted money, and she could see all the shiny stars on his uniform.” Chase shrugged. “I told him I wanted to be a pilot, so he hijacked my dream. Drilled me all summer like he was going to help me get into the military, and then he returned me when I failed.”
She took a deep breath that filled places she hadn’t known were empty. “So that’s my insignificant tragedy. I didn’t want to risk Pippin’s life yesterday. I just sometimes have…blind spots.” She folded her arms over her chest. “I know how to be better.”
But first she had to stop talking. Why was it so hard? She reached for the side of her head at the same time that Tristan did. Their fingers met over the knot on her skull. It wasn’t electric to touch Tristan. Not in the slightest. It was worse—it was welcome. She fought the urge to lean into his shoulder and rest.
“I’m sorry about knocking you out,” he said. “I tried not to mangle your face.”
“It’s too bad. You would have scored points with Sylph for uglying me up.”
“Sylph scares the crap out of me. Frightens Romeo too, although he’s still interested. Nothing more terrifying-slash-tantalizing than an Amazonian blonde.”
“Sylph would be delighted to hear that. Riot calls her Jet Fighter Barbie.”
“That’s kind of perfect. What about you?”
She rubbed the toes of her boots together. “Riot calls me more unpleasant names.”
He tried to cover, which was kind of sweet. “But there’s nothing plastic about you. Nothing predictable. Makes you a fearsome pilot. You do realize you’re like a living legend to some of these people.”
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