“What?”
“They call themselves Guardians of the Truth and they recruited me about a year ago, once I started working. I guess, given my line of work and the fact I had no parents to stop me, I was the perfect candidate. They’re the ones that made me believe there was a way out based on the blueprints I found. That’s why I climbed through that vent, why I pushed myself forward even when I thought death was easier. I had to know if they were right. They want to fight against the Councilmembers and the Gendarme; if they ever manage to gather enough people willing to do so; and they want to live on the surface again.”
“Rey, I don’t understand. How could anyone possibly know? It’s been a century, anyone who could have known has been dead for decades, and that’s assuming the original ROC citizens weren’t feed the same lies about bombs and the end of the world that we were. I can’t imagine the Councilmembers are going around telling anyone the truth, I doubt their own families even know.”
Once again Rey runs his hands through his tangled, knotted hair, something he always does when a difficult topic arises. “I’m not sure. Right now, all they have are guesses and suspicions and with the Council watching every citizen’s movements through those cameras and whatnot, it’s hard to talk about it, or to get more people on board. One of them, Jericho, the man who got me involved, was the partially blind man with that old woman you met our last night in ROC. He’s one of the leaders.”
I think back to that night, how the terrified man tried to shove the door shut in my face. When the Protector’s own daughter showed up at his suite, he must have thought he’d been found out and that his family was in danger.
Plotting against the Council, even if the Council has no tangible proof of a plot; not that they need it; it’s completely insane. Anyone caught would have their number in the Gamble so many times they’d never survive, provided they weren’t immediately executed for treason or terrorism or whatever other charges the Council and the Gendarme prosecuted them for. Even their family’s numbers could be added to the Gamble too for additional punishment or inclusion in a crime. The possibilities are endless because the Council would never stand for any sort of rebelliousness. Neither would the other citizens if they thought their own safety were at risk if ROC were destroyed.
Were there really people willing to do this, to stand against the Council, even with almost no tangible evidence of their suspicions? How could they have any idea the Unoccupied Zone is actually, in fact, occupied? How could they recruit people with theories so radical, I’m still not sure I believe it, and I’ve been living it?
Then another jarring thought occurs and I feel the start of hot anger boiling in my gut. “You were involved in all this, and you never told me?”
“Kelsey, your father is the Protector.”
“So?”
“Are you kidding? What do you think would happen if he found out?”
“But I wouldn’t have told him! I’d never betray you! Look at the other things we’ve done that could have gotten us punished and I never said a word.”
“That’s not the same and that’s not why I didn’t tell you.”
“Then why not? What did you think I would have done? Told Wyatt?”
“You wouldn’t have believed me!” Rey exclaims, throwing his arms wide, smacking the window with one hand. “I barely believed it. No one had any way to prove it. It’s not like we could go waltzing out the door onto the surface to check things out.”
“But you didn’t even give me a chance?” I demand, shoving up from my seat, hurt and livid that Rey, my best friend, didn’t trust me with the biggest secret of his life, something that could have changed the future for both of us. “After all the years we’ve known each other, after I agreed to marry you, you honestly thought I’d accuse you of lying, or worse, betray you to my father?”
“I didn’t want you involved! It was too dangerous. What we were doing, what we believed and what we were planning, we all could have died because of it. I couldn’t put you in that kind of danger. I’d never risk your life like that.”
“So you left me behind,” I say coolly, arms folded over my chest as burning tears form behind my eyes. “You knew all of this, knew there was a chance we could survive up here and yet you said nothing, not even on our last night together when I wanted to run away.”
“I tried to tell you on your birthday. When we were sitting on the bench and you were so upset about your arranged marriage, remember? I told you there was a way out of all of that. I just, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you everything.”
“Don’t even try to act like you told me anything. I had no idea what that statement meant and you knew it! And then you went in the chambers and left me behind to believe you were dead. Do you realize what you’ve done to me, Rey? How badly that hurt? What I went through?”
He lunges to his feet, hands balled into fists. His cheeks are flushed and splotchy, the way they always are when he’s upset. “And you think that wasn’t killing me? You think I was happy knowing I’d never see you again? I didn’t know what was up here, if I’d make it or if we were wrong about the radiation or if I’d get caught and shot. I left you behind because you were safe. That’s all I ever wanted for you!”
“Safe? SAFE!” I shriek, slamming a hand against the ledge of the window and causing the panes to rattle. Tiny splinters dig into my palm but the sting of pain pales to the rage blistering inside my chest and I think I might explode. “The Gamble, the Gendarme, the rations, having to marry Wyatt freaking Walker. You think all of that meant I was safe?”
“Yes! It did! Maybe not happy, but you’d be safe. The odds of your number ever being called-“
“No! No, I was a prisoner Rey, just like you and everyone else in the O.Z, living in constant fear of running out of resources or breaking one of the thousands of laws or having my number selected in the Gamble. And you left me there to face whatever pathetic future ROC held in those suffocating grey walls. I could have died down there just as easily as up here. Do you even know why I’m up here in the first place? Why I left ROC? It’s because you died and I wanted to die too. I couldn’t imagine a world without you in it so I came to the surface hoping the radiation would kill me.”
His face tumbles into an expression of stunned sorrow. He opens and closes his mouth several times before finding words. “Kels, I didn’t… I didn’t think…“
He reaches for me but I slap his arms away. Tears cascade down my cheeks, scorching my skin. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t even think to give me a chance, did you? I would have gone with you in a heartbeat if you had asked, if you had actually said anything at all. Even if it meant we would die, I’d have rather died with you than spend the rest of my life without!”
I shove past him and storm from the room, almost stumbling over my own feet because I am so blinded by my roaring emotions and the wave of tears.
Rey doesn’t follow.
CHAPTER FOUR
It takes me several minutes to regain any sort of composure and dry my eyes, swollen and red from tears and anger and insurmountable exhaustion, a weariness so deep in my bones I don’t know if it can ever be cured.
I sit in a vacant stairwell of concrete and metal, forcing myself to find a sense of calm before I go in search of Jax’s suite. He’s already distrusting of Rey, I don’t want to have to explain why I’m crying and that my best friend didn’t share a secret that would have changed the entire world we knew. Could have changed everything that has happened in the last few weeks.
As I take a final shuddering breath, I press to my feet and ascend to the third floor. It’s weird on the surface that the floors go up with the numbers so that higher numbered floors are on the top, closer to the sky. In ROC it was the opposite with higher numbered sectors further into the earth. However, despite the difference in numbering, the poorly lit and somberly decorated halls and stairs and sectioned off living quarters of the former dormitory remind me of ROC. I grimace at the thought of being back under
ground in that stifling monotony. I need windows and sunlight and fresh air. Now that I have tasted true freedom, the idea of ROC terrifies me even more, being sealed inside that underground tomb.
At the far end of the third floor, I locate suite 307, though the 7 hangs upside down by one screw and the rest of the plastic, painted numbers are chipped and cracked. I debate knocking on the hollow aluminum door, warped and dented from age, but technically this is my new home too so, after finding it unlocked, I slip into the tiny living quarters. At least on the surface I don’t have to scan my barcode.
The dormitory common room lies empty with the exception of a sagging, faded sofa and chair by the far windows. A small kitchenette branches off on one side with a rusted sink and a fridge missing its door and interior shelves, not that the unit works anyway in a world devoid of electricity.
The peeling walls had probably once been white, but are now discolored and cracked, the sheetrock deteriorating from the bottom up. In some places I can glimpse metal supports and wooden framing. The stained and marred wood floor creaks and strains under my footsteps and some floorboards look like they’ve been recently replaced to remove rotting pieces of wood.
As I look for windows, something I’ve become so accustomed to doing lately, I see one has been covered with plywood, its glass shattered and gone.
Branching off to my right, a short hallway leads to three small bedrooms and a bathroom with just a shower stall. I wondered who lived here once, in these buildings that had been a boarding school before the world changed forever.
At the sound of my approach, Jax slips from one of the bedrooms, pulling the door ajar behind him with a slight squeak in its hinges. At first neither of us move toward each other, instead standing at opposite ends of the hall, staring like two soldiers on opposing sides of a battlefield. He looks exhausted, but there’s more… a wary awkwardness, like he is unsure of how to handle me, such a drastic change from the confident, arrogant boy willing to shoot me a month ago.
Jax isn’t an idiot. I wonder if he’s pieced together my history with Rey, that we once, however briefly, were more than friends. That I’m in love with Rey and that now he is back and here with us, things will become so much more complicated. As if our lives aren’t already complex enough.
I don’t know what to think or how to feel or what I even want, and right now I am too tired and sore and beaten to try, so I take several steps toward Jax, curious to see how he will react. Will he move closer or shift away?
He does neither, instead standing a little straighter, shoulders squared and chin lifted higher. It’s the posture of someone who wants to appear strong and self-assured, which he is, but someone who also recognizes they are about to have that strength and assurance tested in the worst way. It’s the façade of someone who sees a battle coming, and knows they have a fifty-fifty chance either way.
“How’s your hand?” I ask.
With a glance at the clean linen winding his fingers, he shrugs. “Just flesh wounds. Someone stitched the bad ones, said I should be able to take the bandages off in a couple days.”
“Does it hurt bad?”
“No.”
I’m sure he’s lying, there’s no way an injury like that wouldn’t hurt, but Jax won’t admit pain or weakness, not even to himself.
“How’s Nadia?” I whisper, nodding toward the door behind him.
“She’s fine, just fell asleep. Tisis is with her. Apparently she’s been up all night waiting for us.”
Shaking my head, I laugh softly. “She would be. Sometimes I forget she’s eight, she acts so much older. I’m going to see her.”
Slipping by Jax in the narrow hall, our shoulders brush and with his good hand he reaches out to grasp my upper arm, his fingers hot against my skin. I turn to meet his gorgeous eyes that seem to make my heart skip a beat every time and I suddenly know that whatever the near future holds, it’s going to be far more than just complicated.
“Are you ok?” he asks.
I hang my head. I wonder if he can see the redness in my eyes from the tears. “You always ask me that, Jax and I’m always fine.”
“Even with your friend?”
I purse my lips and continue to look at the floor. A deep gouge is carved into the wooden slates, as though something extremely heavy was dropped long ago. Without thinking, I run the toe of my boot in it.
“His name is Rey,” I say, fighting my emotions back into the recesses of my mind. “And I honestly don’t know. It’s… a lot to take in and some of what he told me, about how he got up here, just… it makes me question even more than I was already questioning. Whatever was happening in ROC, it’s beyond anything I could imagine. Every time I think I’ve finally sorted through the lies, I find myself trapped in a dozen more.”
“But you don’t have to worry about ROC anymore.”
“I’ll always worry about ROC. It’s a part of who I am. Being on the surface, regardless of what happens here, that will never change. We can’t erase our past just because our future took a different course.”
Instantly, Jax’s entire demeanor changes, body relaxing as he moves closer until we’re barely a few inches apart. In the comfort of his presence, I relax too, leaning against the wall and closing my eyes as he places his bandaged hand on the wall beside my head. Then he brushes his other hand through my hair. My curls are so gross and dirty and caked with dried blood and pine needles and who even knows, I don’t know why he wants to touch them, but his fingers are gentle and he rests his palm on the side of my neck running a thumb across the line of my jaw.
“I know,” he says. “You’re right.”
“Jax,” I murmur, opening my eyes again. “What did you try to tell me last night? When we were watching the fireworks?”
He smiles, but it is sad and vacant, the same expression he wore the one time he talked about his family. “It doesn’t really matter now.”
I nod. I think I know what he was going to say, but I’m not ready to hear it and certainly not ready to acknowledge it. I need more time, so instead of saying anything, I press up from the wall and duck around him.
“I should get some sleep. It’s been a rough few days.”
“Ok,” he says. “There’s an empty bed in the first bedroom. One of the Risers brought up clean blankets earlier so it’s all ready for you.
“Where will you sleep? The third bedroom?”
He moves toward the main room of the apartment. “The third room is empty, there’s no furniture. I’ll take the couch in the living room.”
Watching his retreating form, I feel myself grow cold and lonely the farther he travels from me. It wraps around me like an icy, rough blanket and I can’t seem to make it go away.
“Jax,” I call. He turns, eyebrows lifted and expression curious as I pause, chewing on my lip. What I’m about to say, what I’m about to ask for, I know I shouldn’t. I know that our lives are about to become so much more difficult and uncertain and that most of the difficulty will be because of me, because of choices I’ll have to make.
But I am selfish and don’t want to think about that today. I know it’s not fair, not when Rey is here and I just kissed him twenty minutes ago and I haven’t been remotely honest with either of them about the other. Right now though, I am so scared and lost inside, I need Jax. I need to forget about the last few hours and all of the reminders of ROC that Rey’s arrival has stirred up. I know that deep down, on some sub-level neither of us wants to investigate, Jax understands me. He always will. Tattoos and demons.
“You don’t have to sleep on the couch,” I say. “I mean, if you don’t want to.”
His head lifts at an angle, and I can feel the energy between us again, pulsing and alive.
“What do you want?” he asks carefully.
I don’t know. I don’t know what I want anymore it’s all such a mess. I want to go back to April fourteenth, before the Gamble, before I knew my father arranged for me to marry Wyatt, before I left ROC and started a war
. Back when it was just Rey and me and a delicate little sugar cookie.
I can’t go back though, and even if I could, it would mean eradicating Jax from my life and just like with Rey, I can’t imagine a world without him.
I bite the inside of my mouth and take a deep breathe. “I want to feel safe. Can you stay with me? Just for a little bit.”
For a moment I think he’s going to refuse and I might burst into tears if he does, my emotions so fragile and raw from the stress of everything.
But then he walks back to me until we’re mere inches from each other and I can hear him breathing, the only sound in the quiet space save the steady pound of my heart, quickening as he nears.
He touches me again, smoothing my hair aside. “Why don’t you get cleaned up first. There’s clean water in the bathroom and several changes of clothes for us.”
Nodding, I turn away into the bathroom and shut the door, leaning against it for a moment.
A large bucket of water sits in the old, stained shower base. A mirror hangs over the vanity, its glass cracked down the center and separating my reflection into two halves. Neither half looks all that great; skin a mottled mess of cuts and bruises, a busted lip, hair flying every direction.
Stripping naked, I clean the grime and blood and dried sweat from my body, rinse my hair for all the good it will do and scrub away the dirt caked under my ragged, broken fingernails.
A pair of faded black shorts and a pink tank top with one strap hanging by a few threads sit in a pile on the floor. They’re a little too big, but as I look in the mirror again and see how much weight I’ve lost from my already tiny frame, I guess most clothes will be too big now. I’ve lost the few womanly curves I’d started to form, looking more like my thirteen-year-old self than a young adult.
I at least feel human again as I wander back to the bedroom, the room dim with the worn curtains pulled across the single window to block out the morning sunlight. Jax lies on the bed, arms latched behind his head with the blanket pulled up to his waist, leaving his muscular chest bare and exposed. My heart beats faster.
The Choice (The Gamble Series Book 2) Page 3