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I didn’t think he’d ask, to be honest, but I don’t have a problem with telling him why. I sit down on the bed beside him, letting myself lay back into the rumpled sheets. They smell deliciously of him. “Well, you were right before. Since we started this whole thing, you’ve done nothing but push me to free myself. To realize I was holding myself back. You took that from me. I was trying to do the same thing. Except you’re not physically restrained like I am, Zeth. You’re on emotional lockdown. When you’re around me, you do everything and anything you can to not feel anything whatsoever. So I took that that from you. I made you feel something.”
He’s staring at me, eyes narrowed into slits. “What, you think because you scared the living shit out of me that I’m suddenly fixed and I’m gonna fall in love with you now or something?”
That earns him a laugh. He’s really has no idea. “No. Oh, no, Zeth. You don’t have to worry on that front.”
“And how’s that?”
“You see me as a game. An experiment. Something to toy with until you get the desired result, at which point I’m assuming I’ll no longer be of use to you and you’ll find something else more interesting to play with.”
He twists to look over his shoulder at me. The muscles in his back contort beautifully as he shifts his weight. “There are plenty of girls out there more broken than you, Sloane Romera. I have no interest in experimenting on you.”
“Oh really? Then what the hell are you doing with me?”
“Is this ‘where do you see our relationship heading’ conversation?”
“God, no! Relationship? We’re aren’t in a relationship. We don’t know a thing about each other, Zeth. You’re the guy who shows up on my doorstep and screws me senseless whenever he feels like it. And I’m the girl stupid enough to let you do it.” I choke on the words, hating them, but knowing they’re true. Zeth’s face is stone cold, frozen in a blank, detached expression. He moves smoothly, standing from the bed and pulling on his clothes. When he looks up at me, the conflict I see warring in his eyes takes me by surprise.
“I know plenty about you, Sloane. I know all I need to know. If you know nothing about me, then that’s on you and no one else. You should realize by now that if you wanna know something, all you ever need to do is ask. And you’re not the girl stupid enough to let me do anything. You’re the girl stupid enough to not see what’s standing right in front of her.”
He snatches up his shoes and he doesn’t even take the time to sit down and put them on. He just takes them and storms out, closing the door softly behind him as he goes. I think it would have been better if he’d slammed the door. It would mean he wasn’t working as hard to control his overwhelming anger.
I’m paralyzed, sitting in the bed, trying to make heads or tails of his comments. Trying to make heads or tails of why he just suddenly got so…what, hurt? He was. He was actually hurt. Oh boy. And did…did he just pretty much say he thinks we are in a relationship? That he wants to be in a relationship? That makes no sense whatsoever. None. The man won’t even let me kiss him for fuck’s sake. How in hell am I supposed to process this?
I slump back into the bed, feeling very sore in my body from our earlier activities. But also sore in my heart, too. Because he’s right. I am the girl too stupid enough to see what’s standing right in front of her. Right now I feel too stupid to understand any of it. Zeth is emotionally stunted—there’s no doubting that—but it turns out I am, too. How is it that a man like him, a man made to be a weapon of mass destruction and little else, has seen more in us than I have?
The sky looks like a photo I saw once in the National Geographic. Without the pollution of all the city lights, the stars are an uncountable mess of sublime light, pin wheeling across the night with blatant disregard for how unsafe it all suddenly seems. I stand still for a moment, my breath fogging on the desert night air, and for a second it’s as though I can feel the earth spinning beneath my feet. Like I’m a tiny speck of sand balanced precariously on the tautly stretched surface of a massive drum, and I could go flying off into space at any given moment. I feel small and unprotected against the sheer vastness of that sky, and yet it’s so ethereal and beautiful. I haven’t spent any time out in the desert at all, not since I was a child, camping with my parents and too young to appreciate the beauty of it¸ only seeing the inconvenience of being without friends and television, but right now I’d love to stand and breathe it in some more. But I can’t.
“Come on. Move it.”
I’m shoved non-too gently in the base of my spine with the butt of Teo’s gun. I’m glad it’s him taking me across to the girls’ building in the compound and not Andeas. My first meeting with Andreas wasn’t exactly very civil, and he came away near beaten within an inch of his life technically because of me, so I’m doubting that he’ll be harboring any favorable tendencies toward me. I have no idea how long he’s going to be out of commission, recovering wherever it is he’s recovering, but I’m hoping it’ll at least be until tomorrow night. If all goes in our favor, we’ll be in an entirely different state by the time Andreas Medina can walk again. Zeth, Alexis and I—long gone. God, Alexis. My heart hiccups beneath my ribcage when I think about seeing her again. It’s about to happen and I don’t feel prepared. She’s going to freak out when she sees me. I hope she can keep it together long enough to rein in her surprise and not blow my cover. A lot’s riding on this first meeting. If the guards or maybe even the other girls notice there’s something going on, or the fact that I look an awful lot like my sister, then who knows what they’ll do.
