“Oh, that is very polite of you, but, no.”
“Asshole,” Lucy growls with a wide smirk on her face. The smirk disappears when I bend my fingers at the knuckle and brush them along the textured upper wall inside her and she throws her head back into the pillow. “Taylor, please. Fuck—I’m so close, I can’t…”
“A little longer,” I coo against her lips. She squeezes her eyes shut as she fights her impending orgasm, legs shaking and herbreath coming fast. I press a soft kiss on her lips and demand, “Now. But look at me when you come.”
Her pretty eyes snap to mine and her hips go wild as her insides flutter against my fingers. It’s difficult to wrangle, but I soften the landing for her. I let her hands go she envelops me in her arms and rolls us onto our sides.
In the “spooning” position, I settle my back against her front and she snakes a hand over my thigh and between my legs. The sensation of her coming around my fingers brought me close without being touched, and it doesn’t take much of her rough, circular ministrations for me to unravel. I come with her name on my lips and shudder as my heart rate slows down.
“I’m kind of mad we could’ve been doing this the whole time.” Lucy shakes her head and nuzzles into the back of my neck. “I should’ve dragged you upstairs with me the night of the ball.”
Once I’m settled again, I pull her arms around my bare stomach and hold her tight against me. Of course, like any lovestruck idiot, I fantasized about that exact thing many times when constructing my plan to kidnap her. But each time, I ran into the same issue: I knew something she didn’t. Would she want to be with me if she knew who I was, what I was capable of, and what I had done? I doubted it. Besides, the power imbalance alone made it unethical.
We’re different people now. She has melted the hardened parts of me, and I have hardened the softer parts of her. Neither of us entirely the composition of the person we met almost a year ago.
“You never would have slept with me,” she murmurs against my shoulder. “Because it would’ve felt like deception.”
“It would not have been consensual if you did not know the full truth of who I was.” I’m not sure when Lucy learned how to read me like a book, but I will gladly let her know every inch ofink that makes up the words of who I am. “That’s why I stopped us in the cabin, you know.”
“I know. Though, I can’t say I’m mad about how it turned out. I mean, the Taylor I met at the ball blushed at the vaguest notion of a flirtation, and this Taylor railed me into next week.”
I turn over and prop my head up on my hand, and Lucy mirrors me. Her body is only half-covered by a thin sheet, and my undeserving eyes roam the rest of her skin. She really is quite perfect, as if someone sculpted her lovingly and romantically out of pristine marble. Smooth lines and perfect curves, pale skin, and thick, luscious red hair. But what has always struck me the most about Lucy are her eyes. They’re not an uncommon color, but they are beautifully open and expressive.
“I hate that you have to go back into battle again.” She caresses my cheek with the back of her hand. “Do you still have the nightmares? The flashbacks?”
“Occasionally. However, not a single one of those nightmares or flashbacks compares to the agony of what I went through living without you these past few months. Thinking you were dead.”
“I get it.” Her eyes convey a world of hurt I was not privy to. A world she lived in, for a brief time, where I was dead. I wish I could take that pain from her. Those thoughts are perhaps too heavy, now that the adrenaline and hormonal rush of sex has passed. Lucy changes subjects as deftly as always. “So, you have a mom. That’s kinda crazy.”
“It is rather unexpected.” The shock has yet to wear off, and I can’t even begin to undo years of defining myself as an unwanted orphan. “My life has been repaying a debt I never owed to a woman who never loved me, who I realize never could. And my own mother looked at a helpless newborn and put her self-preservation over the welfare of her daughter.”
“You never abandon someone you love,” Lucy murmurs beneath her breath. The motto I lived by, shaped out of my own abandonment. She brushes her lips against mine in a soft, pitying kiss of concern. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Taylor. I hope you know that you deserve better. From the moment you were born, you deserved to be loved and protected and wanted.”
“Thank you. I don’t know how to think or feel about it. That woman is my mother, and yet, she is also a stranger. I am technically not an orphan, but I still feel like one. Delilah, who I’ve always trusted to be honest with me, has been lying to me my entire life. The Order as I knew it is gone for many reasons, and I have no idea who I am without it.”
“I do.” Lucy changes positions so she can straddle my legs and pulls me up so we are seated across from each other. “You’re Taylor. You are strong, courageous, and more empathetic than you let on. You love foxes and you don’t take sugar in your coffee. You don’t eat animals because you think it’s cruel. I know that when you walk in a room, everyone feels more at ease because they know you are there to help them. You are kind and caring, even if you don’t know how to express it. You are a hero who saved my life and the lives of countless others through sheer bravery and ingenuity. You bear indescribable burdens, and you never place those burdens on others. I know that out of the billions of people in the world, you are my favorite person and I love you.”
With an open palm, I reach up and hold the side of her face in my hand. I envy the life I must’ve lived prior, to have been the kind of person whose reward is that Lucy exists in this one. “I think I am still kind of flabbergasted that you even like me, let alone love me.”
“Passionately, deeply, annoyingly in love with you, to be specific.” Her teasing, affectionate smile turns into a seriousline. “I mean it, though. You are all of those things, and none of them came about because of how you grew up, or who your parents were. It is you and your heart that defines you, and you are astonishing.”
Years of ridiculous fitness gave me the strength to rise without needing my arms and I reel her in for a kiss. I don’t quite share her confidence in this definition of who I am. My rank, my past, my debt to Theia were an albatross. Without it, I should feel free. This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? A life free from duty, a life of peace, a life of simplicity? I am lighter, but not unburdened. I feel carved out. A girl with no last name, no army, and no country.
But I do have Lucy. That will be enough.
“I love you,” I murmur into our kiss.
Lucy guides me back down and brushes the tip of her nose against mine. “I love you too.”
25
Dawn is my favorite time of day. When training, I wake up hours prior so that my runs end near the break of day. The colors take one’s breath away—a drop of yellow spilling out into orange ripples, which slowly flood the purples and blues of a vanishing night. The air is cleaner and fresher. Clarity arrives unimpeded.
But not today, because today at daybreak Captain Finley—who prefers to be addressed without her rank, as she told me three times—is already talking her head off in the back of a cramped fishing boat. She has a rapt audience in Cassie, but the rest of us are simply trapped with her as she spins a wild tale of infidelity, malfunctioning rifles, and a lot of nudity. Mason has, enviably, taken up the driver’s seat, and Delilah sits next to him with big, circular sunglasses on and her head tilted back.
I’m squished between Roxana and Lucy, and I don’t know if there’s a more awkward seat in the world than the one between the mother you met for the first time twenty years after your birth and the lover you thought was dead until two days ago.
A few miles out from the coastline, the waters sway gently as we cut through them in our vehicle. Our vehicle, but of course,Mason and I stole it this morning with the “help” of Captain Finley distracting a coast guard. Guards do not sweep this far out, and copters are few and far between. We should be clear until we get to the Delaware Bay, along the southern coast of New Jersey, where it will be trickier to navigate. Which means, unfortunately, Captain Finley is clear to talk for the better part of a day. She might, as Mason made the unfortunate decision to load our boat with alcohol as well as provisions and Captain Finley is at least three beers deep into this journey.
