“What iswrongwith you?” she asks, holding herself back from shoving him into the wall only because someone could round the corner any second.
He settles against the wall anyway, hands in his pockets, one ankle kicked over the other. He looks stupidly hot, all relaxed and languid, while Clarke’s wound so tightly that normal breathing is out of the question. “I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true.”
“Of course it’s true! Of course it—” Clarke realizes she’s halfway to yelling and hurls her voice into a harsh whisper instead. “My ship’s a piece of shit, Julian, but sometimes that’s just how it is. Sometimes the ship’s crappy.”
“The Clarke I know wouldn’t accept that. She’d demand better.”
“The Clarkeyouknow? Well, the JulianIknow would—oh my gods,” she says, an incredulous laugh popping loose as she realizes how the Julian she knows would be thinking about her situation. “That was you trying to help, wasn’t it? You thought calling out my team like that was going tohelpme.”
He sets his jaw. “Val said Yves would never step up unless forced. Someone has to, if you’re not going to do it.”
“So you swooped in to save the day? Gosh, Julian, thank you!” Clarke clasps her hands over her heart and steps in close, looking up at him through her eyelashes and laying the sarcasm on thick. “Whatever can I do to repay you?”
His gaze goes molten, and a corresponding ember settles low in Clarke’s belly. “I have a few suggestions.”
Thierry’s voice echoes in Clarke’s mind.Just sleep with him already.
There are reasons having sex with Julian is a bad idea. A lot of reasons. She’s having trouble remembering any of them.
She sways toward him. His eyes drop to her mouth.
A door opens and closes around the corner. Clarke goes cold and jumps back, putting space between them, and reminds herself that she’s mad at him. “You told me at Tiresias that Elemental’s not good enough for us to be enemies. Don’t try tomakeus enemies.”
She feels good about that as the last word. She turns for the exit, channeling her fury into stomping as she goes.
“Handle your shit, and I won’t have to,” Julian calls after her.
How much trouble would someone get in for strangling a fellow pilot while half the press corps is still packing up one room away? Clarke’s asking for a friend.
She whirls and stalks back to him. “My contract ends this year, Julian. Now is not the time for me to be a problem for my team.”
Julian blinks. “Your renewal’s not finalized yet?”
Crap. Crappy, crapping crap.
Most teams with expiring pilot contracts announce renewals during season break, as a way of keeping the fans excited duringthe off month. For a pilot a team wanted to keep, conversations would’ve normally started weeks ago, hoping to get all the details worked out in time for the typical announcement window. If you don’t announce during break, everyone assumes one of two things: Either negotiations aren’t going well, indicating a rift between team and pilot, or negotiations aren’t going at all.
Julian thought Clarke was already locked in for another few years at Elemental. Clarke just handed him her biggest vulnerability on a silver platter.
“No, that’s—that’s good,” Julian says, adjusting on the fly. “You can still ask for better terms, then. A ship that’s actually designed for you, for starters.”
“I’m not you,” Clarke hisses, jabbing him in the chest. “I’m not Julian Casperi, future interplanetary champion. I don’t have a winning record I can leverage in negotiations.”
Julian catches her wrist, holding fast when she tries to poke him again. “You’re never going to have one if Yves doesn’t figure out how to use you. The shitty hardware’s one thing, but the strategy decisions—”
Clarke jerks her arm. “What do you know about Elemental’s strategy decisions?”
He doesn’t let go. His fingers are cool against her overheated skin. “Same as the rest of the system knows, since someone in your camp released your entire cockpit recording. We all heard Yves cut off your race engineer early on to tell you not to take risks, which made no fucking sense because you’re magic on tracks like this, and then tell you to push to catch Delphine later whichalsomade no fucking sense given the state of your ship and biofeed at the time.”
Clarke is starting to hate the pleased tingle that spreads overher when Julian slots a compliment in between statements that make her want to kill him. She wants tojustbe angry. It’d be easier that way. “Two snippets of radio conversation and you think you know everything? I don’t always agree with or understand his orders, but—”
Julian’s wearing hisI will die on this hillface. “Go on, explain to me how it’s okay that Yves doesn’t listen to you. Has notonceadmitted that the ship’s seriously flawed, and it’s not all on you and Matthew. Overrules your engineer, constantly.”
“He’s the team principal! He’s allowed to overrule us!” How unfair is it that Julian’s making her defend Yves, when she agrees with most of what he’s saying? Not all of it, because he’s making it sound like there’s something underhanded going on and Clarke doesn’t find that realistic (Yves is a jerk, not evil), but shedoeswish Yves handled a lot of things differently. She can’t admit that to Julian, though. That glance he shared with Val earlier, Val offering to talk to Clarke yesterday—Chronicle’s up to something, although even thinking it makes Clarke cringe at the melodrama. “Let go of me.”
Julian does, dropping her arm so quickly that she stumbles back half a step. He lunges forward, like he’s going to catch her. She withdraws farther, suddenly sure that if he touches her again, she’s going to do something she’ll regret.
They freeze like that: Clarke with her shoulders against the far wall, Julian with his hands outstretched. Time stops.
