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“When was the last time you saw him?”
“I was fourteen. I saw him walking toward me on the compound. I was usually good about avoiding him, but I was thinking of other things. I didn’t notice him until it was too late, but it was the same for him. I decided to walk right on by. Usually whenever I tried that, he’d stop me, at least for a few minutes, and chat. This time he didn’t. No one else was even around.”
“He gave up?”
Tristan rubbed his chin and didn’t answer. He merely looked out his window as the lowborn shops turned into manufacturing plants.
“What did you do next?”
“Stole my first bottle of whiskey to celebrate.”
“To celebrate or to mourn?”
Tristan didn’t answer. “I didn’t mean to tell you all that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s whiny.”
“Life often is.”
“What about you? Tell me something.”
Lila pulled up to another light. She racked her brain for something to tell him, but her experiences with her own father weren’t so horrible. What could she say about her mother without sounding like a spoiled heir? Boohoo, my mother constantly demanded that I run a multibillion-credit empire, but I just wanted to fiddle-fart around as a blackcoat for the rest of my life? Poor me, I was so oppressed?
“You’re not going to share anything, are you?”
“I have nothing to match it.”
“You don’t have to match it, Lila. This isn’t a competition. Just tell me something, anything. What’s the most annoying thing you had to deal with growing up?”
“You already know.” Lila shrugged as she merged onto the interstate, dodging the scattered traffic. “I didn’t want to be prime. I wanted to be the militia chief for the entire Randolph family, so I fought for it.”
“That’s what I don’t get about you. Why? Why join the militia at all?”
“Because I have no interest in my family’s business dealings. I just want everyone to be safe and protected.”
“You took over the hospital.”
“That was for different reasons entirely. For starters, it was my mother’s idea of a test.”
“What about the other reasons?”
Lila didn’t want to answer. She didn’t want to remember Holly. “Let it go.”
“I didn’t want to tell you about my father. I thought we were friends.”
Friends?
Lila cut her eyes to Tristan, more and more annoyed with herself. Perhaps there wasn’t anything between them after all, not anymore, not after what had happened in the tunnels with Reaper. He’d cleared it all up with that one little word.
Friends.
Why on earth did he insist on sharing a bed with her, then? Sending her messages about how he missed her? Making jokes about going on vacation together?
The workborn were very, very different indeed.
But she’d lost Alex, and now Dixon wouldn’t speak with her either. Maybe she needed another friend.
