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"I dunno, man," Colt said cautiously. Too fucking cautiously, like Jake was a land mine he stepped around.
Fuck.He shouldn't have said anything. Should've kept his god damn mouth shut. He'd given too much away and made the Second skeptical. Colt wasn't stupid. Clearly, Jake revealed more investment in the topic than he'd initially let on, and it didn't take Sherlock fucking Holmes to deduce why.
With sheer will, Jake picked up a pickaxe and mustered a false cheerfulness that fooled exactly no one. "Well, I'm gonna get back to it. Thanks for bringing all this stuff up here."
Without waiting for a reply, Jake snagged the sled he'd constructed for hauling rocks and marched back into the tree cover, needing to do anything but converse with Colt and pretend he wasn't rocked down to his absolute core. He needed to be alone with his thoughts, to figure out how he would exist in a world where he was beginning to suspect Zorah was meant to be his.
But wasn't.
CHAPTER 12
Zorah
"Pixie, you hold Jace's hand and follow me, okay?" Zorah hefted Ginny higher on her hip with one hand and hoisted her heavy basket with the other.
Scorching August heat, plus holding a wiggling, child-sized furnace did not make for a comfortable carry. Doing one last head count, Zorah set off, her small charges toddling along behind.
"Zorah!" a deep voice called, and she turned to see Riddick jogging toward her with a raised hand. "Wait up!"
"Hang on a minute, kids," she said, breathing through her irritation at his ill-timed interruption.
Couldn't he see she had her hands full? She placed the basket back on the ground and shifted a squirming, damp Ginny to the other hip.
"I want to go to the lake," Pixie complained.
"I know," Zorah said, feeling a deep kinship with Pixie's pique. She'd gotten some rest since her swim lessons, but the heat plus fatigue strained her patience. "Wearegoing to the lake. Just hang on one more minute so we can see what Riddick needs, okay?"
"Zaw-wah," Jace whined, following his sister's lead but ramping it up into a stage-one tantrum. "I wanna go to the wake now!"
"Hey." Riddick jogged the last few feet to where she'd paused their sweaty, mutinous caravan, a wide grin showing off his golden tooth. "What're you doing?"
"What's it look like I'm doing?" Zorah snapped, immediately regretting her tone at his crestfallen expression.
Riddick raised his hands in surrender. "Sorry, sorry. Here, I can help. Why don't I carry" — he looked helplessly at the child in her arms and the two glowering at her side — "something."
Zorah's shoulders softened. If he wanted to help her rather than just flirt and waste her time, she wouldn't say no. "Take the basket and hold Pixie's hand. We're going to the lake. Are you sure you have time?"
"Sure." He stooped and plucked the overloaded basket from the ground as if it weighed nothing, tucking the woven handles into the crook of his elbow. "Okay, Pixie dust, are you ready?"
"Yes," the four-year-old declared, reaching up to grasp the tips of Riddick's long fingers.
And then they were off. Not wanting to slow momentum a second time, Zorah charged ahead. At her own pace, she could cover the mile-long journey in not much time. But with cranky kids in tow, the time and distance stretched much longer.
"I'm surprised Grace and Lars let you bring the kids here, after what happened with Nico and everything. Aren't they worried?" Riddick asked once they were under the blessed shade of the dense forest.
Zorah rolled her eyes. Was hetryingto annoy her with that question? Of course they worried, but they also trusted her. Maybe not Riddick, though. Maybe he was more like the Alphas in River Bend than she'd realized, assuming she was too inept to be trusted with responsibility. Or perhaps the heat was getting to her, making her as cranky and ill-tempered as the kids.
She half turned her head to answer as calmly as she could. "None of them have had a decent nap this week, so they're all walking baby disasters. The water is the only thing that keeps them semi-calm."
Riddick gave a low grumble of discontent. "Grace and Lars shouldn't work you so hard. They don't give you any time to relax."
An incredulous laugh bubbled out of Zorah's throat in place of the scream she wanted to release. First, he implied Grace and Lars didn't trust her, and now he insinuated that they trusted her too much?
Someone would have to pry her fingernails off before she'd say a single negative word about her hosts. When convincing Zorah's wary parents to let her spend the summer in Morris Hill, Lars had done the heavy lifting. He'd lamented the struggles of his overwhelmed mate and expressed confidence in how appreciative she'd be for Zorah's expert help. Zorah sat quietly during the pitch, her fingers blanched white as she folded them calmly in her lap, silently begging any god she could think of to please let her parents agree, please give her one chance at freedom from her proscribed future.
Lars and Grace were good people, and the reminder reinforced her guilt for lying about the swim lessons. Two nights ago, the entire family had been too exhausted to notice she'd gone, but for her second lesson, she'd concocted a fictitious story to explain her absence. She hated lying to them when they'd treated her with nothing but kindness, but she couldn't see an alternative.
"Why don't they give you some time off?" Riddick continued to grouse behind her.
