“Luke,” I call quietly, opening his door.
“I heard, Ky,” he says without moving.
I step in, closing the door. “You heard?”
“Yes, Marc and I were sitting on the stairs listening until he said something about crying.”
“You heard everything?” I state. “And Marc heard everything. Was this a listening party?!”
“No. I think it’s only us three up.”
I shake my head, swiping my hand over my hair. “You want to talk about it?”
“No. Right now, I want to go to sleep, and after we talk to Jord in the morning, we’ll talk. Let’s go to sleep.”
“Uh, I’m going to talk to Marc and come back. I wanted to let you know.”
He leans up on his arms like he’s doing a push-up and slowly cranes his neck to meet my eyes. “Go talk to him where?”
I bite my lip. Luke’s going to flip. “In… his… room,” I carry each word slowly.
“You should talk downstairs like you did with Cory.”
“Stop it, Luke.”
“Marc’s cool, yes. But this thing between you two is getting a little progressive. I don’t think you should be in his room.”
I lean against the door. “Luke, back off.”
He lies back down. “Whatever, Kylie. You know your limits.”
I leave and cross the hall to Marc’s room. I tap on his door before opening it. He sits up from his bed when I walk in.
“You wanted to ask me something,” I say, watching him move his feet to the floor.
“I asked you not to do that with him.”
Jealousy. It makes me smile. “I thought you had a question,” I say, sliding down his door to sit on the floor. I’m tired, but I can’t walk off on him the way I can walk off on anyone else. Unless he gets me upset, and because I hate people to see me at my weakest, I’ll leave. However, he’s also seen me at an even weaker point. I grumble at the thought.
“I’m getting to that.” I wait on him to continue. “I don’t matter?” I meet his eyes.
I admit, “You matter, Marc. What you do doesn’t.”
“Yes, it does.”
“It doesn’t,” I argue, jerking a shrug.
He releases an aggravated sigh that causes a light rumble in his chest. “Don’t make me prove to you it matters.”
His comment makes his room stuffy. “Prove to me?” I question, taking it as a threat.
“You saw me earlier, and you wanted to question me then, but you wouldn’t because everyone was around. We were just walking and got attacked. I can’t explain Susan. I think she was frightened or something.”
I throw my hands up. “You don’t need to explain. I don’t care; you’re not restricted to me.”
He stands and crosses the floor to me. His frame towers over me, but for only a second, until he grabs me by my shoulders and pulls me to my feet. “You don’t care?” he asks low in his rasp.
My stomach fills with jitters, and I suck it in, controlling them. “You are close,” I tell him. He comes closer, face to face with me, only an inch separating us. I try to breathe, but it gets stuck in my throat, and I gasp instead.
“You care. More than you let off.” He presses my body to his. “I made you mad. Tell me.”
“You did,” I admit defeat. “You made me really mad.” I step back. “Then you wanted to talk about it.”
He steps with me, not giving me breathing room and not giving these darn jitters a chance to calm down. “That’s what couples do when they have problems.” He pulls my arms around his neck. “They talk.”
I leave them there. “But we are not a couple.”
“Hmm, maybe not, but close enough.”
A knock sounds at his door.
I step aside for him to open it.
“Where’s Ky?” Luke asks.
“I’m right here, big brother.”
Marc moves aside as he comes in. “What are you two talking about?”
“Nothing, Luke. I’m coming,” I tell him, leaning from the wall.
Luke surveys Marc from the corner of his eyes. “You’re not trying to get with my sister, are you, Marc?”
Marc looks at me and back to Luke. “No, I’m trying to understand her and Cory, and her and me.”
“Hmmp, I think she likes the both of you but knows she can’t have anything with either. So she—”
“Stop, Luke. Close your mouth,” I say, cutting him off. “Don’t you two talk about me like I’m not standing here.”
Marc moves away from us and asks, “You don’t want him to tell me?”
“Anything I want you to know, I will tell you.”
“You tell me nothing,” he counters.
“But you know plenty,” I add.
Luke closes the door. “What I know is what she does with you, she doesn’t do with him, and the two of you should stop doing it and void your feelings.”
“How about you void your presence in this room,” I state with a point.
He crosses his arms. “Right after you.”
I throw my head back, grumbling. “Can you not do the big brother thing for one night, Luke? Please just leave,” I say, shoving him out of the room.
“No, it’s late, and I’m tired. Come to bed.”
“Shut up, Luke.” Revealing my secrets. It’s a good thing Marc knows why I sleep with him or this would be so embarrassing. “Go to sleep. I’m going to talk to him.” I prepare myself to say something I never thought I would. Not here and not this soon. “And if I get tired, I’ll sleep in here.”
Luke freezes, eyes wide and questioning. Somewhere behind me, I hear Marc practically thaw as he mutters, “Huh.”
I hurry to finish. “I’ll be fine.”
Marc turns me to face him. “Are you sure?” he asks the same way he did when I asked him to kiss me. Skeptical.
“Yes,” I answer quietly. “If you’re fine with it?”
“I don’t know, Ky.” Marc’s sweet rejection brings a burn to my throat.
“Close enough, huh?” I question, quoting him.
His eyes shift around the room, under hooded brows pulled taut with uncertainty.
“Ky,” Luke calls low and disapproving. “That’s—”
“I know, Luke, just leave,” I say, still watching the shift of Marc’s eyes. They rest on nothing and move every two seconds. What could he be thinking this hard about?
“Okay,” Luke says apprehensively. “I’ll be back before everyone else is up.”
I turn my head a bit, surveying him from the corner of my eyes. “Goodbye, Luke.”
The door closes as I turn back to Marc. “I don’t mind you in here,” he finally says after we hear Luke’s hard steps stop and his door close.
I breathe my nervousness away. “Are you sure?” I ask, also unsure and full of insecurities.
“I am, but I don’t understand why you’re doing it.” He backs away from me to his dresser, where he was before. “Why you would want to if you are so confused and if you know there are limitations set between us.”
“I don’t know,” I slump on his bed, throwing my hands over my face, “but you make me want to know and understand why. Why do I care, and why do you care, and why is it you take my dreams away, and why you bring me security with your hugs, and why you make me nervous, and a lot of other whys?”
He sits next to me. “Why I care?”
“Yes. If we are not supposed to…why?” Why must he show me he cares when he knows we aren’t supposed to?
“It may not be a good idea for us to get detailed about our feelings.”
I know the why to that. Separation. Distractions. Creations. Got it. “I see.”
“So maybe you should ask less emotion-driven and uncovering questions.”
“You have questions,” I state.
“I do, but I know if I get to know you too well, maybe fall too deep into you, you could become a distraction.”
Right, and I wouldn’t want him to kill me like Luke
did his girl.
This is what Luke meant by telling me my feelings are in it, telling me I would put too much into it. My feelings are in it, and it’s a little harder than I thought it would be to push them away. “It’s probably a good idea for us to leave this alone. Whatever this is.”
“Maybe,” Marc responds, looking away from me to his door.
I stand. “I’ll go,” I say, heading for the door.
He grabs my arm, now on his feet. “Wait, Ky, I don’t want you to go.” His hand slides down to mine. “But I don’t want you to stay.”
“What do you want?” I face him. A side of me wants him to take it all back and let me leave, while the other side wants him to respond.
“You.” He drops my hand. “I want you to disappear and come back when I live a life as an only child. Not dedicated to what they designed me for.” He pulls me by my waist back to his bed, and he sits. “So I can be sure and have you and not feel guilty about it. And not pull you and then push you away. But then…I want for you to walk away, leave me alone, and take my interest in you and the temptation for you away with you because I know who and what I am, and my real wants don’t matter.”
“How can you accept me but reject me at the same time?”
“We agreed, Ky. Hugs, kisses, and small talk. Don’t take this there.” He gets up, walking us to his door. “You sleeping here, with me, would put me in place as Luke’s replacement. We can’t be that close,” he says, assured.
His words cut me right down the middle of my chest. I must be bleeding out on the floor as I’m stagnant, breathless, watching his eyes avoid me.
“Right,” I breathe after we’ve stood in silence for more than a minute, and his eyes finally meet mine. “I get it.” I get it.
I face the door, stalling before I grab the knob, opening it. It shoves back closed.
“Shit, Ky.” His arm moves from the door’s edge to being wrapped around my waist. His head moves beside mine before he kisses my neck. “I can’t let you leave me,” he whispers, lips against my skin. The areas he’s touching radiate. “Just,” he begins, “lie down with me. But this won’t go past tonight. It can’t. Okay? Tomorrow, we’re distant,” he says, turning me with him to face his bed.
He’s reluctant as he guides me from behind. “Respond, Ky,” he demands.
Reluctantly, I say, “I understand.”
I lie on his bed, him beside me. The twin mattress fits us comfortably, causing us to be close, the way we’ve both grown to like it. He wraps his arm around me, and I lie on my side with my chin on his shoulder.
“I don’t know how you do it,” he says, desolate.
“Do what?”
He takes in a breath, and releasing it, he answers, “Make me go against my better judgment.”
“Why concern yourself with the how if it won’t go past tonight? If you want me to walk around tomorrow and days after that like you don’t exist and we honestly shared nothing. Like we have nothing.”
“You have nothing with no one, remember?”
Exactly. I’m supposed to have nothing with no one, and here I am, lying next to him close and comfortably. Even as this monster truck rolls around in my stomach, and I shiver. “Right.”
“Your brother’s going to have me on his hit list.”
“Not before me.”
“Maybe.” He falls silent then asks, “Why Kylie, just please tell me why?” voice raising.
“Hush, you’re speaking loud. It’s late. We will not make pointless conversation if we are nothing. We will not fall deeper into each other, as you put it, if tomorrow this never happened.”
“Just tell me.”
“You know everything else. Pretend like you know that too or I’ll just leave,” I say unintentionally irritable.
All these feelings with him are irritating. Irritation, curiosity, happiness, distress, and the worst. The one that won’t let me just walk away: contentment. All these things I’m supposed to ignore, this body was built specifically to overcome these feelings. But I guess that means nothing for the mind. My mind, which was generated differently by the ones who sent us here.
Breathing, I hesitantly kiss his neck. “You put me at ease. That’s it. I like you, and you hold my attention. Don’t try to uncover me, Marc.”
“Okay, Ky. Then I’ll talk about something else because I’m not going to be able to sleep.”
“Okay, just don’t move.” This position is comfortable unlike when I sleep beside Luke, which is never comfortable, I’ve just grown used to it being the only way I can sleep—him clutching my head as though it were a football. Beside Marc, I’m light as a pile of dust sinking through fingers and being taken up by the wind. I’ve never been held, and these emotions contradict everything he says. But I do understand, and I know he means them. He must.
I just need to mean them too.
“Why do you still have nightmares? What makes you fearful about what happened so long ago?”
“I can’t answer that. And I’m not fearful. It’s something I can’t control.”
“You have never slept alone since?”
“No.”
He nods. “I bet Luke hates that.”
“Tonight is the first night I haven’t slept with him since we were kids. I’m sure he’s lonely.”
“I don’t think he’s lonely,” he snorts. “But yes, he may miss you crowding his space.”
I tangle my fingers with the hem of his shirt. “Am I crowding your space?”
“No, Ky.”
The room falls silent again. I wait a bit before I break it. “You have scars on your back.”
He shifts uncomfortably, saying, “Sean and I aren’t always around each other. I got jumped by three Waulers. It was nasty. I was bleeding all over the place from them chopping me up, and I took a couple of shots.”
“Where was Sean?”
“I don’t know. Gone.” His shoulder jumps in a shrug. “I know how to take care of myself. We don’t need to be up each other’s asses.” An edge of frustration is in his response, making his voice raspier.
“He would’ve had to be gone for days.”
He sucks in a breath and releases it, saying, “After a few days with our stand-in father, Sean came back, and he didn’t.”
I want to ask what happened with his dad, but on the other hand, I don’t. We don’t talk about our stand-in parents, that personal, hands-on opportunity granted to the volunteers who opt in to raise Creations as their own children. They teach us the basics, building a relationship with us so that we acknowledge there are others in the world other than our twins who require our attention. They impose a realization that we, as Creations, must care enough about the people to protect them, even if that means protecting them from themselves. “You took care of your mom?”
“Yes, and now, no one takes care of her,” he says in a gripping way as though he’d want it another way, though we know we aren’t going to be with our stand-in parents forever. His discontent with this may be because of the Zombies and our determination to protect, especially something—someone—we care about.
I nod, remaining silent. I’m not a good comforter. I don’t know the right things to say or how to convey remorse. But I remember hugging him and him thanking me like I thought to do him. He’s broken, like me, and maybe his fear lies in leaving his mom. “Why did you move from Chicago?” I ask to see if he will give me a clue.
“Sean and I wanted more training, and with Separation around the corner, my mother couldn’t live in our area of Chicago alone. They would have killed her days after we left. You don’t really know how ruthless my city is. Where we visited was the better part. Sean and I protected her, and if we were gone, leaving her there, it would have had a bad ending, and I would have known nothing.” He rubs his hand over his chin. “Moving across the states and growing higher in ranking put more credits in our accounts, which qualified her for a move to Highrum. As long as the Guidance and Trade kept their word, she will be safer. I hope
.”
“I see,” I say.
It’s suspicious for anyone to want to kill the mother of Creations, especially those ranked as high as Marc and Sean. The Guidance would make sure she’s protected with these two around or not. They promised this.
“Yours?”
“My mom?”
“Yes.”
“My parents died a little over five years ago. We left, caring about no one, having no one but each other to look out for or worry about.”
“You lost both your parents?”
“Sure did.”
“That’s how you ended up with your aunt and uncle.”
“Yes, and my aunt remaining.” I move my arm over his stomach and cuff his side. “Your fear lies within your mother,” I state. “And hate within your father’s departure.”
“You’re getting too personal, Ky.”
I sit up on my elbow and look down at him. “You were asking the same moments ago.”
“I wasn’t. My question was how you can still have fear in something that happened years ago and will never happen again.”
I study him, and he does the same. He rubs his hand along my arm that was cuffed at his side and is now helping hold my weight. We capture each other. The look of unusual captivation that lies in his eyes reflect in my own.
“Can I kiss you again?” The words are a whisper, nervously slipping from me. The different ways I feel when he kisses me. It’s all so different and affectionate.
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“If I try, will you push me away?” I hold my breath, waiting for his rejection.
But it never comes as he grabs my neck, reeling me in to him. His kiss is broken and hesitant, and mine is shy but aching to pour into him.
He moves my right leg over him, and his hands rub up my thighs to my hips. An odd anxiety takes my breath, causing me to breathe rapidly as my heart pounds roughly against my chest. I try to steady my breaths and anxious heart rate, kissing him slower. Leaving an inch of space between our lips before they meet again.
His kiss says words he doesn’t, and I’m floating even while feeling him under me and my hands pressed firmly against his mattress. A slow, almost unnoticed tug on my hips lowers me, and that line I said I wouldn’t approach dangles in front of me, fueling the temptation.
Imminent Threat Page 26
