by C. S. Starr
Tal looked at her curiously. “It is important, especially since I’m not sure I can trust my cousin.”
“No?” Lucy shook her head. “Oh right. She’s sleeping with the enemy.”
“Well, according to the two of them, it was just once.” He frowned. “Anyway, not important. I think she’s okay.”
“It could be important.” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “So I think you’re right. He’s probably responsible.” She buried her face in her hands. “Shit.”
“You know what Andrew’s done—”
“I know he was upset, and he reacted.”
“He burned down Washington.”
Lucy avoided his eyes. “I can’t carry that on my shoulders.”
“I didn’t say you had to.”
“I will though,” she said with a sigh as she reached for her map. “So Nevada and East. That’s an odd match.”
Tal nodded, peering over her shoulder at her tattered map. She flinched at his breath on her shoulder. “It’s not like they own the Midwest. We were there. Maybe it’s just an isolated alliance?”
“An Atlantic City—Vegas asshole gambling connection, maybe?”
“Could be,” Tal said thoughtfully. “They could have been trading all along, although we were supplying them with a lot.”
“We need to depose Connor before they get too far, otherwise they’ll be in a better position to do it. Then I guess we negotiate with Nevada and either let them join East or talk them into siding with us.”
“That’s a lot of ‘we’s’ and ‘ours.’” Tal moved back a step. “We want an alliance with you. We don’t want a takeover.”
“So you’re a ‘we’ now? With the pilot’s woman?” Lucy raised her eyebrows.
“I’m a ‘we’ with a million and a half kids that live in West.” A confused look crossed Tal’s face, which he followed up with a smile. “You’re a funny girl, Lucy Campbell.”
“Why?”
“Because you think I’m going to let you run the show.”
“Now that you’ve got a taste for power?” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “You think you want more?”
“You forget I’ve managed West’s finances for almost the last ten years. I may not have had absolute power, but—”
“You had enough to really fuck things up for people.”
“I was going to say it was enough for me to realize that absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He pointed at the map and changed the subject. “They must have made some connections in the Midwest, or along the Gulf Coast.”
Lucy looked at him curiously. “So what’s your end game then?”
“Higher taxes and a proper democracy.”
“So you’ll win it and then you’ll step down?”
“If the people don’t want me, yeah.” He leaned on the corner of the desk. “I don’t need this shit if I’m not wanted. I’ve got enough money to find something else to occupy my time, as long as I can sleep at night.”
“Bold.”
“You want to do this forever? I’d rather sit back and take an advisory role eventually.”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. There’s a long way to go.”
He shrugged. “It’s good to have a dream.”
For a long time, Lucy’s dream had been Heidi Klum circa 2001 in a bikini, an image taken from a faded poster Andrew had scrounged from somewhere. Now, it alternated between murdering the most important people in East and a threesome with Zoey and Tal.
She was fairly certain that neither was very healthy.
When she realized Tal was staring at her, she shook her head. “I’d never let it go unless it was to someone I thought could do a better job than me.”
“Then why did you let Andrew—”
“Shut up,” she snapped, reaching for a ruler. “Don’t act like this is a normal week. My other half is dead. Here I am sharing a bed with you, while the person I’d prefer to be with is probably fucking my oldest friend.”
Lucy felt the hairs on her neck stand up from the look Tal gave her.
“I don’t want to sleep with you. If you’ll recall,” he replied snottily, “you crawled into bed with me last night. I’m trying to work together like adults to further our own interests, and the interests of all the kids that depend on us to be the adults.” She saw from his expression that what she’d said had cut deep. “That’s why I came here. I’m not an idiot. I know I’m not your type, and you know what? You’re not mine either.”
Lucy’s face went red and her nostrils twitched as she bit her tongue to keep from making a comment about his incestuous relationship with his cousin. She turned back to her map and lined the ruler up between the territories she had marked East and Vegas. “So we need to cut off their supply line to Vegas.”
“That’s a good plan.”
“Yep,” she replied curtly. “It is. I’ll send Chubs and a crew down to investigate and see if Red Cloud can assist.”
“You’ll take care of it?”
“It helps me too,” she snapped. “And if we are working together, that’s what I can do. You’ll have your own civil war to fight with Connor. I can do this.”
“That’s nice of you.”
“I’m sure I’ll need a favour from you someday.” She folded up her map abruptly, shoving it in her drawer. “I’m going to go tend to my cows.”
She ushered Tal out of the room and locked it behind her, before stomping off to the front door and reaching for a puffy floor-length coat.
“What am I supposed to—”
“I don’t care,” she muttered. “Plan your war. Whatever.”
Lucy wasn’t sure what she found so frustrating about Tal. Perhaps it was the knowledge that at any time he could fuck her over, just like Connor was fucking him over. There was no certainty in trust; especially when it came to people one wasn’t related to.
She hadn’t been to the barn since she found out Cole died. They’d tended their cows together, a small herd of mixed dairy and beef started from a few of Angela Duncan’s they’d taken that first spring. Someone had brought them in since the air was cold and they huddled together in the large open barn built to keep them alive through the harsh winters. Quietly chomping, they were unaware that they were never going to see again the person that had helped birth most of them.
Lucy let herself into the large open pen and climbed on top of one of the round hay bales that they were picking away at. She’d always enjoyed the simplistic nature of caring for the cows, keeping them fed and watered, milking them when it was required. She didn’t get to do it as much as she had before Campbell’s expansion, but they’d always made a point of visiting them, her and Cole.
That would never happen again.
“He loved you guys,” she said. “I hope you know that.”
Ness, one of the older cows, eyed her curiously and nudged her boot with her big pink nose.
“He’s…he’s not coming back. I tried to talk, and no one would talk, and now Andrew’s gone and killed a lot of people because he was angry, and I didn’t stop him.” She felt tears well up in her eyes. “And I miss him. I feel like I lost a limb. Maybe more than one. Maybe two. I’m not sure I know how to be myself without him.”
Claude, a calf from the summer before, lowed at her. He’d been small when he was born, and she and Cole had nursed him back to health. She looked at him and he blinked back at her, his dark eyes saying a lot.
Cole wouldn’t want her to lose herself. He’d want her to go on and live for both of them. He’d want her to have fun, and laugh, and be happy. The rest of it, all the politics, it was always secondary to Cole, because Lucy took care of that. Lucy realized the opposite had always been true of her, but it had never necessarily been what she wanted.
***
Tal had just tugged his shirt off when he turned around to see Lucy standing in the door.
“I’m going to bed,” she said quietly as she leaned in the doorframe.
“If you’re trying to tell me something,
you should probably just say it,” Tal mumbled, pulling his shirt back on. “I’m beat and not very intuitive, and you’re all over the fucking place.”
“I want you to come with me.”
“You want me to sleep in the bed in the room that you share with your very serious girlfriend, who—as you so kindly reminded me earlier—is who you prefer?” He raised his eyebrows. “No thanks.”
“Of course it’s my preference.” She crossed her arms. “It’s been my preference since I was twelve and decided I needed to have one. If we’re…it’s because you’re the exception, not the rule.”
Tal’s heart thudded deep in his chest as he processed her words and omissions. “I don’t want to sleep in your room.”
“I don’t want to sleep in my dead brother’s room.” She sighed. “We’re done. Zoey and me. Why wouldn’t she be here if we weren’t?”
“Because you’re not exactly a ray of sunshine right now.”
“Relationships aren’t sunshine dependent, or at least they shouldn’t be.” She nodded at her door. “She knew.”
“Knew what?”
“She knew that things weren’t as simple as they’d once been, after I came back. She knew.”
Tal flinched as she reached for his hand.
“Knew what?” he repeated, his tone softer.
“That what happened, it changed a lot.” Lucy tugged a little, and he followed her this time, into her room. “This is my room. She stayed here, but it was always mine first.” She dropped his hand and sat on the bed.
Tal shrugged and sat down beside her, looking around her space. She had a few frames on the walls, abstract things, landscape paintings and photographs of younger versions of Campbell’s cast of characters that he’d come to know. “I don’t know what you want,” he said bluntly. “You’re sending mixed messages.”
“Maybe I don’t know what I want,” she muttered. “So it’s hard to send a clear message.”
Tal reached for her hand. “I keep looking at you and seeing your brother for the briefest second, which is really weird.”
“It’s the hair.”
“It’s not that. You look softer. Kinder. It’s that, when you’re not telling me off for no reason.” He lay her hand palm down on his chest. “I can handle the hair.”
She took a minute to relax at his proximity before inching closer. “You remember him? Cole?”
“Of course I do,” Tal replied, his eyes memorizing her face. “I remember when you first walked in together and he would have given us the moon if we’d made a good enough case.”
“You should have known him. I…I made a lot more sense when contrasted against him.”
Cara had told Tal the same thing a few hours earlier. He buried his hands in Lucy’s dark hair and locked eyes with her. “I want to be important to you. It doesn’t have to be here,” he nodded at the bed. “It can be in friendship, or politics. I feel like we have a lot of potential, but it’s the kind of potential that could go in any number of ways. Wherever we take it.”
She nodded at him and blinked back a tear, stopping it before it ran down her cheek and revealed how much he affected her.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Lucy admitted. “I don’t know how to do what I want and put everything that’s happened aside, and be here with you and just be here.”
“Is this what you want?” He enunciated every word carefully as he watched her face.
She nodded, slowly and deliberately.
“Okay,” he nodded back, taking a deep breath. “Okay.”
She spread her fingers out on his chest and placed her palm over his heart. It beat away with the strength and confidence of something that didn’t know it could fail.
“What are you thinking?” she squeaked.
“I’d like to kiss you,” he whispered. “And I still don’t really know what you’re feeling, so if you could tell me, that would be good.”
She closed her eyes and inched a little closer, which Tal took as a green light, and, like he’d done with much more confidence that night in the woods, he pressed his mouth against hers. She responded in kind and within seconds, any uncertainty either of them had vanished as their unusual chemistry took over.
She smiled against his mouth. Tal kept his hands settled on her face, deciding to wait until he was invited to touch her the way he wanted to. He knew being with her would always be different from other girls, and his expectations couldn’t be the same. He decided he’d have to be patient, as her hands awkwardly traveled his torso, avoiding any obviously arousing areas. He wondered if she knew that avoiding those areas was possibly more of a turn on than her just getting right down to it. Maybe this was part of how women slept together, he thought fleetingly. Maybe everything was slower; less of a race to the finish. He knew there was also the possibility that he repulsed her, not because of anything he’d done, but simply because of what he was.
Her hands eased up his shirt and brushed against his back, causing him to shiver. When she kissed him back, he forgot all but the most basic and important of things. It was nice letting someone else lead for a while, especially in such an agreeable direction. Lucy’s face flushed as he stroked her cheeks with his thumbs.
“This, it’s very…I didn’t think this was how I’d spend my evening,” Tal chuckled.
“Right?” She squeezed her eyes shut and smiled. “I think we’re both treading in unexpected places.”
She initiated their next kiss, drawing his face to hers as their lips met once more.
“Lucy?” Cara said, knocking tentatively before walking in wide-eyed as Lucy pulled away and put inches between herself and Tal. “Sorry…I…” She shook her head. “I should have—”
“It’s fine,” Tal stammered, his fingers on his lips as he realized how strange what they were doing would seem to anyone else. “We were just—”
Lucy was a delicious shade of red, Tal noticed, and Cara’s stunned reaction matched hers exactly.
“What is it, Care?” Lucy finally said, her brow furrowed.
“Tal’s pilot, he’s out there fighting with some guy I don’t know.” She blinked at the two of them. “This is nice. I like this,” she said awkwardly. “It’s good.”
Tal adjusted his shirt and noticed shouting off in the distance. “Why are they fighting?”
“I like him, I think,” Lucy said, her eyes on Cara as if Tal wasn’t there. “I think I’m as surprised as you probably are.”
“I’m not that surprised,” she said with a little shrug. “But the fighting. We should probably go see about the fighting. No one’s breaking them up.”
Tal glanced at Lucy sadly before bounding down the stairs and out the front door.
“That asshole was putting sugar in my gas tank!” Otis shouted, shoving a kid Tal didn’t know a few feet from the house. “You know how hard that shit is to get out, motherfucker?”
Eyes were black and noses were bloodied. A few kids stood back and watched, but no one stepped in as Otis picked up the boy and threw him to the ground.
“That’s Craig. Angela’s boyfriend. He’s from East,” Lucy mumbled to Cara, who found herself awkwardly wedged between her and Tal. “I’m sure she’ll be barking over here in a minute.”
“She hasn’t come to send her regrets about Cole,” Cara tisked. “And he’s from East, pouring sugar in West’s gas tank?”
Lucy and Tal exchanged a look as Otis continued pummelling him.
“Otis,” Tal called. “Let it go.”
“Fuck that. Asshole tried to break my plane.” He threw him down once more.
“You’re dead,” Craig gasped. “All of you, and you don’t even know it.”
“Why were you doing that? Trying to keep them here?” Lucy asked. “Tell me, and I’ll keep him off you.”
Craig looked between Tal and Otis and chuckled as he spit out a tooth. “You think he doesn’t know you’re here?”
Tal’s gut dropped as things came into focus. He was Connor. “I’ve
got to get back,” he said, glancing at Lucy. “I’ve already been here too long—”
Lucy nodded. “We need to go.”
“You don’t—”
“Bull and Zoey are heading there. I’m going,” she said with finality. “We’ll leave tonight?” she asked Otis.
“I need to drain my gas tank first,” he grumbled.
“Chubs, lock Craig and Angela up in the jail.” She reached for Cara’s hand and stared into her eyes. “I need you to take care of things while I’m away. I’ll call. Tell Andrew to work defensively instead of offensively until I know more. Please…make him understand.”
Cara nodded. “I’ll be okay.”
Lucy leaned in and kissed her forehead. “I’ll call.”
She packed light, Tal noted in the rush that ensued. It wasn’t until they were up in the air that they both took a deep breath.
“What if we didn’t have to go to war with East?” Lucy said, burying her face in her hands. “What if it was all unnecessary, and we should have been going to war with you? He could have taken…” She blinked back tears. “West could have orchestrated everything.”
“I would have known,” Tal said, with a large degree of uncertainty. “I would have known if he had your brother.”
“Just like you knew he had us both kidnapped?” Lucy raised her eyebrows critically. “You didn’t know what was going on under your nose any more than I did.”
“Leah knew I was here. Leah and Rika. That’s it.”
“Well, and Craig. Campbell’s small.”
***
It was well after two in the morning when they arrived at Rika’s house, after careful deliberation on Tal’s part in terms of who he could trust. She ushered them in and locked the door behind them. It took a second for Tal to realize she wasn’t alone either.
“Someone broke four of my windows last night,” she said, nodding at three of Juan’s largest cousins. “I think we’re busted. I’m going north to San Fran in the morning and we’ll work from there.” She sat on the couch. “I’ve got my kids to think about.”
