How much are you willing to give just to keep the light on, Talon?
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“What is it?” she asks, tucking a leg beneath herself. She tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and I catch the still-healing split across her knuckle from the night with the broken glass.
You could have prevented that cut.
“We need to talk,” I repeat. I need to say something, anything. If I stop pushing the words out, they’ll just clot and rot in my throat, and I’ll let this—this…leeching off of her—keep going.
“About what?”
“About you leaving,” I say. I try to soften it with a charming smile. It feels like I fail, but I don’t. My face still moves the way it always does. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what a girl like you is even doing here and—”
“No.” Her chin lifts a millimeter.
“Hey, hear me out, honey—”
“Don’t call me ‘honey.’” She frowns. “You’ve never called me that before.”
She’s right. I never have.
“I’m trying to make this easy,” I say instead. “You should be on the first bus out. Head north, lose your phone, change your name. New place, new job. Somewhere with clean air and no men like me.”
“I don’t want clean air,” she says. “And I don’t want men like you, plural. I wantyou.”
That lands where it shouldn’t. I sit up too fast, stitches yanking fire through my side.
What is she saying…?
We’ve never been this explicit before. I knew she liked me, or thought I was hot, or felt sorry for me, or… something. But for her to want me…?
Her gaze locks with mine. It’s unflinching, clear, and brutally sincere. There’s not one ounce of bullshit in it.
“I…” I break away, glance at the wall, the floor, anywhere that isn’t her. “Come on, you can’t mean that. We’ve known each other for, what, five minutes?”
I hear my own voice and hate it.
I’m a jerk.
I’m such a jerk.
“I mean it,” she says. “I knew what you were the first night. I’m not stupid.”
“That makes one of us,” I mutter.
“Don’t turn me into some dumb girl, Talon. I’m serious.”
That’s exactly the problem.
Sheis.
I swing my legs over the edge of the bed and stand too fast. Pain rips white-hot through my flank. Good. I need it.
“You should go,” I say. “You openly spat in Rey’s crew’s face. There’s no going back from that. They do awful things to people who don’t fall back in line.”
“You didn’t fall in line,” she counters. “What about you?”
“I’m with Fisher, Rhea. That’s something else entirely.”
