“Classified?” he said, eyes wide.
“Yeah. Theo’s orders.”
He gripped my shoulder. “But you’re okay?”
“I’m okay. I promise.”
Since the summer, my involvement with Jayden had dwindled to nothing. He’d tried to sleep with me twice, but he’d been rebuffed both times.
After the third time, he frowned. “Something wrong, Sophia?”
“I just don’t want to anymore.”
He sighed, defeated. “Alright. Yeah. It was fun while it lasted, though.”
“Yeah.”
“Friends then?” He gave me a smile.
I paused. “Friends?” We’d never been friends…
“Yeah, girl.” He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “I’ll take what I can get.”
I blinked in confusion. “Sure. Friends.”
Adam continued to throw me his big grins, but he rarely approached. The lingering glances we exchanged made me think he was just waiting for the maelstrom to hit. Of all my friends, he was the one who seemed to understand my predicament the best.
I was certain he knew.
He just didn’t knowwho.
Following the completion of Lucas’s plan to cut NAO supply lines, the eastern and western Hunter forces divorced. Rumor had it that the Security Restoration Campaign was failing, and the fighting had pushed all the way to the eastern seaboard. As Lucas predicted, Haynes turned his attention to the civil war.
He wanted us gone.
We wanted this over.
The aggression escalated. Tension overtook headquarters, like we walked on tightropes that could snap at any second. Soldiers marched into missions and never returned. Safe houses fell on both sides. Civilians lost their lives trying to flee the urban battlefields.
“I just want it to end,” I whispered into Lucas’s chest while he held me one night in January.
“I know, sweetheart.”
Why did there have to be such pointless hate? I told him about my forest, and when panic clawed at my lungs, he’d murmur into my hair, “Tall trees. Warm rain. Smell of cypress.”
It usually helped, but every day the disquiet would rebuild. Men and women came back from missions with fear and anguish on their faces. I treated their bodily injuries, but I could donothing for the wounds in their minds. Even if the war ended, another would begin—the fight to heal.
Scars existed deep inside all of us—the unhealing wounds of lost faith, broken integrity, bone-deep fear. We’d been so bright and shiny at the beginning, full of life and conviction. We had no idea. None of us had suffered. None of us had known genuine terror.
Good triumphs.That’s what we told ourselves. And we believed it, too.
So stupid.
Now we only wanted to survive, and some of us didn’t even want that.
Medics struggled to keep up with the injuries, and most days we held each other while we sobbed our failures onto a sympathetic shoulder. I lost my own share of patients, and I numbed myself to their deaths as best I could, but I sometimes vomited up my dinner from anxiety. Zara would always hold my hair back, and when she asked if I wanted to talk about it, I never had the words to explain.
“It’s alright, Sophia,” she said. “I get it. Can I give you a hug?”
