I sighed. “Maybe there is no point.”
A long silence passed before she said, “I want to help you through this.”
I finally met her gaze. Within it, I could see the compassion, the desire to fix me. “I don’t know how you could. Maybe… With some time…”
Her eyes grew bright. “Well,” she said, her voice a bit more wobbly. “At least you’re here now. I’ve missed you. Being with your people is good for you.”
A powerful urge to spill it all washed over me. I wanted to open my mouth and tell her everything—my thoughts of death, my panic attacks, my secret mission with a Blood Colonel whose mysteries had become my sole reason for living. I wanted to explain to her why my muscles were sore and where I’d obtained the suspiciously finger-shaped bruise on my arm.
What would she do?
Would she pity me? Tell me to stop? Wish me well?
Would she worry over me? Thank me?
I’d never know.
Because I couldn’t tell her.
The secret was mine, and spilling it would lose the Defiance its biggest advantage. In this, as in everything else, I was utterly alone.
I set my teacup down. “I think I should go.”
She straightened. “No. Please stay. We can talk about anything you’d like.”
Easing back into my chair, I studied her hopeful face and nodded. She turned the conversation to bland matters—a novel she thought I’d like, the patient in room four who never failed to demand a glass of orange juice, a commodity we didn’t have. I actually giggled when she confessed that the soldier in room six came on to her every time she checked on him.
“His lines are so cheesy,” she whispered, a glint of humor in her eye.
“Tell me his best one,” I said through a round of genuine chuckles.
She bit her lip and leaned closer. “Yesterday, he said, ‘You must’ve went a long way when you fell.’ And I just looked at him, so he said, ‘Because you’re like an angel in hell.’”
A bark of laughter burst from my mouth, and I slapped a hand over it. “Is he cute?”
“He’s your age! He looks like a baby.”
As the conversation wore on, the knot in my chest eased, and smiling grew easier. It was only later, when I lay in bed and decided that my day hadn’t been terrible, that I realized Zara had been right. Being with my people was good for me. My body felt lighter. Brighter.
But it wouldn’t last. It never did.
Andthatwas why I avoided them. If I didn’t care, their deaths wouldn’t hurt so much. I was terrified of the pain my heart was capable of suffering.
There was a reason they called it crippling fear.
I was utterly crippled. Ruined.
But maybe…
Maybe I wouldn’t always be. Maybe reopening myself to Zara was the first step in regaining my humanity.
Or maybe we were all doomed.
11
Blindside
To question authority is to lend your voice to the hypocrites of the Defiance. Every voice raised for them is a stone thrown at all true Americans.
