“That sounds exhausting.”
“Tell me about it.” She blows her nose again, loudly, another dying goose snort. “And the worst part is that he’s not even doing anything wrong. He’s just being himself. Being kind. Being patient. Being annoyingly, relentlesslythere. And I’m over here acting like a feral cat who got cornered in an alley.”
“I’ve always thought feral cats are very misunderstood creatures,” I offer. “Bad PR. Not their fault.” I scoot closer to her, thigh to thigh, and she rests her head on my shoulder. “Yasmin, we are the way we are because we’ve been hurt before. And we swore we’d never let the world close enough to hurt us again. But the world has a way of worming past your defenses when you’re not paying attention, whether we like it or not. We can fight and build new walls, or we can…”
“Murder the trespassers?” she suggests hopefully.
“I was gonna say, ‘Let love in again,’ but your suggestion does have some merit to it.”
We both laugh, and I realize that I’m crying now, too. Yasmin’s problems are mine, and my problems are hers, and both of us—and both Zeke and Bastian, and now Sage, too—are all caughtup in this nasty, lightless mess with no end in sight. We’re stumbling in the dark. All of us, not just me.
But in times like these, I default to Ye Old Reliables: a.k.a., the motivational posters hung up on the walls of my sixth grade classroom. The one that springs to mind right now was a chain of silhouettes holding hands, with a slogan on the bottom that read,If You Want to Go Fast, Go Alone. If You Want to Go Far, Go Together.
Idowant to go far. Far away from here and this nightmare and this tear-soaked, snotty-tissue-filled bed. There are better days ahead for all five of us, I know it.
We just have to trust each other enough to make it there.
“Hey,” I say, giving Yasmin’s shoulder a squeeze. “Why don’t you go take a shower? Hot water, some of that fancy eucalyptus body wash you like. It’ll help.”
She sniffles. “You think a shower is going to fix this?”
“At the very least, it’ll make you feel like a human being again instead of a swamp creature who’s been marinating in her own tears for the last God knows how long.” I nudge her gently. “Go. Wash the feelings off. Or at least dilute them a little.”
She laughs wetly and stands. “Fine. I’m gonna hog all the hot water so Zeke doesn’t get any.”
“That’s the vengeful spirit I know and love.”
I hear her shuffle toward the bathroom, then the click of the door and the groan of pipes as the water comes on. The lavender incense is still burning on the nightstand, but it’s fading now, mixing with the steam that’s already starting to creep under the bathroom door.
I lean back against the headboard and let out a long breath. The house settles around me—the hum of the air conditioning, the distant murmur of… voices?
I tilt my head, straining to hear. There’s an open window somewhere nearby. Through it, I can just make out Bastian and Zeke talking in the backyard. Their words drift in, fragmented but audible.
“… need leverage,” Zeke is saying. “Real leverage. And to get leverage, we need a threat.”
Bastian hums skeptically. “How exactly do you propose we get that?”
“We feed him to the feds.”
I listen for a while as they brainstorm all the various ways they could try to coerce a Bratva underboss into turning snitch, or install some kind of camera in Aleksei’s hideout, or lure him into a trip, or, or, or… It’s all far-fetched, to say the least, and I know by Bastian’s increasingly doubtful hums—especially when Zeke starts saying he knows a guy who makes great prosthetic noses and mustaches—that none of it has a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
But as I lie there, half-listening to their increasingly desperate schemes, something starts to form in my mind. A thought, fragile as a soap bubble, floating just out of reach.
Leverage,Zeke said.A threat.
Where do we find something like that? Who is accessible enough for us to get to them, pliable enough to be manipulated, and self-serving enough to see the righteousness and/or payoffassociated with our cause? Who else stands to gain if Aleksei Izotov spends the rest of his days rotting in a jail cell?
Almost as soon as I frame the question, the bubble pops. The thought crystallizes.
I know the answer.
I scramble off the bed so fast I nearly trip over my own two feet. I hear Yasmin calling out from the shower to see if I’m okay, but I ignore her and barrel down the hallway. I burst through the back door just as Bastian and Zeke round the corner of the house.
And I plow directly into Bastian.
His arms come up instinctively, catching me before I can bounce off him and land flat on my ass. My palms lie flat against his chest, his hands gripping my upper arms, our bodies aligned in a way that feels far too familiar.
Just like it was the night I first touched him.
