I push away from the tree, every nerve of mine alive in the damp night air, but no longer out of control, not the way I was in the car. “After that, either all this shit is over and done with, or we’re stuck here forever.”
“And your father?”
“Prison. At a minimum.”
“And at maximum?”
I meet his gaze in the dark. “I think we both know what he’s earned.”
A smile that looks like it’s made of poison twists across his face. “Understood.”
As I march toward the cabin, two guards exiting as I go in, I focus on the weight of the evening air on my skin, the metallic scent of blood that’s seeped so deep into thefoundation that I might as well be entering a coin museum, and on the beads of sweat that still trickle down my back, my body overwhelmed but my mind set.
The only way out is forward. And the only way forward is built on trust.
Chapter 18
Trips
Class on Monday makes my skin itchy. It’s been long enough since I’ve been around people that I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’ll scream.
Or worse, not be able to scream, the solitude and blank walls having already absorbed all the sound I was capable of.
I make it through my lecture, grateful there isn’t any group work, then follow Falk down the hall, the cacophony making the ringing in my brain worse.
Falk turns on the radio on the drive back, glancing in the mirror to see if I react. Honestly, I’m not sure how to react right now. Instead, I let the old-school guitar riffs float over me, struggling to keep myself in my body, both the same and different as when my anger takes over. But I pick out every shade of orange, yellow, red, and brown I see clinging to the trees we pass, tapping out the beat to the music even if Idon’t know it, the leather under my fingertips soft and sun warmed.
Last night was a fucking nightmare, but I made it. The whistleblower got to live, and I didn’t have to beat another man to death with my bare fists.
Wins all around.
Fuck, this shit is hard. But I need Mattie out of this hellhole before Father marries her off to the highest bidder. Clara’s faith in the plan is strong enough that I can almost imagine a world without the specter of my father hanging over every action, every goddamn choice I’ve ever made, waiting for me to fuck up enough to lock me to him forever.
I might be in a cage, but Clara’s promised me a key if I just sit here long enough. And I have to be a man worthy of her faith in me. Even if staying present as we hit rush hour traffic and our drive slows to a crawl is a battle that doesn’t seem worth winning.
After those first few weeks of shock wore off when we ran, after I got my hand strung back together, Clara proclaimed we needed to learn from each other. So, while we were all still a wreck physically, we focused on the fine art of grifting, reading people and situations, how to identify fake IDs and forged art, how to access the dark web and use open-source intelligence techniques. Clara came up with a written code, got herself therapy and came home every week with books for the rest of us to read about recovering from trauma, managing ADHD, or processing rage.
All this while cobbling together the tiniest cash line from Jansen busking and Walker selling his first sketches. Then, of course, she added more to the agenda. Climbing,running, swimming, scuba diving, fighting, shooting, motorcycles, anything she could think of that might make or break our chance out of this mess, we taught each other.
She was planning what we would do next. But with the desert sun turning the freckles on my arms into blobs of brown, with my hand still weak and sensitive, with my anger still threatening to drown me, I couldn’t see it.
I do now.
When she sat us down and sketched out the start of the plan, I wasn’t the only one who told her it was full of stupid risks.
It is. So damn full of stupid risks and even stupider contingencies that there’s no way it won’t come together exactly the way she’s imagined. No more leash, no more threats, no impossible decisions between running with a girl I’ve been falling for since the first time she knocked down my rich boy facade and made me show her the real me, and saving my kid sister from a world that sees her as nothing but a game piece on my father’s board.
The brown, end of autumn leaves cartwheel across the driveway as I roll down my window, the pungent smell reminding me of last night, of the conversation Falk and I had, and I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. He’s willing to work with us. Now we have to communicate what we need from him without my father figuring out what we’re up to. He stops the car at the bottom of the steps, and I swallow back the instinctual disgust at seeing the now clean stones, still not knowing if Jansen is okay.
I’ve had a lot of time to think these last few weeks. Too much time. One thing became crystalline to me though—theguys are more than friends or business partners. They have been more than that for longer than I would have admitted to myself even a few months ago.
There isn’t a word for what we have. Some sort of combination of brother, family, and fellow soldier. Losing any of them would shatter not just me, but the unit.
Part of me must have guessed how intertwined we all were as soon as Clara came crashing into our lives. It’s why I didn’t want her anywhere near them. She could have destroyed us. If things had happened differently, in a different order, if she’d been a different woman, she would have.
And I don’t think any of us would have known how to fight for each other then. Because none of us had fully realized how connected we were. Not just by circumstance, or contract, but this nameless love that feels a lot like sitting down on a couch and putting your feet up, releasing the frustrations of the day with a simple exhalation, finally safe to relax, if only for a little bit.
We have each other’s backs. And now Clara has all of ours.
