“So, not that much of an exchange,” I mutter, knowing our first-choice candidates are off the list.
His steps continue behind me, and I turn, not liking him out of my sight. He leans against his desk, his safe disguised as a drawer, one hand lazily spinning through a cup of his fancy red pens, the rattle metallic and oddly threatening. “I assume you can’t snap your fingers and find me what I need.”
“You assume correctly.”
He tosses me a phone, and I barely catch it before it smacks me in the face, a vivid reminder of the ring box he threw at me nearly a year ago. He smiles, a trap with teeth.
“I’m assuming everything on this phone is monitored?”
He lifts his glass, tilting it so the liquor coats his closed lips, then licking them clean.
“I’ll be going then,” I say, not wanting to stay any longer than I must.
“Ms. McElroy?” he calls, my hand stalled on the door handle. “It’s a pity you weren’t born a man.”
Even with two doors and two floors between us, his praise settles like a blight on my soul.
Tuesday morning, they let Trips into my room early, and we do what we know we were put together to do. But afterwards, he bundles me close, and all I want to do is cry.
I’ve been strong. I’ll keep being strong. But damn if I don’t want to be anymore. Just for five minutes, I want to break, to prove to myself through my weakness that I’m still me. That I’m not a totally different person. That I’m not a cold, strategic mind, but a girl doing her damnedest to keep the people she loves safe.
But it’s not the time. And when Trips tilts my head up to look at him, he sees it, somehow, in my face, kissing first my forehead, then each cheek, before settling against my lips, so goddamn sweet that my heart breaks. But he whispers what’s become our secret battle-cry, “Fear and fury, Crash.”
I nod against his chest, and we both get up and ready for the day, our silence frighteningly normal after months here.
Yesterday was Walker’s birthday, and I missed it.
Before, when we were planning this, I’d asked him about it, about me missing his birthday, and he’d said it was better that way. And I’d pushed, needing to know what it was about his birthday that made it so terrible.
I’d been shoving tinfoil-wrapped bundles of food he handed me into the fire, a strange way of cooking that worked bestwhen it was too hot to cook in the camper, but we wanted more than sandwiches.
“It’s not important,” he’d said.
“But it is, if it bothers you so much.”
He’d turned away, leaving me to stare at his profile while he watched Fluffington stalk a ground squirrel that had yet to notice the danger. Fluffington’s tail twitched, the squirrel swiveled toward the motion, and then with a flash of gray and the scream of a terrified rodent, he pounced. He missed. Mostly. A tiny tail dangled from his jaws as he pranced back, proud of his prize.
Animals don’t suffer from moral quandaries.
Walker had turned, handing me the last packet, squatting down beside me. “I don’t want to tell you. I don’t want to tell anybody.” He stared at the fire, his face oddly still. “But maybe Ishouldtell you. Maybe it’ll help or something. I told you I’d be more open.” Sighing, he’d closed his eyes, like whatever came next was too big to see and hear at the same time. “It’s me. I know it is. I’m the problem. It’s like I’m two people. One is bold, brash, and confident enough to do exactly what I do and know I won’t get caught. That I’m good enough to be uncatchable. But there’s this other side of me. And it’s little, and sad, and it just wants my parents to be proud of me. And they’re not. I don’t think they ever will be. And it hurts.”
I’d stayed quiet, knowing there was more coming. Walker had picked up a stick, poking at one packet half-heartedly.
“It started when we were younger. On our birthdays, my parents would list off all the accomplishments we’d had over the past year. It was the one day where they bragged about ustous, you know? When Marshall went to college, it switchedfrom a celebration around the table to a text in the family group chat. And every year, my brothers have these amazing, glowing lists of accomplishments. And every year, I’ve got nothing. The last two years, my parents haven’t even texted to wish me happy birthday until late in the day, like they’re too embarrassed by me to even celebrate me at all. Like the old saying, if you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all. Only it’s about me.”
“Walker—”
“I don’t know if that’s it. I don’t want to ask. It’s better not to know for sure that they’re disappointed in me than to have them straight up tell me I’ve done nothing worth celebrating.”
I hadn’t known what to say. Instead, I’d leaned against him, both of us toppling over onto the dirt. Fluffington had sprawled across both of us before we’d got back up, his purrs ruined by the tail still dangling from his lips. “Ew, cat, I don’t want your animal parts by my face,” I’d whined while Walker tried to dislodge twenty pounds of cat from us.
We’d laughed, and moved on, but yesterday, it was all I could think about as I wandered campus, a vigilant guard at my back—that he believes he isn’t worth celebrating. When that is the farthest thing from the truth.
I need to talk to him. To make sure yesterday wasn’t awful. I have to tell them about the phone and what I’m being asked to do in exchange for one of them coming to our wedding and space for Summer to stand beside me.
A virtual stranger will be my maid of honor while my real best friend is locked down until either we’re free, or we’re stuck forever. At least I’d given Summer a heads up she might be one of my attendants.
Trips and I get bundled into the back of the SUV as usual, but today’s guard is the jumpy one. And a plan comes to me. One that only works with Trips playing along, and Falk pretending not to know what I’m up to.
