“What would Dash say?” she asked.
“Does it matter?”
She couldn’t answer. It did, but it didn’t.
“I always loved you both as sisters,” he said. “I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love the two of you. You know that. But things change. You looked at me a certain way a while back, and it was as if a light went on in my brain. Everything kind of shifted in my head.”
“A while back?”
He shrugged. “About five years ago.”
“Five years!” she exclaimed. She dropped her voice. “Five years! And you never said anything?”
His blue eyes met hers, and he looked so much younger in that moment. Vulnerable in a way she hadn’t seen in years. Her heart did a little somersault.
“I’m saying it now. I tried not to. I was afraid you didn’t feel the same way, and I’d wreck everything. Besides, there’s a war on, and my job is dangerous, so I decided not to tell you. I figured if I was killed, you could remember me as just a friend, and that’s all. As a brother. If I didn’t make it back, it might be less painful in the long run.”
His words stopped her heart. “If you were killed,” she said softly, “neither Dash nor I would ever recover. You are a part of us just as we are of each other. It’s always been that way. We love you. I don’t think that if I thought of you… romantically, it would be any more or less painful.” She picked up her spoon, poked at a chunk of beef in the stew, then set it down. She’d lost her appetite. “Honestly, I don’t know how I feel. A part of me is screaming that Dash loves you, and I would never ever take you from her. I couldn’t. But you’re saying it’s not like that between the two of you, and I… Even if I allowed myself to feel that way…”
“Allow yourself?”
“You and I are tangled up in so many secrets and lies, I don’t know how we’ll ever straighten things out. Like you said, this war won’t last forever. It can’t. Then what?”
“Then I want to be with you.” He reached for her hand, and his fingers closed around hers. “Listen, Dot. If you don’t feel the same way about me, I’ll let it go. I will never do anything to make you unhappy or uncomfortable. I’ll follow your lead.”
Her heart squeezed with regret, and she pulled her hand away. “I can’t think about it right now, Gus. It’s about more than you and me. You’re not the only one with a dangerous job. Dash is out there flying in a war, never hearing from either of us. What if she thinks we don’t care anymore? What if the unthinkable happens, and she never understands why we abandoned her?”
One of the training techniques Camp X used to toughen their agents up was to have them stand in front of a sheet of bulletproof glass. They were not permitted to flinch when someone shot directly at them. Dot had gone through that exercise. It had terrified her the first time, but after that, something inside her had hardened. Cheating death made her feel as unbreakable as the bulletproof glass itself. It was such an alien feeling that laughter had bubbled up from deep inside. The instructor had ordered her to stop. He wanted no reaction from her. No reaction at all.
To anyone else, it would have appeared that Gus hadn’t reacted to what Dot had just said. He didn’t flinch, and nothing on his face showed the slightest change. But Dot wasn’t anyone else. The pain she saw flash behind his eyes cut right through her. She’d frightened him. She didn’t think she’d ever seen that before.
“Then we’ll write to her,” he decided. “Both of us, separately. And I’ll tell her how I feel about you.”
Neither spoke for a moment.
“Whether you write to her or not,” Gus said, “I’m going to.”
“She probably won’t write back.”
“That doesn’t matter. Not to me. I’m doing what I can. The rest is up to her.”
He was right. Dot drew in a breath. “Don’t tell her about… about you and me, okay?”
“Is there a you and me, Dot?”
Everything was so much easier when she didn’t think about him or about Dash. She thrived when her energy went into the work, not her feelings. This was too much, sitting with him, trying to sort through all the mess in her heart.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I have so much to think about.”
He looked so defeated that she almost cried, but he managed a smile. “I guess that will have to do for now.” He rose. “Listen, I get it. It’s something different for both of us. Whatever you decide, I’m glad we’re talking again, Dot. Our friendship means everything to me.”
“Me, too, Gus. I’m sorry I’ve stayed away.”
She watched him take their trays to the front then walk out of the mess hall, feeling the distance between them stretch like an elastic band. She couldn’t turn away from him any more than she could turn from her sister. Except she had given up on Dash, hadn’t she?
Guilt tore at her for the next twenty-four hours until she couldn’t take it anymore. For the first time in a long time, she brought out her stationery and wrote her sister’s name at the top of the page.The rest is up to her, Gus had said. She took a deep breath then began to write, hoping she was strong enough to face the possibility of never hearing back.
fiftyDASH— Southampton, England —
