She looked at Mara like she was air. Like she could finally hope for some happiness and some sanity in her life that isn’tjust about survival or some transaction. It seems the weeks Vi’s spent with us, the nights where she stopped fighting and started reaching for us, were just things she’sendured. Not chosen. Endured. That shit does not feel good.
And Mara is proof of that. Because you don’t look at someone with that much relief unless everything else in your life is shit.
This shouldn’t bother me.Shouldn’t.
I don’t operate on approval. I don’t need Vi to want this arrangement, but I do need her to survive it. Whether she looks at me with heat or hatred is irrelevant to whether she’s breathing tomorrow.
That’s what I tell myself. I almost believe it.
Almost. Except for the image I can’t shake, that of Vi’s face when she pulled that woman against her chest. Eyes closed. Arms locked. Every wall she’d built inside the Rot collapsing in a single second because someone frombeforeshowed up.
Is that all it takes?
Goddammit, I’ve touched her. I’ve held her. I’ve pressed her against walls and pulled sounds out of her she’d never admit to in the light of day.
She’s never once had that look on her face.
I turn back to the mattress. Vi’s watching me, her hand locked in Mara’s, chin up, shoulders back—and everything about her posture saysTry to take this from me.
5
STING
I’mfour steps from the mattress when Vi stands.
Not slowly. Not carefully. She pops up and crosses the room to put herself directly in my path with her shoulders squared and every line of her body broadcasting a frequency I’ve come to know too well.
Fight.
“You can’t decide this without me,” she says.
Her voice is low and controlled, the kind that takes great effort. I can see it in the tendons of her neck, how her hands hang at her sides with her fingers curled, not yet in fists, but they could be at any moment.
Behind her, Mara watches from the mattress, still but alert. She has the sense to stay out of this, which tells me she’s smarter than some of her actions might suggest.
“This is a security decision that impacts more than just you,” I say.
“She’smyfriend. She came here forme. That makes it mine. Or at least, my input.”
“That makes it complicated, Vi. It doesn’t make it yours.”
Her eyes flash. There it is, the flare I’ve watched ignite a dozen times since she entered the Rot. The heat that makes her reckless. The thing that draws me to her and makes me want to pin her to the nearest wall and fuck her until she shuts that mouth of hers.
“You see threats everywhere. You’re paranoid,” she snaps. “Every little thing you didn’t plan for is a crack in your carefully constructed world. You can’t go through life like that?—”
“That paranoia, as you call it, is why you’re still breathing.”
The words come out sharper than I intend. But I don’t care.
Vi’s chin lifts. “Don’t do that, Sting.”
“Do what?”
“Take credit for my survival. I’m not alive because of your paranoia. I’m alive because I adapt. Because I learn the rules and I follow them. You protect me. I’m not ungrateful. But you don’t get to use it as a weapon every time I disagree with you.”
She’s good at this. She’s always been good at this, finding the precise angle that turns a defensive position into an offensive one. I present a fact; she reframes it as a power play. I state a condition; she turns it into an accusation. It’s just a different kind of debate than mine.
The kind I can’t match.
