“Tai, I think we should let her take the lead.”
“I’m not letting some dumb animal lead us around the desert. We’re going this way.”
Tai’s words don’t hit their mark. They hit me instead. He is a grumpy bastard most of the time, but this is the first time it feels like he’s being mean. And Daisy doesn’t deserve that.
“She’s not dumb. Between the three of us, she’s the only one who is from here. She probably has some survival senses that lead her to safety or water or help!” It feels weird to be arguing with Tai from up on her back, so I swing my leg over and slide down to the ground with a thud.
Tai huffs and turns away from me. He sinks down to the ground and throws a handful of sand in frustration. The tension in his back that I’ve been watching all day slowly lifts from his shoulders. It’s replaced with drooping shoulders of defeat.
I sit down next to him. He doesn’t even look over at me. I know that I hurt him this morning.
What is wrong with us? We keep saying and doing the wrong things. It’s so messy.
This is definitely a sign we don’t belong together.
“I don’t have it in me to fight both of you right now.”
“I guess we did gang up on you,” I admit with a bitter laugh.
“I am hanging on by a thread. Have mercy on me and go with me on this, please.”
It’s thepleasethat does me in. I lean over and rest my head on his shoulder. He relaxes against me and drops his head down lightly onto mine. We sit there for a while silently watching the shadows shift across the sand.
Minutes or hours go by. The only indication of time passing is the stretching shadows from the grooves in the dirt. A flash of light catches my eye in the direction Daisy waspulling us.
“What the?” I block my eyes with my hand, trying to make out what caused the reflection.
“A village!” Tai says triumphantly and jumps up from the ground. I stiffly climb up to my feet. He looks so happy that I swallow the inclination to point out Daisy was right.
“Thank you, sweet baby Jesus!” I yell to the sky. Finally, something other than the bare desert around us.
Tai scoops me up and spins me around. He lets out a deep sigh of relief. The hopelessness from moments ago is gone. We are chest to chest smiling broadly. I’m suddenly aware of his proximity and the way he’s looking down at me, not quite at my eyes, a tiny bit lower. He bites his lower lip, and I realize where he is looking.
“I’m so tired, I cannot possibly take one more step. If we stop for the day, could we make it by tomorrow?” I ask and take a step back, breaking the spell.
Tai pushes his hair back with his bionic arm. “Easily.”
FORTY-EIGHT
Tai
“Thank you for coming to save me,” Bri says, breaking the silence.
We’ve been lying here facing each other in the tent for a while, so there isn’t anywhere for me to go to hide the surprise on my face.
“You’re welcome. It’s the least I could do.”
“You didn’t have to come. Aro could have sent some redshirt to get me. They probably would have seen my crashed escape pod and left me here to rot.”
“What’s a redshirt?”
“A redshirt is a person who has no name. They are a plot device in old classic sci-fi movies. They would be the first to get killed, raising the stakes, but there’s not enough danger by that point to affect a main character,” she explains. “Expendable.”
“I’m glad I’m not a redshirt.”
“You have no idea how close you were to being one.”
“Would a redshirt be the hero, get the girl, and ride off into the horizon on a ship atwarp speed?”
