**
“So how far now to your…pod? Community? Hideout?” I asked the twins.
“We’re still a couple days’ walk out now,” Roddy answered, but while he was speaking, my watch began to beep. Everyone stopped because when things beeped on this planet, you paid attention. “What is that?” Roddy hissed and looked around.
“It’s this,” I said and showed them. “But it’s supposed to be off. I wonder why…oh. I asked a question about where something was on the planet. I bet that’s why it came to life.”
“Sugar britches, you’re going to have to start speaking layman terms.”
“The doll is the watch. The watch is the doll. The doll told me to put her chip into the watch because she needed an upgrade, and because she needed the world net.”
The twins and Maxton stared at me like I’d lost all my marbles. “Um…” Fletch said slowly. “So you’re saying…”
“I switched on the doll. She told me she needed me to put her chip into the watch. I did.” I switched the watch on so they could hear it for themselves. “Betsy Ross, say hey to the gang.”
“Hey to the gang. My name is Betsy Ross. I’m named after a female American hero who made the first American flag—”
“Trust me, Betsy, they know all about it. They probably know more about you than you do.”
“I find that doubtful,” Betsy spouted back, making the twins laugh so hard. “Mommy, do you have a destination you would like me to look up for you?”
“Holy crap!” Roddy said and pointed at my wrist, laughing. “The watch thinks it’s still a doll! This is some twisted, horror movie stuff right here. If that watch says ‘Hi, I’m Chucky’ drop it and run for the hills!”
Fletch chanted in the background, “Hi, I’m Chucky. Wanna play?”
“Or to put the lotion on your skin!” Roddy continued.
Fletch chanted again. “It puts the lotion on its skin. It puts the lotion on its skin.”
All the boys laughed so hard.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“You can download things from Earth if you look hard enough, savior. You can just about anything on the black market.”
I remembered Maxton’s friend at the docks talking about downloading Old-World language software. “Okay, whatever, but don’t insult Betsy Ross.”
Roddy laughed harder. “What does she do?”
“Well, so far, nothing. She’s the Around Landu edition, so she knows everything about the planet, but she said my mom gave her some information to give to me later. That only I will know when I’m ready for it, but when I told her I was ready for it now, she said that I wasn’t.” The twins continued to die laughing, leaning against each other. “So, so far, she’s been nothing but a pain that I risked my butt going back to my pod for and she’s done nothing to say ‘thank you’ for it.”
“Dude,” Fletch laughed. “The real Betsy Ross would have at least made you a handmade Thank You scarf.”
“For real!” Roddy agreed.
“Look up Zone 18. Then we’ll know exactly how far out we are from home.”
“I only answer to Mommy.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Maxton as he covered his mouth with his fist, hiding a laugh. “How far away from Zone 18 are we? And would you stop calling me Mommy? Call me Sophelia.”
“At your current walking pace, you are approximately three days and seven hours away from your destination, taking into account sleeping and stops for breaks and food. Is there anything else I can help you with, Sophelia?”
“No!” I groaned. “Shut down, turn yourself off. Do whatever it is you do.”
Roddy began to whine. “This would be so much faster if we could take the hover rail, swipe some hurtle boots, see if we could catch a horsopotomus, jump on a messenger bot’s back. Anything but what we’re doing—”
“I get it, Roddy. And no, we can’t take any public transportation. We’ll get scanned.” Maxton lifted his arm in case the twins were too dense, because…they were sometimes. “You know, scanned? And then we’ll be made—as in caught—and that wouldn’t be good—as in the opposite of bad—right?”
“But, not even—”
His brother jumped in and said, “No, Roddy, not even a bot’s back.”
I smiled at them. They were adorable, whether they knew it or not.
Roddy kicked the ground, scuffing it with his shoes as we walked. Pouting. His brother punched his shoulder.
“Dude, we’re halfway. Why are you so upset about the walk now?”
Roddy looked at him like he was crazy. “Because it’s Saturday!”
Fletch grabbed his head. Maxton and I looked at each other like we were missing something. Then Fletch flicked his eyes over to his brother. “Dude, Mommy would save us some. Come on. Plus, she knows we’re bringing company. The savior!” He smacked his brother’s arm again, but he didn’t seem to mind. “She’ll definitely save us some.”
I didn’t know why this time was different but curiosity ate at me, making me say, “What will she save you?”
They both looked at me and said at the same time. “She’s making Sunday meatballs on Saturday dinner!”
I felt this stab to my gut, a true blow to my insides. Not only did it make me miss my mother so much in my soul and heart and everywhere else that I could feel things, because she didn’t have much to give me but what she had she gave and made with love, but it also served as a reminder that the twins and Maxton both had mothers and families that loved them so much, they spent time and family dinners together with actual food—food that I didn’t even know the names of. What the heck was a meatball? Was it actually a ball of meat? Could it be that simple? It was enough to make my brain hurt, for more than one reason.
And here they all were out here with me where they didn’t belong.
Before I knew it, one wretched tear had escaped the corner of my eye and sat there, just waiting for me to do something about it. For once—just once—I wanted to know what a rolling tear would feel like. And this stupid tear and this moment were even worse.
I loathed that tear and all its meaning. It thought it was setting me free, bringing me closer to something or someone, but it wasn’t. I felt like I was falling so far in that moment and I didn’t know if anyone could catch me.
Chapter Fourteen
con·stel·la·tion - a group of stars forming a recognizable pattern that is traditionally named after its apparent form or identified with a mythological figure. The sky is currently divided into eighty-eight constellations.
Maxton
“Sophelia,” Fletch said softly. I’d seen the tear, too, but was trying to assess how to proceed.
I silently begged him not to be an idiot right now—like asking her if she was crying because she didn’t know what a meatball was. I was going to kick his bony behind if those words left his mouth.
“You miss your mom, huh?”
I stared in shock. Wow. For once, the kid got it right.
She wiped the tear and then turned a little, her warm breath making the chilled air puff smoke around her mouth. She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I miss her so much sometimes I can’t breathe.”
“Which is probably good ‘cause it saves oxygen,” Roddy said from behind us.
And…they’re back.
She didn’t laugh, but I saw a small smile tug at the very corner of her lip. She turned fully and walked ahead of us, wrapping her arms around herself, from the cold or the heartache. It was turning ridiculously cold. Like the kind of cold I was telling you about, where you had to sleep inside and have fire and heat and warm bodies next to you—okay, I may have added that last one. But I wouldn’t object if it was a certain redhead with gray eyes.
I walked a little faster to catch up.
“Cold?” I asked even as I reached across her to check and see if her built-in warmer was on. It wasn’t.
She pushed my arm away. “I’ve got it.”
I held my hands up.
“Just wanted to make sure you were warm enough. It’s freezing out here.”
“I can take care of myself,” she muttered, and then seemed to gather steam, tightening her arms around herself. “I hope you don’t think that just because we kissed that you can just…”
“I can just what?”
She looked over at me for a second before looking back to the path we were walking. It was full of people but she didn’t seem to see a one of them. “You’re not my new lord. You’re not my new proprietor, my new master, my new…” She gritted her teeth.
“Go ahead, Sophelia. Let me have it.” I purposely said her full name, knowing she’d notice. She was pulling away. Trying to show me the girl she could be. That snarky girl from the ship was making a comeback. But what she didn’t know was that strong, independent girl was just as much a turn-on as the soft Soph that I’d had the past week. But she was forgetting how strong and courageous she was standing up in front of that camera, in front of the Militia when she was running out of air. She was always strong, always courageous, and always brave and smart. The loving, caring, amazingly beautifully-hearted girl I’d come to know was just lurking under the surface. And it didn’t take that much digging to find her. She wasn’t two people. She wasn’t a puzzle that needed solving; she was one amazing girl who just didn’t know it yet.
“I’m a plague,” she whispered.
“Oh…Soph.”
“I am!” she screamed and stopped where her feet were planted in the middle of the street, surprising me. “I am a plague. I have taken so many people so far.” She scoffed bitterly. “You don’t want to be with me, Maxton.” She wouldn’t look at me. She just shook her head at the ground. “I’m a destroyer of goods things. Of good people.” She finally looked up. “You have family who needs you—”
“Who I can’t go home to. You know that. I won’t bring the things I’ve done into my family’s life. It was my decision to do them, before you even came along, and now I’ll pay that price. Gladly.”
“You could still be near them at least.”
“Next door or a million miles away.” I shrugged. “If you can’t talk to or see them, what does it matter?”
She closed her eyes, searching her brain for new evidence. “I got you fired.”
“I turned you in for the reward. Twice.” I put up two fingers to drive my point home. Though, technically, the second one didn’t count.
She growled. I heard the twins scoffing and making noises at our banter. They had stopped a few feet behind us, knowing better than to come closer.
Her eyes were fierce as hell as she gazed up at me, telling me to run as fast as I could and begging me to stay all in the same blink.
“They will always be after you if you’re with me.” Her bottom lip started to quiver, her tell that it was all crashing down, but she kept up her fierce face. Her fists were clenched at her sides. “You’ll never be safe. You’ll never be free to walk the streets without,” she fingered the appearance scrambler around her neck, “these things on!” she yelled. “You’ll be a prisoner. You’ll be my prisoner!”
A few people walking by on the street had noticed her outburst and were giving us weird looks as they passed, but nobody seemed to care for more than a fleeting second.
“Don’t you care?” she yelled. “Don’t you care that your life will be over? Don’t you care that I’m taking everything from you?” She looked over at the twins, too. “You, too. Run! Run while you still can. You shouldn’t be here.” That lip… “You shouldn’t want to be with me. I’m a plague that will take everyone down with her. I’m damaged, I’m slashed and scarred, I’m cracked…” That lip lost its fight as finally they parted and a small sob made its way through.
I came into her space, done with this whole thing. That lip was my undoing.
“You listen to me, Sophelia A3,” I growled, but took a breath, taking it down a notch. I lifted her face, wanting nothing more than to kiss her trembling mouth and make everything bad in her life all go away. But life didn’t work that way, did it? You couldn’t think happy thoughts and fly away to Neverland. And you couldn’t kiss girls and have everything in their life that was wrong be right. If only. But I was apparently doing something right, because that lip? It wasn’t trembling quite as much anymore. And her eyes? They begged me to save her. “You were slashed when I found you, remember? And now, you have some scars.” Her face crumpled and she tried to take it away from my hand, but I brought it back to face me. I wrapped my free hand around her back, right against the part of her I was speaking of, and brought her against me. I put my mouth against her ear. “What is a life without scars? Scars come in all forms and we all have them, some deeper than others, some more than others, some harsher than others. Your scars are yours, Soph, and you earned them,” I said harshly, my lips touching the rim of her ear. “I know it felt like sh—awful going through what you did, but the point is you did it. You. No one else. And no one else could have but you. Your scars are beautiful because of who you are and what you did to earn them. Don’t ever be ashamed of them. As for you being a plague? If that’s so then please, infect me. Because I want everything you’ve got to give me.” I was pleased to hear a sniffled small laugh.
I leaned back, still holding her chin. There were a few tears, clinging to the place under her eyes. I took her face in my hands, ten percent surprised that she let me and ninety percent elated that she was back to the brave, loving girl who took her destiny by the balls and said to hell with her past. I wiped her tears with my thumbs, loving how she closed her eyes when I did so. It made it seem that much more special somehow.
She opened her eyes and I finished my speech.
“And you may be a little cracked, Soph, but it wouldn’t take very much to fix. And I’d love to try.”
She smiled, looking at my shirtfront, and sighed. “Why did you have to be so amazing?”
I laughed a little. “Well, I could give you a list—”
She smacked my gut and I “oomphed” for her benefit. She lifted her eyes to mine and I saw the question before she asked. “Why are you doing this? What do you get out of it? I’m…I’m not worth the trouble of all this, of the trouble that’s coming for us—for me.”
I hoped it showed on my face. I couldn’t see how it wasn’t. I felt it in that moment as I thought about the way I felt when I was with her, when she had been with my family, when she tugged on my hair in that way she does, when she joked with the twins and laughed so wholeheartedly, when she kissed me back like we wouldn’t wake up the next day so she better make it good. I smiled and brought her closer a little with my hand still holding her face.
“The fact that you can’t see how much you’re worth makes you worth so much more.” She opened her mouth once, her brow bunched, but nothing came out. She didn’t know the words to ask. I continued. “A diamond doesn’t know how much it’s worth; it’s just beautiful because it exists.”
She just stared. There were only three known diamonds on this entire planet and they were all currently sitting in Congress. I swooped down while tugging her up at the same time. Just a little. I waited right at the precipice of her lips, making sure she wanted me and I wasn’t taking her silence as acquiescence when she was really just trying to find a way to tell me to get lost. But her fingers bunched in my jacket front and she pulled me down the rest of the way.
I groaned a little because she was aggressively thanking me with her mouth. So I kept my hands right there on her cheeks so I could keep my little barrier, since we were right there in the middle of the street and all.
When I saw that she wasn’t stopping or even slowing, I knew I had to take the reins on this one. I slowly began to pull back, loving on her lips because each one of them was gloriously perfect. She sighed, puffing her warm breath against my lips as we pulled back.
“Sweet, you’re going to put me in my grave if you don’t stop looking at me like that,” I rumbled.
Her wide charcoal-gray, glazed-over eye
s gazed up at me with surprise and, dare I say, happiness? “You said it.”
“What?”
But she didn’t get to answer me, nor I her, because clapping startled us. We looked around to see that we had collected a little crowd of onlookers. The twins sat in the middle of the crowd, shrugging like they didn’t know what to do. I knew we needed to get out of there, pronto. I smiled at the crowd and down at Soph. I did a little bow, making everyone laugh, and then laced my fingers with hers before bolting through the sparsest section of onlookers.
“Oh, gosh,” Soph was saying. “This is bad. This is bad. They had cameras and handhelds out. They were recording us for the news, Maxton.”
Ah, I loved it how she didn’t call me Max like my family. I had always wondered since I shortened her name if she would shorten mine. I hated it. Not like she hated hers, like I loathed it like kids loathed brussel sprouts in gravy. It felt so kiddy. I always hated it. And could not be more thankful for this insightful girl.
“I know, Soph.” Oh, the irony of that nickname! “It’ll be—”
“It won’t be okay!” she said loudly back. “See, I am a plague. This is what I do. I get everybody into trouble—”
I yanked her to a stop. “Do we need to do the whole spiel all over again? Because I will. That kiss at the end was hot.”
“It totally was,” Roddy stage-whispered to his brother.
I glared at him and shook my head ‘No’ at him.
He nodded and pointed. “Oh, yeah, got it. Ix-nay on the talking about you guys kissing.” He clucked his tongue. “Gotcha.”
I rolled my eyes and looked back at Sophelia, but she was covering her mouth and shaking her head. I tried to hide my grin, but it was pretty hopeless. I pulled her over to the twins with my arm on the small of her back.
“This is a motley crew of craziness.”
“Don’t even try to act like you don’t like us,” Fletch barked before plowing between Soph and me, breaking us apart. Roddy followed suit, looking at us both like he didn’t know if he was in trouble or not but he was always with his brother. I could do nothing but shake my head.