Forged(9)

“You arrogant—”

“Pack or stay, Blaine!” I grab his wrists and tear myself free. “I don’t care what you decide so long as you don’t stop me from doing what’s right.”

A muscle ticks in his jaw. We stare at each other for a painfully long moment. Then he picks up his bag, throws a few things into it haphazardly.

“You’re an ass, you know that?” he says. Dark shadows linger beneath his eyes, and he’s squinting slightly, almost as though looking at me blinds him.

“I’ve always been an ass.”

He either doesn’t hear the teasing tone of my voice, or he chooses to ignore it.

“I love you, Gray. I always will. Which is why I get so riled up by the fact that you can’t see how losing you would kill me.”

He snatches his bag and leaves, and I realize for the first time that all his hesitations could be for different reasons—ones that have nothing to do with not wanting to remove Frank from power or returning home to Kale.

He’s still trying to keep me safe. Just like he did when we were kids—shielding me from a slingshot blow with his own body, or pulling my curious hand away from a flame. Blaine is never going to outgrow playing big brother.


I stop by the female quarters and find Bree making her bed like the room is more than a temporary home.

“Here goes nothing,” I say.

She straightens, turns to face me. “It’ll be a breeze, I’m sure. Getting in off-limits places always is.” Her eyebrows are raised with the joke, the corners of her lips curled in a smile.

“Can’t go much worse than Burg, right?”

She swings her bag onto her shoulders. “Don’t tell me to hand over my gun when I need it, and we should be fine.”

The reminder of how she took a beating at Titus’s hands because I convinced her to lower her weapon makes me cringe.

“Oh, don’t give me that look. I bounced right back. Even have a nice battle scar as a result.”

She’s speaking of the thin mark above her left eye, a pale echo of where stitches once held together split skin. I reach out, my thumb eager to trace it, and she pivots away from me. It’s quiet for a moment, the air heavy with how things once were between us.

“We should go,” Bree says. “They’re probably waiting.”

She attempts to squeeze by me and I grab her elbow before she can escape into the hall. “I’m not going to stop trying, Bree.”

“Then you’re an insensitive jerk who doesn’t respect me,” she snaps. “Or what I want.”

“You really don’t want us to talk? Ever?”

“That’s not what I said.” She’s scowling, looking at her feet, the doorframe—anything but me. “It’s complicated,” she says finally.

“Explain it, then.”

Bree stares down the hallway. Licks her lips. Finally, she glances back at me. “I still trust you on missions like this, I do. I still want us watching out for each other. I just don’t want to be anything more.”

I don’t believe her. Not for a second. But then I wonder if that’s because I’m doing exactly what she said: not respecting her decision, choosing my own feelings as a greater, more worthy truth. I let go of her arm and the tension in her body dissipates. Her shoulders relax. She peers at me, as if she’s trying to read my thoughts.

“Come on,” she says, but I feel like I’ve managed to pull her closer by letting her go and the concept is so bizarre that I stand there smiling, my feet fused with the floor.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asks.

“You,” I say. “You make me a mess.”

She rolls her eyes and hmphs. But she also gives my chest a light shove before walking away. Contact. That she initiated. The first since Burg.





FOUR


UNLIKE BONE HARBOR, PINE RIDGE sits along a narrow inlet instead of a cove. We fly over a long stretch of dry earth and rust-colored rock to get there, and when we arrive the tide is out, making the town look impressively dreary. From the sky, the community is a horseshoe around the empty trench, pockets of water still pooled in the deeper areas, with bridges spanning it at various intervals.

We touch down well inland, where the inlet is fed by a small river butting against a narrow ridge of pines—the landform that likely gave the town its name. The smell of salt hits me when we climb out of the craft. We haul the gear from the helicopter and Heidi disappears almost immediately. She must have her own orders to attend to.

The outer edge of town is marked by a failing wood fence, and it is here that a young man reclines, hip against a post and ankles crossed. When he sees us approaching, he pushes off the fence and tosses his rolled smoke in the dirt.

“Adam?” He gives a hesitant wave, then presses a fist to his heart, three fingers splayed out so they almost look like a capital E given the angle he’s holding them. “You’re here for Nick?”

“It’s that obvious?” Adam says, mimicking the Expat salute.

A smile flickers across the guy’s face. “Chopper kind of gives it away. So, what were the plans again?”

“We never said. Can’t be too careful in gulfside towns these days. I’m sure you understand . . .”

“Gage,” he finishes. “Man, I’m sorry, rattling on and not introducing myself. I’ve been working the waters with Nick for about a year now.” He pulls out a new smoke and lights it. “We were competitors before that, but Nick bought me out, which was a blessing, really. It was only a matter of time before he’d have run me under. He’s a hardnose, Bageretti. But that’s why he’s the boss, not me.”