“It’s my choice,” she said. “Isn’t that the point of all of this? For me to have the freedom to make my own choices.” For the first time, she sounded frustrated. “As someone who claims to love me, I’d think you’d want that.”
I stiffened. She wasn’t pulling her punches anymore. “It’s your choice.” I forced a laugh. “And yet, weirdly enough, as someone who loves you, I don’t really want to watch you get yourself killed. Or worse. That’s my choice to make.”
She clamped her mouth shut at that, turning to stare out the side window.
And then, thank God, the conversation was apparently over. But somehow getting the last word wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it was reported to be.
15
Ariane
ZANE MEANT WHAT HE’D SAID. That idea rocked me to the core.
I hadn’t detected even a hint of deception from him. Would he really leave and go back to Wingate? Would I let him?
It was all I’d been pushing him to do from the second I’d read the letter from my father and realized that Zane’s life would be in further danger. But that was when I’d been prepared to let him go. At that point, I’d steeled myself against my own feelings. Pulled them back, stuffed them down, buried them under concern for his safety. That had to be the top priority, not my own wishes, not the longings that I couldn’t allow myself to say aloud.
Now, though, after I’d finally become convinced that Zane meant it, that he really intended to stick with me through the insanity that was my life at the moment, I’d stopped holding back, I’d let go and let myself feel. Only to have him pull away. It was like leaning into the wind, counting on it to support your weight, just as it vanished beneath you, dashing you to the ground, leaving you bloodied and bruised.
I drew my knees up to my chest, tucking my skirt around my legs. I felt skinned, exposed. More so now than I had since that night in the lab when the observation wall had turned to glass, revealing the truth about me to Zane.
I didn’t know how to go back. I didn’t know how not to feel these things for him, now that I’d opened the door. And worse, admitted it to him. My face burned at the memory. Not with regret, exactly, but more with the realization of how vulnerable I’d made myself.
I dared a glance at him. His hands were tight on the wheel, his knuckles turning white, the only outward sign of his inner turmoil. He was afraid for me. My whole life I’d longed for someone who would care about me, just for being me. Not because of what I could do for him or because I reminded him of someone he’d lost.
But I hadn’t considered the repercussions. That once you were no longer isolated, alone, but involved in a larger unit, a relationship or a family, there were additional considerations, obligations. Ties.
Part of me wanted to rage at Zane. How dare he muddle this up with his feelings. His worries. If I was willing to take the risk, wasn’t that all that mattered?
Zane hated Ford’s approach, but she’d done exactly what I would have done, if she or one of the others had come to me when I was living in Wingate.
She was being careful and putting safety first. After all, it wasn’t just her life at risk. She was in charge of Nixon and Carter as well, which only made sense. Nixon seemed too distant to be involved, though I had no idea what was going on in his head, obviously. And Carter, with his shy smile, desire to stay in school, and eagerness to talk, might not have the edge needed to make the hard decisions. Looking at them collectively, I was pretty sure I was seeing Dr. Laughlin’s version of a variety pack. Different genes switched on, resulting in a range of human/alien combinations.
Ford, apparently, had the right mix that made her a natural leader. So she was skeptical of me, expecting a trap. In her position, I would have felt the same.
But someone, somewhere, had to trust. Had to make the first move. They had extended that trust to me by not (a) immediately killing us or (b) signaling their guards to contact Laughlin.
If Ford’s intention had been to turn us in to Laughlin, she wouldn’t have taken the risk of letting us leave or allowing us to set the time and date of our return, if we returned at all.
That was only logical.
I watched Zane from the corner of my eye. He was concentrating on the road, his mouth tight. He truly thought that they’d manipulated the situation to take advantage of me.
But in reality, Ford had only accepted the situation as it presented itself. Offering to aid me in developing a plan was pointless. If it was so simple to escape, they would have done so already. And the decision to take the chance had to be mine, not based on their limited ability to help.
It made sense to me. She had not spelled it out, but I understood how she thought, even if I couldn’t hear her thinking. I parsed information in a similar way. To me, she’d done nothing objectionable or even truly surprising during the entire encounter.
Zane saw it differently. He couldn’t help that. He filtered information through his own background and experiences, which were not at all similar to mine.
Fine. We’d encountered that difficulty before and found common ground.
The trouble was, this time, whether he realized it or not, he’d made it very clear that I’d have to choose—not just whether to help Ford and the others but which “side” I was going to take. Human or other? I would ally myself one way or the other and lose something. Or someone. There was no way around that.
Zane slowed to make the turn onto his mother’s street and inhaled sharply. “Shit.”
His adrenaline washed over me, bringing the world into sharp focus.
I sat up, putting my feet on the floor. “What’s wrong?”
“My dad’s here.” He nodded toward the end of the street.
Sure enough, a familiar-looking dark blue SUV, emblazoned with WINGATE CHIEF OF POLICE, sat in front of Mara’s half of the duplex. And, surprisingly, Mara’s little silver Mazda was in the driveway, parked at a dramatic angle, as if she’d pulled in without any care or in a big hurry.
I frowned. She shouldn’t have been back from work for hours yet, assuming she put in a regular eight-hour shift.
The ubiquitous dark SUV, Laughlin’s spy or spies, was here again as well, though parked at a more discreet distance, closer to the intersection where we were than to Mara’s house.
“Something’s wrong,” I said, as I tried to isolate the anxious vibe that radiated from the area, a weird itchy/tickling sensation at the edge of my brain that wouldn’t let up.
Zane tensed. “Is he…is my mom okay?”
Did he hurt her? That was the question in his head, the one he wasn’t asking.
I bit my lip. Zane had never specifically said that his dad had hurt any of them. But when Zane had been worried that my father was abusing me, he’d had a certain grim familiarity when checking my arms for bruises. He’d known what he was looking for. And regardless of whether that was based on personal experience or simply supposition, the possibility that his dad might hurt his mom existed in his mind, and that was enough. Chief Bradshaw had been beyond furious when my father had him ejected from GTX. And he’d blamed Zane’s willingness to defend me—instead of turning me over to Dr. Jacobs—on the influence of Zane’s mother. All of that added to a potential volatile situation in Mara’s tiny duplex.
I struggled to tune out the surrounding noise—Zane’s thoughts and feelings, those of the random people in the neighborhood—and focus on the occupants of the building at the end of the block. “I’m not picking up any physical pain.” Pain shouted the loudest of anything, and it was unmistakable, always accompanied by some blend of fear and shock. (Even when people are expecting the hurt, the actual physical sensation is always more intense than anticipated and still comes as a surprise.)