Jenna lets Hap pass and she shuts the door. “I’ll leave you two to talk. I have some things to take care of in the other room.” She pauses as she passes me. “Left out a few details?” she whispers, and then adds, “I won’t be far if you need anything.” She obviously has her doubts about Hap too.
As soon as Jenna’s gone, Raine puts her hand on my chest, touching the small raised lines, and gingerly moves to the thicker more tender ones that Jenna has woven back together.
Her hand drops to her side. “You lied to me.”
I can’t deny it. I hobble to the sofa and she follows. I’ve lied to her on so many levels, I don’t even know for sure which lie she’s talking about. We both sit, though it takes considerably longer for me to ease myself down than it does Raine.
I look back at Hap, who hasn’t moved from his post by the door, but whose eyes haven’t veered a centimeter from me. He looks like he’s ready to finish me off. “What about him?”
She sighs. “Hap, privacy, please. Voices off.”
“That’s it?”
“It’s not really necessary. But yes, that’s it.”
She waits for an explanation but I’m not sure which one she wants to know. I hate lying to her. Everyone has—for years. I don’t want to be like everyone else. I want to be so much more to her. “What do you want to know?” I ask.
“Is it really that hard to figure out? The truth. Your mother wasn’t having one of her bouts. You hurt yourself. Why did you make up a story? There’s no shame in taking a tumble—unless that’s not what really happened.” She scrutinizes my chest again. Glass, cats, and stairs? There’s suspicion in her eyes.
For her sake, I know I have to make this good, plus I’m not entirely sure Hap isn’t listening in. “I did take a tumble, Raine. That’s the truth. I was stupid and careless. I’m embarrassed about it. Don’t tell anyone. Please.” And then I go into a long explanation, pausing at all the right moments, looking away at all the right moments, using all the tricks I learned from Kara about being convincing, telling her how my father ridicules me for being careless, for not paying attention, if he got a whiff from the Collective about me missing meetings and why, well, I didn’t want him to know, and neither did my mother, because arguments between us don’t go well. They go very badly in fact. My father is strict and expects perfection—one reason my mother and I are both glad to be away from him for a while. I pile lie upon lie until I’ve painted a mirror image of her relationship with her own father, until her face goes from disturbed to sympathetic, and I hate myself when I’m done.
She reaches out and gently touches my cheek. Tears rim her lower lashes. Her fingers slide down to my lips, where one cut runs deeper than the rest. Her touch is velvet, barely there at all, but it’s all I can feel, all I can think about. I don’t deserve it, but I want more, more of Raine.
“Would it hurt too much if I sat close to you, Locke? Just for a few minutes?”
I lean back and pull her close, my arm around her so she’s tucked in close to my left side, the one with intact ribs. She molds to me, like we’ve done this a hundred times, no awkward movements, just her and me, staring ahead at nothing at all. She tells me what brought her here in the first place, why she dared to skip tonight’s meeting, something she’s never done before, knowing the consequences she will have to pay if her father finds out. But as she speaks, I begin to grasp exactly what those consequences are. He was still furious with her about her inappropriate dress at our first meeting, so today he had technicians come. They strapped her down and scanned her, searching for what was wrong with her, trying to find the reasons, the damage, the deficits, anything at all that might explain her unacceptable behavior. And when they were finished, they scanned her again.
He’s searching for numbers, Raine. Not damage. He’s desperate for the missing half of the bank account numbers. Consequences have nothing to do with it. That’s all your scans have ever been about. Nothing you’ve ever done.
She continues to tell me the details of the humiliating procedure. I wonder what the Secretary thinks, that she could be embedded with a time-sensitive biochip programmed to one day reveal itself? Would Karden have done that to his own baby daughter in the interest of safeguarding eighty billion duros? If he would, he’s not a man I want to save. It’s hard for me to listen. I want to react. I want to break something. Throw a chair against the wall. Do something.
“I cried,” she continues. “I said I was sorry. He told me crying was unacceptable. He never has allowed it. Usually, for him, I can become that person he wants me to be, the one detached from my circumstances. After Mother died I tried even harder to be his perfect daughter. Proper. Unaffected. Prepared. The only time I ever strayed from his ideal was when I was alone up on my rooftop, or on one of my nighttime escapades.” She lifts her eyes to look into mine. “I was good, Locke. For so long I was good for him. Somehow, it all worked, at least for a while. Now I feel like I’m walking a tightrope between two lives and I’m not sure exactly where I belong.…”
She looks at me, waiting, her last words more of a question than a statement.
She wants to know if my world is her world, but I don’t know if it can be or if it even should be. I want to tell her that my world is so far from hers. I want to confess that I’m not who or even what she thinks I am—and she isn’t who she thinks she is either. Xavier’s words tear through me: What would I be condemning her to? She’d be caught between two worlds, not fitting in anywhere anymore, not to mention what the Secretary might do with her. What the Secretary might do. It makes my blood run cold. Maybe if I had kept my distance in the first place like I should have …
I look at the nugget-head. “Hap, privacy. Close your eyes.”
He closes them. I knew he was still listening.
But now, being right is not as important as having a private moment with Raine. It’s all I can do to keep from pressing my lips to hers. I want to erase the questions I can’t answer, the worry, the doubt, but I know a kiss isn’t the way to do it. I bring my forehead to hers, my eyes closed, feeling the warmth of her skin, the warmth of her breath on my face. I can’t give her the answer she wants. “You have to go,” I whisper. “It’s not too late to make it to the meeting at Cece’s. You can’t risk it.”
She pulls back to look at me, searching my eyes. “Locke, what are you afraid of? Tell me the truth. I’ve trusted you. Why can’t you trust—”
“You should go, Raine. It’s getting late.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“That’s all.”
She stares at me, her jaw clenching. It’s not the answer she wanted. It’s an empty answer that holds no warmth, no future, and especially no trust. “You’re right. I should go. I’ve risked far too much already.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
“Of course. At the meeting.” Her voice is flat.
“Raine, don’t tell anyone about my accident. I don’t want it to get back to my father.”