Page 28 of Chaos
That has my throat catching. Of course, he’d dream of a place without guns. “Flowers everywhere and sunshine and no blood or bullets ever. We’ll call it the Flower-verse.”
“Okay,” he says quietly. Not amused like I expected. Not anokay, crazy Frankielike I anticipated, but the second the thought forms, I realize it shouldn’t have. That’s not Yorke.
That’s never been Yorke. He’s not indulgent or patronizing. He’s right here with me, and maybe the idea comforts him as much as it comforts me.
“You and me.” I tighten my arms and legs around him, getting my face closer to those amber eyes of his so I can stare at them. “But more than the Flower-verse, I want you most in this world,” I whisper.
His brows draw together. “Same.”
The pressure in my chest eases almost instantly.
Up close, his eyes look like galaxies, explosions of amber, tiny veins of brighter gold, a rim of deeper brown, the faintest breath of green.
Maybe the baby will get those eyes.
“No matter what, we stay together, right?” I say.
“Agreed,” he whispers, and somehow, it unlocks a need inside me to confess the first of so many things I should share, the baby, what happened in that cellar.
So I start at the beginning.
“I told Ben to take me,” I whisper. “It was my idea.”
I tell the whole story about what happened after I pushed Shane down the hill, and convinced Ben to take me rather than risk Yorke coming in and killing Ephie.
He’s silent, listening with a patently Yorke expression I’ve learned by now means he’s processing.
I run out of steam quickly, right around the time they threw me down the stairs. I can’t make my mouth keep talking, and I can’t seem to touch those items—the cavity search, the shit bucket, Scraggle’s awful worm, the baby.
I hate lumping her in with the rest of that.
So I force out a very stilted, awkward, “They didn’t rape me. It wasn’t … that. I’m sure you’ve been worried.”
His eyes close sharply. “You shouldn’t have fucking been there,” he says, voice heavy.
“You shouldn’t have to shoot kids for me,” I whisper back. “I won’t have that on your conscience.” He already shot Carl, his own brother, surely that’s enough.
“And you?” he asks gruffly, pinning me with a sharp glare. “Where’s the list of things you shouldn’t have to do for me?”
I sigh, because I don’t know. “I want to see Auden now.”
“He’ll be glad to see you,” he says, but his jaw stays rigid as he helps me out of the water and into clothes, pushes me to eat bran flakes and shelf-stable milk.
We walk together down the halls of Thornewood that barely feels like Thornewood, where soldiers stand at intervals like guards, and the light is dimmer enough to give me claustrophobic whiffs of the cellar.
As we climb the steps, I ask, “Where’s Shasta?”
His lips part and his gaze slips to the side.
“What?” I freeze mid step, my heart stalling out—of all people, I didn’t even worry about Shasta. Indomitable Shasta. “Just say it. She’s not dead, is she?” She can’t be dead. She can’t be. “Yorke? Answer me. Oh god, is she dead?”
“No. She’s blind.”
Blind?Why? The last time I saw her she was … Shata … very much capable of seeing everything all at once with a thousand thoughts about it all.
“How?”
He starts to answer, his gravelly voice making words, but the only one I hear is, “Ben.”