She smiled. She’d been wrong. The relief flowed like a wash of warm water, clearing away her doubts. “You do want to be with me.”
He stared at her. His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath, held it, and then let it go. “No. I don’t. I want you, but I don’t want to be with you. That’s the point.”
She froze inside. She could feel her head shaking back and forth, but her heart and lungs were frozen in her chest.
“I can’t keep being dragged in by the lure of,” he gestured up and down, indicating her. No. Indicating what she was. “I need to keep my eye on the prize. I’m sorry, but you’re not it. Not for me.”
That was it, wasn’t it? The Dust, the power within her, was the lure. Not her. Not Lena. Not anything she herself had to offer. She looked past him and forced herself to focus on lifting her leaden legs, one after the other. She walked around him, down the hall.
“Lena.”
She kept going.
“Lena.” He moved around her and took her arm to stop her. “Look, the Councilor said he’d reassign me, but today I’m supposed to keep working with you.”
“I have a lesson with Thomas,” she ground out.
“It’s been cancelled. Something came up, and he’s dealing with it, whatever it is. He sent me to find you. We’re supposed to—”
“I’ll sit in his office. Alone.”
“Lena.” He sighed. “This is why I didn’t want to do this. You’re the one who said not to wait ‘til later.”
“I didn’t want you to wait until later. And now I don’t want to be around you. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”
He grimaced and leaned in, his fingers tightening on her arm to keep her from moving past him. “I’m sorry.” His voice was tight with emotion. “You don’t know how sorry I am. I didn’t want to hurt you. Can we just pretend, just for another day—”
She leaned in, too. “No. We can’t. Now let go of my arm before I tell the Dust to melt your fucking hand off.”
***
Lashing out at him with the threat had been childish. That didn’t mean it wasn’t satisfying to see Jackson’s eyes widen as he realized she was serious and remembered she could do it. He let her go. She made her way to Thomas’s office to wait for the Councilor to be done with whatever issue had come up. Messengers and agents buzzed in and out of his office for the better part of an hour. She tracked them while she waited. In. Out. In. Out. It kept her from having to think about anything that had happened in the last twelve hours.
She was about to give up and return to her room to sulk in privacy when the door opened again, and Thomas stood framed in it, ushering out the last three men who’d entered. He noticed her, and his brows rose.
As the men trooped out of his office, Thomas crossed to her. “Your determination to not do as you’re told is a thing to behold.”
“I am, in fact, an expert at not doing what I’m told,” she answered, with a nod of her head.
“So I hear.”
She returned his gaze, waiting. She wasn’t sure to what he referred, of course, given her previous comment. She certainly wasn’t going to try to guess what it was he’d been hearing and from whom. She had no desire to tip him off to anything he didn’t know.
But he finally smiled, and the warmth made it all the way up to his tired eyes. “Come on, then.”
She rose and followed him back to his office. Instead of walking around to the other side of his desk, he crossed to one of the two chairs in front and collapsed into it. She took the other.
“I hope you weren’t waiting because you actually expected a lesson on control today?”
“I was waiting….” What had she been waiting for? Other than to avoid everyone else in the school? “I don’t know why I was waiting, but I have zero interest in a lesson on control. So you’re safe.”
Thomas nodded at the ceiling. He didn’t say anything else. He was either meditating or waiting for her to say something.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she ventured, “Whatever it is that’s going on, is it something I could help with?”
“Do you have any experience doing reconnaissance work?”
“Um. Nope. But I excel at making things go boom.”
A smile flitted over his face. “A skill which we will no doubt make use of.” He groaned and pulled himself up, sitting forward to clasp his hands between his knees. “We’ve gotten word that there’s going to be a big transfer—of what or whom we don’t know. Because of where it’s coming from, we assume it’s going to be Sparks.”
“Girls?”
He made a face. “Doubtful. It seemed more dangerous-transfer big, not girls-who-don’t-exist big. If I thought it was that, I’d be playing it a hell of a lot closer to the vest. And doing more than reconnaissance.”
He’d go get them. Good.
“We know of one secret prison slash test facility, but not any others. So…it might be a good time to keep an eye on them. We’ll be sending teams every few days.”
“Can I go?”