The Girl Who Dared to Think (The Girl Who Dared #1)

“Yeah, but then what happened?” Grey asked from next to me, and I saw a muscle twitching in his jaw. I could see he didn’t like Quess and his flirtatious mannerisms—and I had to admit, he looked very attractive when he was jealous.

I used my hair to hide my smile and turned back to Quess, who shrugged. “Got bored there, too. Problem is, there’s no room for innovation or creation in the Tower outside of medicine. I couldn’t rebuild or adjust or streamline the antiquated machinery around the place. Everyone gets twitchy when you mention it, yet they run around like madmen trying to keep up with the day-to-day needs of the Tower. It’s exhausting and depressing.”

“So you fell,” Roark said, again around a mouthful of food, and I couldn’t stand it any longer—I began serving myself small portions, not wanting to take too much from the people we’d found. Maddox arched a taunting eyebrow as I scooped up a spoonful of the beans with some rice, but I ignored it and took a bite.

Simple, but divine after the day we’d had.

“Pretty much,” Quess said. “And don’t worry about giving us your backstory. We got it from Cali already. You guys really think there’s life out there?”

“Selka saw it. She touched it with her own hands, and they killed her for wanting to spread the truth to everyone. The powers that be can’t stand to let the Tower go, so they crack down and keep the people living in fear of the world around them.”

“The Tower wasn’t meant to last forever,” Quess added in the wake of Roark’s statement, his blue eyes sad. “Nothing we create ever does, but yeah... it will start to fall apart eventually, even with all the TLC it’s given. But still, this is a huge leap based on the belief of one person.”

“He’s right,” Maddox said, breaking her stony silence by dropping her utensil onto her now-clean plate. “You’re betting everything—your very life—on believing that your wife saw what she said she saw.”

“And her getting killed for it,” Roark thundered, his fists banging on the table hard enough to make dishes clatter. “You think they would’ve executed her if she’d just been mad? No, she was a danger to their perfect image of the Tower, so they did away with her. Like she was nothing.”

He looked away from everyone, but not before his eyes had filled with the bitter sorrow of a man who was railing against a faceless system. Against those who had stolen his life and wife from him.

“On that note,” Cali announced softly, filling the awkward silence that had stretched out into the small space with a confident command, “we should all start getting ready for bed.”

I immediately got to my feet. “Then I should go. I need to get back up there before anyone notices that I’m missing.”

Cali looked at me and then stood in one fluid motion. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you leave right now.”

“Excuse me?” I stared at her, trying not to gape at the woman telling me I couldn’t leave.

Her face was made of stone as she shook her head at me. “You know you heard me correctly, dear. And I’m sure that your friends have already come to the same conclusion as well.”

“Gerome knows something’s going on between the three of us,” Grey said quietly, craning his neck up to meet my gaze, his eyes also reticent. “He’s going to be waiting for you to surface so he can question you.”

“And people are still out looking for us—and subsequently you,” Roark added. “No way they’ll let you pass by them without wanting to know how your pursuit went. Where are you going to direct them? How are you going to avoid attention, even leaving this place?”

“And you’re not guiding anyone back to our home,” Maddox declared menacingly. “We’ve worked too hard to keep our location a secret for you to start screwing this up.”

“Besides,” Tian added, a shy little smile on her face, “I like you. You look like you can tell good stories.”

I looked all around me, clearly outnumbered in more ways than one, and realized that now that I really thought about it, I didn’t even want to go. I barely slept when I was at home, and they had all made excellent points. Still, I hadn’t forgotten about Zoe and getting her those pills. She might not be talking to me right now, but she was in trouble, and if I didn’t help her, then chances were she’d just continue to go down.

“I want your word that at some point soon, I’ll be able to go,” I said to Cali, lifting my head in challenge.

She inclined her head somewhat. “That seems reasonable, but under my terms, all right? Everyone here is my family.”

“The reason I need to go is for mine, so I think we understand each other.”

The two of us continued to stare at each other, and I couldn’t help but feel that Cali was taking some sort of measurement of me, weighing pros and cons in her mind based on what she was seeing right now.

In the end, it was Tian who broke the stare-off, by standing up and offering excitedly to show us our room.

As we followed her, I could still feel Cali’s eyes on me. Still, the exchange had gone better than I’d hoped, and I felt that she was going to make a good ally in the days to come.

Once we figured out what the heck we were going to do.





28





As Tian led the three of us through the kitchen and down the hall, my eyes darted around, trying to find anything that would reveal who we were really dealing with. The small kitchen area was rudimentary, just a cooking element sitting on a metal table next to a cutting board. Another table held a plastic bin filled with soapy water, but there was no faucet for it. Everything was neat and tidy, but that was because it had to be—there wasn’t any space.

In the middle of the floor in the kitchen area was an open hatch with steps leading down. The smell of damp soil and vegetation wafted through, and as I passed, I caught a glimpse of greenery down below, just out of sight. Then we were walking down the long hall. String lights were draped around protruding pipes and along the wall, giving the area a whimsical feel. I saw childish paintings—likely Tian’s work—on the wall in an array of colors. The one that made me pause was of four handprints, each a different size and color, with names printed just below. They had pressed their hands together so that their forefingers overlapped with the previous one’s pinkie, linking them together. Tian’s small hand was in pink, Cali’s in red, Maddox’s in purple, and Quess’s in deep blue.

It was such a simple thing, but as soon as I saw it, I felt it—the love they had for each other. It gave me pause, made me think about my own family, my parents, and I truly realized that their home was not my home.

That was followed by a surprising understanding: it hadn’t been my home since Alex had left.