Sylph shook her head, while Romeo and Riot watched the floor.
Pippin gazed at the screen, the orange lighting up his cheeks. He gave a hopeless sort of shrug. “You killed us, Chase.”
19
HOTAS
Hands-On Throttle and Stick
Chase was burning up and still a little sightless as she mumbled a bathroom excuse and fled the scene of her latest crime. She pushed into the locker room, and the bench wavered beneath her as she sat hard. Crashed was more like it.
Her breath came short and sharp as she relived the pressure of the centrifuge. How she’d wanted more, more. Wanted every pound of it until her body turned off like it had been unplugged. Not good enough, Tourn’s voice barked through her thoughts, and not for the first time, she wondered whose spot she’d stolen in coming to the Star.
Maybe that cadet wouldn’t have failed…
And sapphire? Christ. She wasn’t going to live that one down anytime soon.
Her body felt about as hot as if she had been in a real fire. She yanked her shirt over her head. Her dog tags clinked, and she ran the metal links over the balled chain, holding on to the grating sound in the echo-tiled room. She didn’t hear anyone come in.
“That’s some scar.”
Chase grabbed her shirt and held it over her bra. “What are you doing in here?”
“This is the boys’ locker room.” Tristan looked back at the entrance. “At least, there is a little man on the door.”
Chase flashed hotter than ever. “My mistake.” He wasn’t turning away, and she didn’t feel like bringing her shirt down so she could get it back on. She should have walked out, but she was too beat to even consider standing.
Tristan seemed to understand. He sat on the bench. “Can I ask you a question, Chase?”
She let her head fall forward, and sweat tingled as it slid down her neck. She didn’t want his questions. “No.”
He didn’t accept that. “Why are you so hot and cold with me?”
She considered him for a moment. He was real right now, not overly pleasing or polite. Perhaps that’s why she broke her standard evasive tactics. “Because you’re two people. And I only like one of them.”
“So you do like me, at least fifty percent of me.” He was trying to make her smile. It was almost working. “I might have to tell Sylph on you.”
“But then who would stop her from killing both of us the next time we hit the runway?”
“Come now,” he said, his confidence peaking. “I haven’t gotten up there with her yet, but I’ve seen enough tapes to know she can’t keep up with us.”
Chase was enjoying this a little too much. They hadn’t been in the sky for a week now—the terror level was still too high—and the way Tristan said us made Chase flash to the way they’d flown together. Wing under wing and all that teasing.
“So.” He pinched her arm softly. “Tell me about that scar.”
She was in weird headspace. Warm and fuzzy and not herself. “I told Pippin it was from falling off my bike when I was a kid. I tell my hookups I got mugged.”
“But those are lies?”
“Necessary alterations of the truth.” It was a phrase she’d stolen from her dad’s lexicon.
“You sound like a politician.”
Chase ran her finger up the raised line that marred her from elbow to shoulder. The doctor who took the stitches out promised it would fade and settle with time. He was the real liar. The scar was as red and angry now as it had been five years ago.
The truth came slowly, dredged up from somewhere deep. She didn’t want to give it voice, but Tristan already knew about her dad, so that made it so much easier. Too easy maybe.
“I had a run-in with some barbed wire,” she said. “A long time ago.”
“A long time ago? What’re you, fifty-seven?”
“I was twelve.” She folded her arms over her chest, a little more aware of what was under them than usual.
“Not too many twelve-year-olds have run-ins with barbed wire.”
“Maybe in your family.”
And there it was. Chase had brought Tourn into this. Would Tristan push to know more? He gave her a dark look that proved he was thinking about Lance Harold Tourn. Although she’d walked into this, she already regretted it. She reached for the first available distraction.
“Do you blame me for what happened to JAFA?”
He looked at her like she’d started to speak Chinese. “What?”
“If I hadn’t gone after Phoenix, we wouldn’t have been found out. JAFA would still exist.”
He shook his head. “Adrien told me we were being watched all along. Our interaction might have sped things up, but we were already marked. It was a matter of time.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t gone after you—”
“Stop.” He hadn’t yelled, but he might as well have. She could see him fighting with dark thoughts. She knew that battle intimately. Maybe he wanted to fight; it always helped her.
“Well, I feel guilty,” she baited.
His face was red. “Like your dad feels guilty about the Philippines?”
She stood up. “Should he? He was doing his job. He had to do it!” Her words snagged on her conversation with Pippin. Apparently “had to” moments were genetic. She sat as suddenly as she had stood, but Tristan wasn’t done.
He jingled her dog tags. “Why do you wear these all the time? I bet you sleep in them. At JAFA we only had to wear them in the air.”
Chase elbowed his hand away. “We wear them because we’re a few heartbeats from enemy territory. Any day the drones could show up with a thousand missiles. I don’t know about you, but I’d like for Kale to be able to ID my body when it’s a blackened brick.”
She’d gone too far.
Tristan fell into that damned place. Shock slid over him like cement. Sweat spotted his temples. He didn’t seem like he was breathing. Maybe he saw JAFA burning. The explosions. The screams. Whatever it was, it had him by the soul and was twisting…